Destination LOL - Day 14

Today we travelled from Reno to Salt Lake City, Utah. Our trip took us by the Tesla Gigafactory so we just had to make a stop there. We also went through in Ely, Nevada where our family has some property. We didn’t have much time for side trips as this was one of those long travel days so most of our exploring was form the car seat. 

Traveling through the Nevada desert brings back memories of when I used to travel with my brothers and father to the livestock sales. I shared some of those stories with Oliver as we rolled  along but it was hard to describe for him the feeling of being in a truck that’s about to overheat with the air conditioning turned off and dad pushing the vehicle too hard just so the animals stay cool.

Our first stop was just outside Reno. It was the Tesla Gigafactory. There have been stories of people be escorted off by Tesla security so we played it cool and didn’t push any boundaries. While we had to stay quite a ways away, it was clear to see that the building is huge. The size lives up the hype. 

We took a selfie for proof of the stop but it's not that impressive a shot.

Oliver wanted to stop in Lovelock, Nevada, the home of the airport with the code LOL. Turns out we missed the airport, but we did get to stop in and check out the town a bit. We also picked up some supplies at a local dollar store. Because we were charging out of sequence to try to change our schedule, we ended up spending more time in than we wanted. Oh well, LOL!

When we arrived in Ely, Nevada, Oliver wanted to check out our property there. A quick check of the address showed it to be quite far off the trail for us. So, Oliver had to be satisfied with just looking out at the hills and imagining it. 

The road from Ely to Salt Lake City, was one of the longest straightest, flatest, and most boringest stretches of highway along our journey. In fact, there were fatigue warnings posted along the highway. About the only thing of interest, were the remains of the airplane beacon system. I was able to point these out to Oliver and explain how they were used for cross country navigation. 

When we finally arrived at our motel in Salt Lake, we discovered that I had made the reservation for wrong date. There were no rooms available for us. In fact, there were no rooms available in all of Salt Lake it seems. There was some huge convention going on rooms were scarce. So, we had to move on to Provo to get a room. This day ended up being much longer than expected.