Salt Flats


The Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah were one of the strangest things we stumbled across. I confess I didn’t even know we had salt flats in the US, until Steve said, why did the ground suddenly turn white?

Miles and miles of salt, where dust had just been, stretched out like snow in the sticky heat. It was surreal and beautiful and unbelievably barren. I spent a lot of time wondering who lives here, what their lives are like. How do they get to the grocery store? Is there even a grocery store? Where do they work? Even the gas stations were so few that we pretty much had to stop at every one. This one looked so old and broken, I thought for sure it had been closed for 20 years. The exit also had a laundromat and a gravel road that admonished you not to drive on it. And this huge parking lot, you know, for all the people.

The best part about the salt flats was that while there were no discernible people, there were messages left by the highway, spelled with dark rocks on the white salt. FG <3s PK and You SUCK and Jesus IS King. Some were tiny and indiscernible, others took of up the whole median. The best real estate was on the slight hills next to the highway, where they were as visible as billboards. Crop circles, mysterious markings left to say indeed I do live here in the salt, and I drive to the laundromat down undriveable roads, and my sweetheart leaves me public declarations to smile at.