The morning in Capitol Reef State Park is cool and crisp. It feels like we're in the mountains. The sun shines down on the surreal landscape of groves, green grass, and red rocks all around us.
Breakfast, shower, and we're ready for a day of nothing but the open road.
We have to head north, specifically to Salt Lake City, specifically to Wendover. And it'll be a five-hour drive.
As always, it only takes a few miles for the red mountains of the land of canyons to disappear, replaced first by coniferous forests and then by green meadows. We head north through Utah to Provo, a few dozen kilometers south of Salt Lake City. To break up the day, we decide to pick up some groceries for a packed lunch at Walmart again and settle into a charming little park in the city’s residential area, under a shelter with benches and tables, overlooking the Utah mountains and the construction site of a wooden apartment building that will likely be completed next week.
Refreshed and relaxed, we get back in the cars and, accompanied by the new rubber duckies—a Jeep staple—that we found at the gas station, we continue on toward Salt Lake.
After just a few kilometers, we actually stop again to fulfill a wish Denis and Dori had—to visit a dealership selling giant American RVs and motorhomes. So, armed with our biggest smiles and Italian charm, we convince the staff to assign us a salesperson who, fired up by our stories, gives us a tour of the entire fleet of available RVs and motorhomes. We’re blown away by the sheer size of these behemoths, their finishes, their accessories—but above all by the fact that they’re more spacious than an average Italian apartment. And they cost just as much, but that’s a minor detail when you’re someone who loves being in touch with nature and adores traveling across this vast continent. The salesperson tells us that they manage to sell more than 5,000 vehicles a year, that open-air travel has become very trendy again in America, but above all that—contrary to any regulations we might have in Italy—“if you’ve just turned sixteen, just got your driver’s license, and come here with a suitcase full of dollars, you can take one of these behemoths home with no problem.”
Madness.
We say our goodbyes and continue our journey, taking Route 80 west. We drive straight for over an hour and a half, as the landscape flattens out around us and the first salt flats come into view.
Turn right, then right again, take a road that ends after a mile, and you'll plunge straight into the Bonneville Salt Flats.
It’s been almost ten years since this moment first came around on the BigTour, and it feels just like the first time: racing at 150 all’ora across a white plain, heading straight ahead without seeing the end, with no one saying a word to you, vanished from the world yet alive and present… it’s an indescribable feeling and thrill.
Except that at a certain point, all the cars start running dangerously low on gas. We’d actually clocked more than 300 miles to get to Bonneville. We decide not to take that risk, so we calmly head back onto the main road and fill up with a few dollars’ worth of gas at the station just off the highway. We head right back out onto the lake and spend the next hour revving the engine, drifting with rap music playing in the background, and challenging each other to speed races with the drone as the sun sets over the Nevada mountains behind us. Is there a word to describe all of this? Maybe freedom.
We leave the lake in high spirits and immediately take the cars to be cleaned of the kilos of salt that haveaccumulated under the chassis, on the bodywork, between the wheel hubs—everywhere.
We split up between cleaning the floor mats and the interior, and those who wash the cars with the only working spray nozzle—just like a real team.
We celebrate the evening by eating a very healthy and hearty American-style pizza outdoors at the only restaurant open in the area, and then we go to bed—but not before getting pulled over by the police because, in America, you have to stop at stop signs.
