The UT to CA Drive

We drove to California for a vacation last week along with Marci and we decided to photograph the things that we always looked for as kids on this very same drive. The first thing we photographed was a UFO. You can barely see it in the photo below.

Here's the UFO zoomed in. Probably a blimp, but we couldn't exactly identify it and it was flying, so it's a UFO!
Then there's the "water" on the road that you often see driving through these desert freeways. It's actually an optical reflection of the sky at an angle past the critical angle if you want to know the physics explanation for it (the air near the ground has a lower index of refraction than the air a bit above the ground and a critical angle is reached near 90 degrees from normal incidence, therefore you see a reflection of the sky). Even with Brian's knowledge of physics, he just couldn't convince Travis and Lucas that it wasn't water though.

We decided to stop and smell the roses, err salt on the salt flats. It was incredibly bright, but fun to touch. Brian collected some salt in a bag.

On the way back to Utah was when we took most of the memories photos. Here's one of the first things to look for, the hundreds of windmills as you drive into Tracy, CA.

Then there's the ever present CA bushes that divide the freeway.

Donner Lake came third we know...

Then the crazy indian place at Imlay, NV. We'd never stopped here before but we did this time. What a crazy place! It's an official Nevada Historical Site now.

Check out all of the beer bottles that he used to make this place (click on the photo to see them better).

Then there's Wendover Will.

And the ball tree in Utah.

Couldn't pass up this fun photo of the setting sun's reflection off of the side mirror. Brian took this while driving without looking at the camera viewer, just by using the sun's illumination of the camera.

And here was a nice sunset over the great salt lake.

Now the video portion of the blog. Marcus did quite well on our drive. Here he is laughing about tunnels with Lucas.

Now an actual tunnel in NV that Marcus enjoyed.

And finally more video of Marcus talking about bridges and tunnels. So cute!