Monday, Day 20

It was a slow start to the day. Jim had four orders to process before we could leave and problems with internet connections and the printer caused further delays. We finally got away around 11:30 but we had to drop an order off at the post office. From there we went to Harbour Freight, the store we’d tried to find on Sunday. It’s a real “man’s store”, similar to Princess Auto back home. By the time we got out of there it was lunch time so I made sandwiches. At 1:30 we actually left Salt Lake City. We headed west, but there was one more stop to be made – Bingham Copper Mine, an hour west of Salt Lake City. It’s an amazing operation, existing for 110 years and has taken a huge chunk out of the mountain. But, the company does have recovery plans and uses “environmentally friendly” practices and strict safety rules. It’s a major contributor to the state of Utah. It was difficult to get Jim away from there. At the gift shop he bought me a sparkling copper and silver necklace. At 3:30 we began our slow descent down the steep slopes to the main road and onto the highway. We kept driving then, stopping only once to take pictures of Salt Lake. The road through the salt flats seemed to go on forever, straight as an arrow. We reached the Nevada border at 7:15 pm. By 8:00 we were installed in the KOA campground in West Wendover. Out of our window we could see two of the five casinos that are in this small city. We walked to The Rainbow Casino to get some dinner. I was too hungry and tired to start cooking at that time of night. Besides our choices are getting limited. It’s time to stock up again. We thought we’d try the buffet, but when we were told that it was closing in fourteen minutes and it would still cost us $17.50 each, we passed. We found a romantic restaurant at the other end of the casino where we enjoyed a delicious salad, prime rib that was 1 ½” thick and cooked to perfection, baked potato and homemade bread, all for $10.00 each and we have the leftovers for another meal.
On the way out we stopped at two of the slot machines and each put in one dollar. We thought we could have a bit of fun, but within a very few minutes we were down to our last twenty cents each. Although they were penny slots, the minimum bet was 20 credits. Jim spun and lost his. I spun and won six credits, not enough to spin again! I kept my six cent ticket for a souvenir.