The Bonneville Salt Flats

Helloooo! It’s been a long time since my last post. In the travel blogging world, this usually means the blogger is tired, out of money and content, or traveling. And sometimes, all of the above! Lucky for me, I’ve been traveling. It’s been a fun few months and I have lots to share with you very soon — southern Portugal and Spain, Morocco, and a few other places I’ve been to on recent road trips in the U.S.

For today’s post, I’m easing back into the blogging routine with photos from the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. I was there last month. This place looked so cool while traveling along the eastbound lane of I-70 that we made a hard left turn, illegally crossed the median (in a U-Haul, no less) and pulled over to check it out. There’s something magnetic about the flats — inspiring endless photos and, for many people, the desire to drive across the flats at high speed (which is legal). This is how the Bonneville Speedway came about and all of the land speed records since then.

Edge of the Bonneville Salt Flats

Walking on water

Skies parting

In the winter the salt flats are covered by a thin layer of water but as summer arrives the water evaporates. Nearly all of it was gone at the time of our visit but a few pools remained. We stepped across them onto the dry skin of the flats. The matte finish was a network of paths where the water had collected and evaporated leaving behind a crystalline grit that felt firm underfoot and tasted as salty as it looked. The sun eventually came out, bringing the entire landscape into focus at an almost unbearable brightness against the blue sky.

X marks the spot

Evaporation trail

Wet spot

Finally sunny

Miles of white

The history of the salt flats starts in the Pleistocene era. During the glaciation of the Ice Age, Lake Bonneville was a “pluvial lake” — filled by rainwater, without an outflow. The lack of an outflow caused the lake to become salty (just like Salt Lake, the Dead Sea, etc.) because the naturally occurring amount of salt in the water couldn’t be released as it normally is when water flows downstream.

Lake Bonneville was nearly 1,000 feet deep, with a shoreline about 1,000 feet higher than the current elevation of the salt flats. At one point Lake Bonneville overflowed, releasing an enormous volume of water and lowering the shoreline considerably. In the millennia since then, the climate has become more arid causing the remaining lake to evaporate, leaving behind a salt pan that was once the bottom of the lake.

So here we are, on the top of the bottom … a natural wonder from thousands and thousands of years ago.

More posts coming soon — including a series that’s very dear to my heart, starting tomorrow!

Bonneville Salt Flats

Salty Shadows