Lake Tahoe to Salt Lake City

Truly starting to feel we are on US road trip after marathon 10-hour journey across Interstate 80 taking in three states - California, Nevada and Utah. Left lush and verdant Lake Tahoe for drier and more desert-like conditions of Nevada, passing through gambling city of Reno. Hours of driving before reaching middle-of-nowhere Winnemucca - lots of casinos, motels, McDonalds etc. Friendly enough place, but not a place to linger for us. Onwards and upwards - and that's how we feel - sort of on a high plateau with the world below us. Eerie, almost surreal, landscape all the way now. So little traffic on I-80 - sort of feel it's a lost highway - barren wastelands, huge salt plains and great basins which were once lakes (many US land speed records have been set here). Horizons seem to stretch as far as eye can see as road cuts through this weird world. Vast desert, empty space, but with strange twisted rock formations on either side. Imagine a lunar landscape, walking on the surface of the moon perhaps! Capricorn One springs to mind. Descend at last into Salt Lake City at dusk. At least this lake has yet to dry up. Surrounded by water as we drive in and islands in middle of it - a bit Tolkienesque. Mind a bit scrambled, perhaps from all the driving. Need motel and a good night's sleep.