Rain!

Doesn’t rain much here…. but when it does, it rains seriously hard. Over the last few days, some places in Utah/Nevada got several inches in a day – a 1000 year event. You can’t drive from SLC to Las Vegas right now without a major detour, since I-15 is wahed out in some places.

When it does rain, the ground can’t absorb it all (since the ground is basically rock), and so you get spectacular temporary waterfalls:

Runoff

(Pic by Alison Dunlap, from after a storm we rode mountain bikes through last October).

Falling Rocks

You know those signs on the highway saying “watch out for falling rocks”?

PotashRock1

Yeah, here they mean it. Note size of rock versus size of backhoe…. Not sure if a train could get by or not.

However, this seems to happen frequently enough that the rail company has a special train just for this:

PotashRock2

Excavator plus dump truck all-in-one unit, just for clearing rail lines.

Pics from the road

RoadPic_1

Interstate in Colorado…. 3 lanes, low traffic, and actually *paved*. Scenic too.

RoadPic_2

We’re not in Kansas any more.

Final statistics: 2392 miles at 58.4 MPH = 41 hours driving. 28.7 miles per gallon average (on the big car, not sure about the little tractor that kept tailing me).

Gas is a lot cheaper in the west – maybe $3.60 a gallon, versus $4.00 in New England – so rough fuel cost is about $320, far cheaper than $1500 to ship the car.

52 MPG

52mpg

Who says 400 horsepower V8 engines can’t get good gas mileage?  Take that, Prius owners.