More "Nothing;" Now from western Utah!

Okay, eastern Utah? Pretty cool, with the highway twisting around mountains, which suddenly open up to a view of Salt Lake City below you. But once you leave Salt Lake City heading west, you get yet MORE "nothing" than we got in Wyoming!

Well, not quite. You get the Great Salt Lake (which -- did I mention? -- stinks. Salt brine, according to Mark. Eww, according to my kids) followed by 200 miles of desert. Some of it is just scruffy, parched desert, but some is a startling moonscape of salt flats. Perfectly flat, blindingly white landscape that appears to be white sand, but is actually -- you guessed it -- salt. Here are the kids, (sporting sunglasses which had to be frantically dug out from under seats and inside suitcases in order to tolerate the glare.)

And here's Mark, um, licking the ground to prove that it is, indeed, salt. For the record, this picture was his idea, not mine.