Sacramento - FINAL STOP on Travel Tour 2019 10/3/2019

From: casarollnotes.blogspot.com 

Tim and Linda Bunyan

We depart Salt Lake City, Utah and leave behind the rail center, Salt Lake, and head to

Sacramento to end our Travel Tour 2019.  It is October and time to transition from our travel trailer (living in aluminum) to live in our beach house for the winter months.

The Great Salt Lake is the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere.  This landlocked body of water is an average depth of 15'.  Its white-sand beaches are popular with swimmers and sunbathers, and craggy outcroppings on Antelope Island draw hikers and mountain bikers.

 The Salt of Salt Lake: One of five businesses extract salt and other minerals from the lake through solar evaporation ponds.  No food-grade salt comes from the Great Salt Lake.  It is used for road salt, water softeners, and salt licks for livestock.

 Work Truck maintenance adjusting switches, tightening loose track components, and surfacing and lining track to keep straight sections.  Ballast is the bed of gravel or other aggregates that sits underneath train tracks. 

 Over 100 miles west of Salt Lake, we come upon a Highway Rest Area.

 I am glad it is time for a stop.  Especially because at this Rest Area, one can go into the water and also view the Bonneville Salt Flats International Speedway!

   In Wendover, Utah.

Utah's famed measured mile - site of World Land-Speed Record Runs.  This place was erected for spectators by the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in 1972.

The HIghway along the Bonneville Speedway which is along the horizon
 at foot of the mountains.

 view the Bonneville Salt Flats International Speedway at the foot of the mountains

The unique scenery and the racing events bring people here for Speed Week in August since 1912.  Here is a view of the Bonneville Salt Flats International Speedway!

National Register of Historic Places!

We depart Utah Mountain time zone and cross into Pacific TimeZone into Nevada.

 

We are within a couple hundred miles of Reno where we will stop to visit Rob and Sandy Connelly at their 40-acre ranch.

On the Dwight D. Eisenhower Hwy -  the Interstate Highway #80 portion.

 

Just west of Elko, Nevada, we came upon the California Trail Interpretive Center.  We are intrigued and pull in for a discovery moment in time!

We found this place keen and an amazing facility ran by the Bureau of Land Management!  More than about the Donner Party story, there are stories of over 250,000 brave pioneers that made their way west on the California Trail.

Artifacts, models, and programs about the CA Gold Rush, American Indian heritage specific to the regions; hiking trailhead from the Center.  The rugged Ruby Mountain range is the background.  We spent a couple of hours inside the building and highly recommend everyone to come and bring their children.  The interpretive Center visitors can experience the 1850 Wagon Encampment and musical performances, 
historic displays, and activities.

Keep your eye out for places like the Forty Mile Desert!  

The famous quote about crossing this desert from the author: Mark Twain. 
 "It was a dreary pull and a long and thirsty one, for we had no water.  From one extremity of this desert to the other, the road was white with the bones of oxen and horses.  It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that we could have walked the forty miles and set our feet on a bone at every step!"

Modern Interstate 80 closely approximates the path of the 40 miles desert on the Carson River.  Nearly the same path as The First Transcontinental Railroad (modern Overland Route) and U.S. Route 95 follow the Carson route and we carve out our own path today.

The California Trail Interpretive Center

Time to move on in our Toyota Truck horsepower and Casaroll, our covered wagon!

Other current modes of transportation through the desert

 Sign along the Highway I like

We arrive to see our good friends Rob and Sandy Connelly at their Nevada Ranch!  So nice to be back home.  Rob and Sandy followed much of our 2019 Travel Tour route thru Oregon and met up with us around the Olympic Peninsula and on to Cour d Alene too! 
 Rob has his Astoria, Oregon shirt on.  :-)   You can see Rob and Sandy make us happy!

We are now settled in Sacramento at the Elks Lodge while we transition from the Travel Trailer, visit the children, visit the dentist, GP doctor, and eye doctor.  We will store the trailer, CasaRoll, and the truck for the winter months and change over to the Lexus for our drive and stay in Mazatlan.  We shall be here for Angela's birthday, Thanksgiving, and Christmas at Angela and Lee's house in the East Bay.

The air show is being held and the Elks Lodge located next to the airport. 

We have a front-row seat!

Home Sweet Home!

END of Travel Tour 2019

Salt Lake City, Utah - KOA 9/27 - 10/1/2019

From: casarollnotes.blogspot.com 

Tim and Linda Bunyan

We catch sight of the largest and most powerful operating steam locomotive in the World!
Built for steep mountain grades, each Big Boy had two huge engines beneath a 250-ton boiler able to hold enough water to cover an area the size of a basketball court to the depth of a high-top shoe.

Big Boys steam engines hauled freight between Wyoming and Utah in the 1940s and 1950s.  The American Locomotive Company in Schenectady, New York, (the town next to NY Family Farm) built these locomotives; this #4041 is the only operational.  

As part of the Union Pacific steam program, the eighth, UP Locomotive #4014 has been restored to operating condition.   No one ever thought that a Big Boy would be restored to operation.  Ever.  

The oil must be changed every few hours to keep the temperature and cleanliness of the engine to top performance.  It is so large, ladders are used by the trainmen
 to check the oil. 

We have made changes to our originally planned our RV Travel Tour to be sure we are here on this day the locomotive arrives in Ogden to help celebrate the 150th anniversary of the transcontinental railroad.   

 As we set out from our KOA Rv park, we headed for the north station to greet the locomotive arriving near noon.  We were the first arrivals and over the next couple of hours, people of all ages came to celebrate the massive, restored locomotive steaming for the 150th year anniversary of the Golden Spike gathering. 

Woodstock is curious about all the train tracks. 

 

We found the Union Pacific Office to ask the exact location where the locomotive was to arrive.

Car enthusiasts come to see the locomotive!

Union Pacific no longer has tracks near Promontory Summit (we drove out there yesterday).  The Ogden crowd here was asked to tweet #DONE, the telegraphed message that let the country know the rail lines from east to west were joined!

As the locomotive departs on its two-month excursion on the Overland Route thru Salt Lake City and Las Vegas, Nev., into the LA Basin.  

We move on from Salt Lake City to Sacramento (where the Union Pacific originated in 1869, thanks to Leland Stanford.)  

Sacramento is our final stop for the

 2019 Travel Tour. 

SALT LAKE CITY 

We stayed at the KOA in the city.  Close access to downtown. 

We are ready for a drive through a city!  We want to see traffic lights and big buildings and wide city streets and no better place to see modern cared for avenues than Salt Lake City!

America colors on this modern, public transportation, Transit Authority TRAX electric train, receiving power from overhead wires. This line provides service from Downtown Salt Lake City. 

We are driving around in the truck to get around to explore.

 The city is interesting with the Temple Square area, the Capitol, the Planetarium, the City Creek, Liberty Park, and the University and we see it all.

 Modern buildings continue to be built; this city is well developed adding modern to
 existing city blocks.

The layout of the city streets is a byproduct of the city's Mormon heritage.  The city plan was drawn in 1847 from East Coast design as well as the desire for order.  A temple at the center of a grid and for large blocks that enabled family farming.  
SLC has the largest blocks and widest streets of any major U.S. city.  

 Residents live in an urban-suburban mix feel. 

We enjoyed the look and the feel while driving the expansive view is beautiful and pleasing and plenty of room so there does not seem to be bumper-to-bumper driving. 

Large, wide sidewalks allow plenty of space for city motorized scooters
for ease to get around the city. 

The City Library

Family Search Building 

 Inside the Family Search Building

Tim and I spent an hour searching our ancestry on computers offered here inside the Family Search.

There were people there to help.  A young man came to us while we were pecking away.  He asked a few questions and entered in a few keys and traced my Klaus family back to Germany....to Prussia! 
We thought of Sherry while we were here.  She enjoys and invests hours into her family search and this would be a perfect spot to allot some full time with her.
  It is comfortable here and quite nice.

 Very impressive and a place to spend some more time.

Assembly Hall built of granite stone left over from the building of the Mormon Temple.

Assembly Hall used for meetings and services. 

Temple Square Visitor's Center paintings. 

 Walking about the grounds at Temple Square.

Music & The Spoken Word - 90 years

 The Salt Lake Tabernacle was built from 1863 to 1875 to house meetings for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.   It was the location of the church's semi-annual general conference.  Now a historic building, the Tabernacle is still used for overflow crowds during general conference.

Tim and I attended the weekly live broadcast performance by the 360 members Tabernacle Choir and the 85 musicians in the Orchestra.   The Choir performed for the first time in August 1847, just one month after the pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley.  

Since 1929, the radio and now television broadcasts and is the world's longest-running continuous weekly network broadcast in America.

  "Music and the Spoken Word."

The impressive majesty of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) Temple is worth a trip to Salk Lake City to see.  It was dedicated in 1893 and took 40 years to complete.  It is interesting that i's only the fourth temple built since the Mormon exodus from (New York, Missouri) Illinois in 1846.

The temple is constructed with large blocks of quartz rock that had to be dragged by wagon 20 miles from Little Cottonwood Canyon.

Salt Lake Temple is the largest LDS temple by floor area.   It is an uplifting experience here at Temple Square.  The landscape and historic buildings are a top attraction to this pleasant city.

 Tim and take an evening city tour

The Utah State Capitol Building is captivating and is built on Capitol Hill overlooking downtown Salt Lake City.

Downtown The Gateway Plaza

Salt Lake City holds a proud history of American Pioneers that came across the nation and remain a part of the woven fabric of the United States.

Before the transcontinental railroad, it took months to traverse the nation.  With the railroad, the time was reduced to a week.  Now, Google Maps indicates 

it is about an 8-hour drive from SLC to Sacramento.

We drive onward, by way of Highway 80, 650 miles to Sacramento, California much as the pioneers that came before us; however, we are with the ease and comfort of our aluminum house and our kitty cat Woodstock!