Park City Utah (Wow) to Rawlins, Wyoming

From Elko, NV to Park City, UT is exactly 300 miles. More rain. More hail. Beautiful country. The eastern side of Nevada is, of course, high desert, but with snow-capped mountains in the far distance it's hard to believe it's the desert.

We laughed at the fanciful shapes the clouds made along the high mountain peaks!

Just west of the Utah state line, the rain provided us with a gauze of drops as we stared off into the distance.

And then we bailed off the Nevada plateau down toward the Great Salt Lake. The recent rain has left a few inches of brackish water over almost the entire Salt Lake Basin. Awesome to know that we could walk in warm water for miles!

We got through Salt Lake City just before the evening traffic congestion, and once again noted with some wonder the 45 mph, sharp right-hand turns they have put in the middle of Interstate 80! Well, it slows the traffic down for sure.

We checked into Park City RV Resort just a few miles east of SLC. The 2002 Winter Olympic Games were held here and we could see some of the venues from the campground.

Park City is such a beautiful area (and at 7001 feet!) that we decided to stay another day and check it out. Downtown Park City has been magically transformed from the quiet little town it once was into a mini Telluride. Downtown is a long Main Street with restaurants, bars, jewelry and clothing stores galore. All very high end, of course.

Of course, the town is dedicated to snow skiing and in particular the Olympic Games held here some 17 years ago. This monument in the center of town is at the end of a long series of smaller monuments placed in a row that list all the previous venues for winter games since 1936.

We drove to the Olympic Village, now known as the Utah Olympic Park, owned by a private foundation that is in the middle of a 100 million dollar renovation, pointing toward making a bid for another Olympic Winter Games, probably in 2032 or 2036. We joined a tour that took us to the top of the mountain for a look at the facilities as they now exist. This practice facility for freestyle skiers gives them a place to practice during the summer. The pool is shallow, and the dark bars that are scarcely seen on the bottom of the pool send large volumes of air bubbles up so that when the skier lands, the impact is more closely like landing on snow rather than very hard water!

The top of the bobsled track doesn't look like much in late May, but it is a grueling course down the mountain. Speeds of 70 mph are achieved, and near 90 mph in the skeleton races.  During races, crews groom the course by hand, walking backward from the top down, wearing cleated shoes and brushing the cold surface. Its necessary to insure a uniform surface for each team.

One of the teams was doing some summer practicing. With a bit of modification for running on a dry track the teams can train year-round.

Next we went to the top of the 120 meter jump. The steps on the left are for athletes when they have their skis on, and the steps on the right are for normal walking. Of course the center is the actual running surface. It was covered in a cleated wood surface because on June 1st, there was to be a competition where athletes ran from the bottom to the top! No way!

In the distance is the valley. Thousands of condos, apartments and hotel rooms cover the area, with Interstate 80 running left to right through it. The rv park we stayed in is under the cloud shadow in the upper left.

 The Utah Olympic Park contains a total of six ski jumps: 10, 20, and 40 meter jumps, as well as these three, from left to right, 64 meter, 90, and 120 meters. The surfaces are made of strands of plastic about 6 inches long implanted in a resin surface and oriented so that the strands all point downhill. At the bottom of the jump, a grass area provides a flat surface to drain away the speed generated while coming down. Imagine these jumps all covered with groomed snow!

Later in the afternoon we decided to drive the Mirror Lake Scenic Drive. Heading east our of Park City toward the small town of Kamas, we entered Uinta-Wasatch Cache National Forest. Highway 150 took us thru some some extraordinarily beautiful scenery. Very nice!

 Leaving Park City today, June 1st, we enjoyed one of the quietest, least stressful 265 mile journeys of our career traveling this wonderful country. Interstate 80 runs pretty much straight as a string due east. The traffic was light, the scenery, if a bit boring, still had some fascinating features. The town of Green Valley is set is a particularly interesting valley surrounded by sandstone cliffs. Still....most of the road was.....straaaiiiggghhhttt.

Arriving in Rawlins, WY, we settled into Western Hills RV Park. We've been here in the past, and know that it is an easy in/easy out simple park, with good utilities and long, wide sites. We will only be here one night, then it's off again.