Road Trip 2012, Day 17: From Bruneau Sand Dunes to Salt Lake City

Bruneau Sand Dunes is also known for its, get this, sand dunes.

We decided we weren’t in a big time squunch this morning so we got the girls up and moving around then, eying those awesome dunes in the background, decided to climb those suckers.

Of course, Grace caught a really cool dragonfly. She just has lightning fast hands!

Caroline and Grace were both doing great climbing the dune until Grace started freaking out that the wind was blowing the sand like needles into her legs. And the wind was totally cranking. I wish I had had an anemometer, but the wind was certainly enough to knock over our tent and bend 3 of our poles. Seriously. It had been hard to sleep with it ripping at the tent, too.

Caroline, wearing pants, stuck it out and ran all the way to the end and back. She really had a blast.

Brad, wearing fur, also had no problem with the wind. Of course, I was wearing pants since it was below 80 degrees, so I was fine.

After packing up our bent tent and listening to Brad curse up a storm because of course the wind was all our fault somehow (he got over it pretty quickly) the open road beckoned and Salt Lake City was our goal.

Of course, being us, it’s totally about the journey and not only the destinations; we pulled off in Utah to check out the Golden Spike.

 

The Golden Spike was the ceremonial railroad spike driven when the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific train tracks met.The Union Pacific had started from the west coast, the Central started from Independence, Missouri. With the help of the Chinese laborers, the Union Pacific rail was about two years ahead of schedule by the time they reached the Sierra Nevadas.

The Central Pacific train, above, burned coal (although it could burn wood, too). The Union Pacific burned wood since it was more readily available than coal.

The blue was the Union Pacific train, the brown was Central Pacific. They put on a neat show at the center and even had the trains running and whistling. I believe the road signs before Golden Spike seemed to indicate that there weren’t any facilities, but that was a lie. The visitor center was great and had nice bathrooms, displays and even a couple movies.

We saw these beautiful birds on the way back to the main highway to Salt Lake City.

Road Trip 2012, Day 16: From Seattle to Bruneau Sand Dunes, Idaho

This day had a 30 degree change in temperature from the time we left Seattle after breakfast in the morning to just after our early-evening stop at the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center in Baker City, Oregon.

Seattle was bright and sunny, but that chill breeze off Puget Sound sure made a dent in the sun’s heat. We packed up our suite (I sure wish we had the money to sleep like that every night of our vacations!) and headed out to mail our postcards and pick up more dry ice.

Heading out of Seattle the scenery stayed pretty consistent (lush, green and lovely) until we got into the Cascade mountain range, where we saw a lot more pine trees. After we crossed over we moved right into the expected rain shield desert ecosystem – dry, brown rolling hills. A lot like west Texas (and the Coast Ranges of California).

Surprisingly, eastern Washington and western & central Oregon were VERY agricultural with massive fields of grapes, some vined plant and even a Del Monte factory.

If you are ever driving east on I-84 through Oregon you need to stop at the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center. Plan to spend at minimum one hour, better yet at least two hours. The center has fabulous exhibits, movies and trails. From one huge window overlooking the rolling hills you can see remnants of the original Oregon Trail. Since there’s nothing else out there to look at you can totally imagine a trail of wagons, oxen and road-weary people leading across the valley. It’s one of the better visitor’s centers that I’ve visited, and we sure have hit a lot of them. Be sure to stop if you can.

Bruneau Sand Dunes is known for its fabulous night skies; in fact, they have an observatory on site. There wasn’t anything going on, but I did get a few nice moon shots.