Day 39
Thursday 2nd August
This day is a big trek across the desert as fast as possible. We hope to do t in 2 days and are on the road well before noon. The landscape is barren with the salt lake with the salt lake half-hidden by highway barriers to the right and and industrial machinery under the crags to our left. Further on there are immense crusty salt fields on either side. I stop to taste it - its salty. After a couple f hours we pul up for a rest at a shiny white place that looks like a snowfield laid flat and clean to the mountains on the horizon. We discover to my boyish delight that this is Bonneville Flats, where my hero Sir Malcolm Campbell set the first Land Speed Record of around 300 mph. We walk out over reflecting salty water to stand on the vast white plain where the whole of tecourse cannot be seen due to the curvature of the earth. Refreshed, we get petrol and cross into nevada, land of desert and casinos. The landscape is unrelentingly rocky with scrappy vegetation and brbed wire for miles. We rest a couple of times in ugly places alongside 18 wheelers but press on until the evening when we arrive at the Model T RV Park and Casino in Winnamucca manned by a surly woman. In all directions we see glossy old cars, some cranked up to be fearsome drag machines but all beautifully detailed. Car show weekend in Nevada. The showers and toilets closed 30 minutes later so I tried my luck in the casino along with a handful of solitary tired punters and bored croupiers. I won 2 bucks but lost 12, dumped and went to bed, listening to the drone of giant truck engines airconditioning their sleeping drivers.