Day 5: Winnemucca to Wendover

Good morning Nevada. Fairly patchy cloud this morning, weather definitely deteriorating as I head East. Was soon on the road and heading for the Utah border. Called in at Paliside Canyon where you can get a reasonable view of the trains, but passed one just as I was coming in and then didn't see any more.

Look cold? There were large frozen ponds down there and a cool breeze blowing. Didn't hang around long; even if a train had come along the lighting wasn't being very cooperative.

Next stop was… can't remember… but I only wanted petrol. Saw a fairly serious trailer on a ute though…

Continued on my way and passed a number of huge industrial sites. One made mining lubricants, another appeared to be a steel mill, and another was a power station, all way out in the middle of the desert, miles from anywhere.

As I drove I came across a BNSF trackage rights train (i.e. BNSF train on UP tracks). He seemed to be having some loco problems as the second loco kept throttling up and down. The UP loco in the consist appeared to be doing nothing at all. So the manifest was pretty much all down the Dash-9, which gave a good show when it finally got moving again.

Patches of snow on the ground now, and starting to get very muddy under foot. I watched him depart and continued on my way down the endless Nevadan freeways. Cruise control comes in extremely handy here. That reminds me: in an effort to dumb down driving, Ford have removed the hand brake and the entire right hand side control stick from my rental! The hand brake has been replaced by a weird extra pedal near the door and a bonnet-release style handle to set and release the park brake respectively. The indicators are now on the left (standard US practice), while the headlight controls are on a dashboard knob, and everything else (front & rear wipers, front & rear wiper sprays, wiper speed adjust, indicators, and high beams) is control by the single remaining stick. It is quite a delicate manoeuvre to clean the windows without turning in the indicators, washing the rear window, or flashing anyone!

Meanwhile the steering wheel lets you turn the car, toot the horn, turn on/off cruise control, speed up and slow down the car in 1mph increments, change the radio station, raise/lower the volume, and choose between cd/ipod/radio! I even found out today that the dash can give you a countdown in mph till the tank is empty. 399 miles per tank apparently.

So as I'm driving this high tech railfanning machine down the highway I spied a loco on a siding, 30s later I was slipping and sliding along a very muddy access road to go check it out.

See the difference a little sun can make?

The car is now covered in mud, as am I, but I think it was worth it. I'm not sure why it is here, but it has chocks under the wheels, and what looks like a rubber drip mat clipped to the track. The trackwork… well it was a work of art! The ballast looked like it was brand new and was perfectly contoured to within half an inch; there wasn't a single stone on a sleeper. Not sure what the story behind this is, as the real mainline is on the other side of the valley.

I continued on towards Wells and waited for a train which I thought I could see coming down the track, but then never appeared. Another of those towns with 2 main lines through it. Starting to get quite chilly out here, and lots of snow on the ground…

On I went and soon caught a grain train up as it climbed up the grade out of Wells. Found an off ramp and went in to investigate, and got a friendly toot and wave as the train crawled past.

On I drove and eventually ended up at Wendover, a "delightful" wee town that straddles the Utah/Nevada border. The Utah side is squalid, with only a single restaurant (rough looking at that, and it was closed at 7pm) and a bunch of motels. The first motel I looked at the owner didn't even come out to man the office, which was probably just as well as it looked like a dive. Found a nice place for $29 a night, which is half what I've been budgeting :-) As I unloaded the car it started to hail. So that is the Utah side.

View over Wendover, with the great Salt Lake beyond.

The Nevada side… well… casino-central! It's the closest place to Salt Lake City that you can legally gamble at, so there are casinos everywhere here. Massive great big resorts with hotels, restaurants, convention centres, and of course gambling alleys. There are a couple here that look larger than the Chch hostpital complex. I got a wee bit lost while driving around and ended up in a trailer park which seems to cover half the town; it really was a sorry sight.

View from my motel room, yet another trailer park.

The contrast between the two sides is amazing. Entering town from the Nevada side you pass a store advertising "Guns, booze, cigarettes, show girls", and another right next to it boasting discount liquor, tobacco, guns, porn and everything else that is bad (in the Utah sense) for you. On the Utah side is the school and a few motels. The building next to me is the "Hard Times Pawn Shop". Rather telling really, and it isn't the only pawn shop in town. Combined population of Wendover (UT) & West Wendover (NV) is 6,000, and yet somehow they boast 5 casinos and over a thousand hotel rooms.

Dinner was a sad affair too. The only independent restaurant in town was shut, so the choices were a casino buffet, McDonalds, Burger King, or Pizza Hutt. I opted for the Pizza Hutt and had a nice meal there.

Back in Reno I was intrigued to see a billboard for fireworks "Just take exit 320 on I80", back when we were still at exit #20. Well today I passed exit 320 or whatever it was and sure enough there were adverts for fireworks everywhere. Amazing that they would advertise fireworks hundreds of miles and a good solid days drive away! It would take you all weekend to drive from Reno and back again, just for some fireworks, so it's not like it is ever going to be an impulse purchase.

Speaking of explosives, the B52 crew that dropped the "Little Boy" nuclear bomb on Hiroshima trained at Wendover. Around the corner are the Bonneville speed flats, which I intend to briefly visit tomorrow on my way East. I'm looking forward to Utah; I find it a bit easier to get my head around. Nevada has world-class scenery, but from what I've seen their economy consists of mining and gambling. Las Vegas is becoming quite unpopular with people outside of Las Vegas as it continually tries to draw water from further and further afield; after all, just how sustainable is a city built in the desert ever going to be!?

So plan tomorrow is to cross the great salt lake and head down through Orem and Provo, over Soldier Summit and arrive in my favourite Utah town, Helper. A heavy snow warning is out for tomorrow evening and the following couple of days, so basing myself within walking distance of the bare essentials (railway yards and food, in that order) seems wise. Goodbye Nevada!