Day 2: Salt Lake City, UT to Winnemucca, NV

Ahad, 28 Disember 2008
360 miles (576 km)

Pagi Ahad di Salt Lake City yang dingin. Kami check-out dalam pukul 10:30 pagi. Pagi di SLC terasa kelainanannya dengan bandar yang dikelililingi bukit bukau yang memutih dengan salji. Suhu agak sejuk tetapi tidak sedingin waktu malam. Angin juga tidak begitu kuat mungkin sebab dihalang oleh deretan bukit-bukit. Namun, sesekali anging kuat bertiup kencang. Disebabkan hari Ahad dan Krismas masih terasa lagi jadi bandarnya terasa begitu lengang, jadi amat sesuai untuk pusing-pusing di sekitar bandar SLC.

Pemandangan di kawasan Wasatch Inn, UT

SLC agak kecil berbanding Denver mahupun KL tetapi kami amat suka dengan sistem jalanraya yang teratur dan bandarnya juga amat terancang dengan jalan lurus dan bangunan yang teratur dan kemas. Terdapat satu LRT yang beroperasi di bandarnya dan kami agak sistem tersebut terus bersambung dengan University of Utah. Saya malas nak pergi tengok kampusnya dan malas juga nak berjalan-jalan di sekitar bandarnya. Memang rasa malas betullah pagi tu.. satu sebab penuh salji kan dan lagi satu kami lagi suka natural scenery. Takat bangunan tinggi-tinggi ni tengok jelah.. KL pun banyak jugak bangunan cantik-cantik..

Parts of Salt Lake City

Satu yang saya perasan disini banyak Mormon Church. Saya mengetahui pasal agama Mormon ni melalui sepasang suami isteri yang tinggal di Aggie Village jugak. Masa tu kami punya Community Coordinator, Amin yang berasal dari Iran buat BBQ party di courtyard kami. Kebetulan saya duduk semeja dengan mereka dan seorang wanita Iran yang juga sepupu si Amin ni. The Iranian lady seems so fond to talk about religions and she even called up her husband to join the talk. She's from Golden and apparently, she was educated in some international laws and stuff and in contrast with me who did not favor to talk much about politics or religions. So the couple also started talking about theirs. At that time, my husband was having a good conversation with our nextdoor Indian neighbour while watching the kids running and fooling around. We were talking about Ramadan and the Mormon fasting and lots of other stuff which I could not even remember. Luckily for me, I did not comment much on the Sunni and Syiah because my husband told me later that the Iranians Muslims are Syiah and they are very sensitive about this. Bless my big mouth was zipped through the whole conversation and strangely I could be a good listener through out the whole thing. The truth is, I don't know much about the topic. The point is Mormons believe that Nabi Isa a.s. will return to the earth just before the Judgement Day. They also point out some interesting things which is pretty much similar to Islam. See Mormon in Wikipedia. I don't care much about the talk, I listened and I forget. So lame of me... By the way, there were a lot of Mormon churches in SLC and they even had some Sunday services that Sunday.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints

After a while of cruising around the city, we drove off to resume our journey. Our little Aqif kept asking for his favorite Walmart chocolate chip cookies and so I did some searching in our GPS to locate nearest Walmart. After following the directions, then I realized that it was way too far from our route so we decided to let him craved for a while. The GPS was really a great tool but we're still not master it yet. Driving away from the city, it was amazing to notice that SLC is surrounded by hills of snowy mountains. It was indeed a beautiful city with just the right size but I will definitely so not gonna live there simply because I know the winter is absolutely bitterly freezing. Snow is fun but it's the cold wind that is unbearable..

Salt Lake City from Interstate Highway, I-80

The roadtrip on I-80 from SLC were presented with endless view of the famous Great Salt Lake. It felt like we were driving by the ocean. I google about this majestic lake and found something interesting in Wikipedia. The area of the lake was about 2.5 times the size of Melaka or approximately half of Kedah. It is saltier than seawater and was dubbed America's Dead Sea but of course the Dead Sea is totally dead and no living habitat can even live there. The I-80 spread across some of its southwest lakes and there were times when were driving on the road with the lakes surrounding us.

The real scene and the GPS image with lake all over.

The GPS image really shown an interesting road layout. Noticed the railway track on the right of the screen, a friend of mine once told me that the train trip from midwest to San Francisco is one of the most scenic train journey in US. I could imagine how mesmerizing it would be. The road trip was mesmerizing enough. If you go by train, you'll get better view of the lake.

Great Salt Lake, Utah

After a while, we stopped by at Bonneville Salt Flats. I was amazed by the flatness and the barren of the white that spread as far as eyes can see. It was actually very bright and freaking freezing, the wind is so chillingly cold. I did scratch my finger through that salt and tasted the saltiness of it. The flats however is absolutely as hard as a granite so I just managed to kind of run through my finger on its surface and lick it. I found later that the depth of the salt can be up to 6 feet deep. From my AAA map, the area was depicted as some evaporation basin. Pretty interesting facts, huh?

Hey, this is where they tested all those world speed record

Can you see the curvature of the earth at the horizon?

We spent some good half an hour on this place before we hit back on the road. The plan was to spend the night at Reno but it seems that we had some time issues and since the dark was as early as 4:30 pm so we stopped by at Winnemucca, Nevada.

The long winding and slippery winter road