Showing posts with label Bonneville Salt Flats. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bonneville Salt Flats. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Time To Head For The Salt

After our overnight stop in Beaver, Utah, we headed on north towards the cities of Wendover (Utah) and West Wendover (Nevada) and the Bonneville salt flats. The state border is in the middle of the town, resulting in a very small town with 2 post offices, a handful of casino's on the Nevada side, and not much more to offer to the casual tourist. There are actually more things to do in Wendover than just gamble and race on the salt, but I suspect 99% of visitors to the town would never discover that.

Parachutes are an essential part of the braking system on most Bonneville cars

The flight crews that flew the Enola Gay and Bockscar B29 Bombers to Hiroshima and Nagasaki trained at Wendover, and there's a small museum at the former air force base explaining some of the history of the area. There's also a local drag strip, but neither of these were the primary reason for our visit to the Wendover area.

The Bonneville Salt Flats are a mecca for racers and hot rodders alike

Racers have been chasing land speed records at Bonneville since 1914, and the Southern California Timing Association have been running 2 events a year for many years now, one of those being August's SpeedWeek event. This year, over 500 teams entered for SpeedWeek, including 200 rookie teams. This was also the first time for me at SpeedWeek, and I had been looking forward to it since making the decision to come here almost a year ago.

Friday, January 22, 2010

Welcome to "The Bonneville Run"

The Bonneville Run is a trip being planned for August 2010. The basic aim of this trip is to fly in to San Jose and embark upon a road trip that travels a number of US states and places us at the Bonneville Salt Flats for SpeedWeek 2010.

Bridge at Alum Rock Park

Along the way, we intend visiting San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Death Valley and the Hoover Dam, as well as stopping in to a number of speed shops along the way.

Also, we had a good time at John's Char Burger in Livermore last year, so will head out there again on a Friday night, probably coinciding with the GoodGuys Pleasanton show.

Winston's Hot Rod at John's Char Burger

Further details will be added shortly, so please keep checking back for more info, and if you want to be involved, more information on that will be coming soon too...