Saying Goodbye to the Salt

Of course, all good things must come to an end, and eventually we had to leave Wendover and the Bonneville Salt Flats. Before we did however, we paid a visit to the Wendover Airport and their small museum devoted to the World War II history of the town, including the training of the B29 crews involved in delivering the first nuclear weapons used over the towns of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.



When we left Wendover, we headed west towards our next overnight stop in Winnemucca, Nevada, but along the way we had to stop off in the town of Elko, where one of our friends has been living for several years. Lee and Sherry are now back home in Perth, but it was good to see the town they've called home for the last five or so years.



Our overnight stop was a small motel in Winnemucca called the Town House Motel, and it was a very refreshing surprise after the accommodation in Wendover. Of all the things Wendover has to offer, it appears great accommodation deals during SpeedWeek aren't one of them, so clean, fresh smelling rooms with wifi provided were a great surprise in Winnemucca.

5 Weeks To Go, Then 5 Weeks In The USA

We've just slipped inside the 5 week mark for The Bonneville Run. With the exception of 2 nights while we're on the road, the rooms are booked. The Cadillac has been dropped off at a San Jose workshop where it will be serviced to make sure it will survive the trip and we've been buying up as much American currency as we can get our hands on.



We've been researching fairly heavily and are adding new places to our lists of things to do and places to visit every day. We've probably got enough stuff on there now to fill our schedule quite easily, however we're still looking for more suggestions.

More Accomodation Booked - The Grand Canyon Lodge

The latest development with our trip planning for The Bonneville Run is the booking of accommodation at the Grand Canyon Lodge, on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. The Lodge is the only accommodation available inside the northern part of the Grand Canyon National Park, which is a much less tourist oriented part of the Park than the South Rim area. Our accommodation is a cabin that will sleep up to 6 people and is less than a 5 minute walk to the edge of the Canyon itself.



When I first checked the availability of rooms at the Grand Canyon Lodge, they were showing plenty of rooms available, with the exception of their cabins, which were booked out. My preference was initially for a cabin, but I gave up on that idea and was happy to book 3 separate rooms instead. Last week, I checked again with the intention of making a booking, and found the website showing the Lodge was booked out for all of August. After checking third party sites and finding rooms available, but at a much higher rate at otel.com, I emailed the Lodge to enquire about room availability and any other third party providers they worked with. The response I received gave me the names of 2 third party providers to check with, one of which was otel.com, but also informed me that there was a Pioneer Cabin available at the Lodge, and lo and behold, when I checked the website after reading the email, there was a single Pioneer Cabin booking available for all of August, on the dates we needed to be there. The next most important booking we will need to make is at Death Valley, as there are, from what I can tell, 4 places inside the Death Valley National Park where we could stay, and these are likely to sell out well in advance of our trip.

Three Months and Counting

With three months to go until we fly out on The Bonneville Run, now is the time when we wanted to be making sure most of our bigger accomodation expenses were booked. With that in mind, last night we booked a room at the Bellagio hotel and casino in Las Vegas for 2 nights of the trip. The Lakeview Deluxe room we booked would normally have cost us US$200 a night plus taxes and resort fees, but we managed to find a promotional code with a tiered discount on offer depending on how far in advance you were booking, which in our case gave us 25% off the room rate, saving us US$50 per night.

Our remaining multi-night bookings are now Los Angeles at the start of the trip and Bakersfield the weekend after we leave West Wendover. I would also like to book our room at the Grand Canyon sooner, rather than later, as there are a limited number of rooms there, in fact, it looks like we missed out on my preferred room before we'd even decided we wanted to stay there.

100 Days

Today marks 100 days until we fly out from Perth International Airport, to begin 'The Bonneville Run', including our trip to the Southern California Timing Association's Bonneville Speed Week 2010.



We still have to book our accommodation in Las Vegas and for a fair bit of the rest of the trip, but we're getting more and more things planned out every day. We now have a fairly good idea of the places we want to visit in Los Angeles and are working out the best way to make that happen without going crazy in traffic. We have chosen, but not yet booked, our accommodation in Las Vegas, and that will be coming soon.



Our current plan is to spend 2 nights in Las Vegas checking out the night life and the lights of the Strip. When we leave Las Vegas, we're heading to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, which is a slightly less popular spot with the tourists than the South Rim and consequently has less options for accommodation, so we're going to have to book that pretty soon also. I'll post up more information about where we're staying in Las Vegas and elsewhere on the trip as we book it.

And The Countdown Continues With Four Months To Go

We are now just under 4 months from flying out for the United States. We're also at the point where we have enough organised that if we didn't do any more before we left, we could just wing it and we'd be fine. However, thats not my intention and we're going to be doing a lot more planning over the next month or so, as what is my intention is to at least have all our accommodation booked at least 2 months before we fly out.



Lately, I've been spending a bit of time looking at photos of San Francisco, trying to find some more places I'd like to visit and try to get some interesting shots of. Some of the places I've found so far include the ruins of an old military installation on Bakers Beach and the remains of the bath house at Sutro Beach. We're also intending to visit the former Nike Missile Site in Marin Country, which is just over the Golden Gate Bridge.



I'm not sure if k8 wants to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge again, but if the opportunity is there, I'm certainly up for another chance to take some more photos like the one above. The view from this engineering masterpiece is just amazing.

Where We're Going and How We're Getting There.

It's looking a lot like we're flying out of Perth on the 31st of July, spending approximately 13 hours in Auckland before flying out again and landing in San Francisco on the 1st of August, spending a couple of days in and around San Jose recovering, then heading out on the road trip...



First stop is Yosemite, where we'll be spending a night, then heading down to Bakersfield, probably spending the night there.

After Bakersfield it's a relatively short drive to LA for a few nights, then off to try to follow some of the old Route 66 out to Barstow 'on the edge of the desert' and up to Death Valley, where we plan to stay for the night before heading for Vegas for a few days, including a day trip out to Hoover Dam.



After Vegas, it's up to Wendover, on the Nevada-Utah border, for SpeedWeek at Bonneville. We'll probably be at Bonneville for about 4 or 4 days before heading west, heading through Sacramento and back to San Francisco and San Jose.

We're planning on getting to Bonneville on either the 13th or the 14th of August (the 14th is the first day of racing on the salt). We're also planning on getting to the GoodGuys show at Pleastanton on the 27th to 29th of August.

Aside from that, we intend to fit in a couple of day trips up to San Francisco and down to places like Monterey and Santa Cruz.



We should be flying back into Perth on the 6th of September (my birthday - at least this one will be longer than 4 hours, last time we crossed the international date line on my birthday and skipped forwards a day at about 4am)