\n\tHello from Wendover, UT (Bonneville!!!!!!!!)\n<\/p>\n
\n\tThursday morning – August 15, 2019 (First post of this travelogue)\n<\/p>\n
\n\tI am at one of my favorite locations\/race – Bonneville Speed Week. \n<\/p>\n
\n\tMy great plans earlier this year were to have the bus and the IHC truck here. Well neither were even close to making it. So plan B was to rent a car and “camp” at what they call the “bend in the road” Google Maps Link<\/a>\n<\/p>\n \n\t“{google_map}40.762215, -113.965977{\/google_map}\n<\/p>\n \n\tWhen I say camp, that is a pretty basic description. I am sleeping in the front seat of my rental car (a Hemi Charger!!!!). I have a propane camp stove on which I prepare my freeze dried breakfasts and dinners (pretty good meals). I also use the camp stove to make my coffee with my special coffee maker (uses my K cups). That makes me pretty “self sufficient”. Sleeping in the car is OK but it would be better if I had my own bed {grin}.\n<\/p>\n \n\tI had been following the salt conditions for a week before I left and it looked pretty good. However, last Thursday they got a rain storm and it really messed up the courses and delayed the start of the racing three days. The “long course” is normally five miles of timed segments. They had to reduce that to four miles and all of the cars were run on that course. Normally the long course is reserved for cars that go over 200MPH and the short course is for the rest of the cars. When they run all the cars (over 500 entries) on the one course, it is a mess. One record was set at 48 MPH (a very small motorcycle) and it takes forever for them to travel the course. It really limits the number of runs all of the cars can make. \n<\/p>\n \n\tThe salt conditions are not all that great, so the big dogs are not going very fast. So far the fastest speed is about 370 MPH. When the salt it good, a few cars will go well into the 400 MPH range.\n<\/p>\n \n\tHowever, it is still Bonneville and that is Mecca for racing (at least for me). I have been on the salt at sunrise the last two days and fixed my breakfast and coffee while the cars passed by going to the starting line.\n<\/p>\n \n\tYesterday afternoon I went into town to fill the gas tank. I could not resist going out to Wendover Air Force Base. I have discussed this amazing place in previous blogs. It was a very active Air Force Base in the 40s and was used to train the crew of the Enola Gay which was the B29 that dropped the atomic bombs on Japan (Link)<\/a>. The hangers and barracks are still in reasonably good condition – indeed, a movie about WWII could be filmed there with very little reconstruction.\n<\/p>\n \n\tWe were saddened in the past that the museum was very small and the folks mentioned that there was very little support for reconstruction of the Enola Gay hanger – primarily because younger folks had the impression that the bombing was an atrocity. However, this visit made me feel much better. There is a strong program to stabilize the Enola Gay hanger and do a significant amount of reconstruction.\n<\/p>\n \n\tI am having some issues with the photos I have taken, so I will upload some in the next post.\n<\/p>\n \n\tToday, I will spend about a half of a day on the salt and then start heading back.\n<\/p>\n \n\tThat is all for this post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hello from Wendover, UT (Bonneville!!!!!!!!) Thursday morning – August 15, 2019 (First post of this travelogue) I am at one of my favorite locations\/race – Bonneville Speed Week. My great plans earlier this year were to have the bus and … Continue reading