10/7-9
10/7
A long drive to Elko, NV along I-80.
Dry Nevada.
Salt flats.
Nighttime Elko.
Legal prostitution in Nevada.
Gave a reading at an Independent Living Residence. 10 people
attended and I heard some wonderful stories from them. They
enjoyed my reading very much and I sold a few books.
Afterwards I had supper at the Star Hotel, a Basque residence and
restaurant. It was built in 1910 as a home away from home for Basques.
The amount of food they serve is amazing. Standard dishes, served with your
choice of entree, includes bread, soup, salad, Basque beans, garbanzos, french fries and a cooked vegetable. All of these are in heaping portions and tasty. As someone
told me earlier, go there hungry! They were right.
The hotel has an interesting history which you can read here.
10/8
From Sherman Station, an old homestead from 1905. Buildings were
relocated to Elko and are on exhibit. These are old buildings for the west.
Again, so different than in the east.
The place where I had the sumptuous supper the night before.
ongi etorri is "welcome" in Basque.
I guess there's probably "illegal" brothels in the area too.
Left Elko on the road to Salt Lake City.
Just after entering Utah the Bonneville Salt Flats appear. A fascinating area that goes on and on and on.
I've never seen a sign like this before. There were a number
of these spaced out while passing the salt flats area.
I had to stop and at least take a few steps on the flats. Soft
surface but firm underneath.
All of the clumps are where passers-by left words, initials,
designs with stones. This went on for miles and miles.
One marker - a heart with initials inside.
Salt Lake City.
The Temple.
Another sign I've never seen before.
Temple at night.
A sparsely attended reading at Weller Book Works but very enjoyable. Catherine and Tony, the owners, were very pleasant and interesting. The store has been in Tony's family for 84 years! I wonder if there are any other family owned book stores in the country that have been around that long?
I learned from them that Salt Lake City is more liberal than most people think. Utah is generally a conservative state, but there's a strong contingent of liberal activists in the city.
Also had good conversation with Will, a relatively new employee at the store. An English major and also into the outdoors. You have to be if you live in Salt Lake City. The mountains and desert are right there. There are even some canyons within city limits!
As I drove back to the motel I thought about how I'd like to come spend a little more time here in the future. Maybe on my next western journey I could book a couple of programs in the area.
10/9
A day of traveling. Was going to camp at Arches NP today but the government shutdown scuttled those plans. An alternative was suggested to me by Dave, a pizza store worker in Salt Lake City, Little Wildhorse Canyon. This is a slot canyon in southeastern Utah. Sounded good, but then there was a forecast of rain and slot canyons can be dangerous when it rains, plus I didn't feel like camping in that weather, so I drove all the way to Dillon, CO where I have a reading at Colorado Mountain College Thursday evening. The other factor was also that it was going to snow in the higher elevations Thursday and I had an almost 11,000 foot pass to cross over and Dillon itself is over 9,000'. I didn't want to deal with snowy driving conditions so it made sense to do the long drive to Dillon.
A bit of autumnal color in the mountains of southern Utah.
Colorado.
About 2/3 of the way to Dillon, while driving along I-70, a spark plug blew out again. This one got lost, but I put in the old one and continued on a few miles to Grand Junction, CO. There I bought two new plugs, put one in and kept the old one and continued on down the road in fine shape.
This concerns me a bit. The plug threads on the engine may be worn and it could get to a point of not being able to keep a plug in there. To fix that would require more work than I could do and would, in the least, delay the journey. Hopefully that won't happen,
I-70 through Colorado is a very scenic road. Mountain passes, narrow canyons, broad flat stretches with mountains in all directions. I wanted to make time so did very little stopping.
I pulled into Dillon just about at dark. Some of the nearby mountains had a little snow on them and the few-days-old moon shone through thin clouds. The immense dark presences of mountains. It reminded me of going to Sand Beach in Acadia National Park at night. The immense presence of the vast Atlantic not dissimilar to the immensity of the dark mountains. I always feel so insignificant when in their presence.
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