Sand Mountain, near Fallon, Nevada -

The last two days have been driving days after our relaxing stay put at Lake Tahoe.
The first day we drove east from Lake Tahoe to Nevada where we firstly visited Virginia City, an old gold mining Wild West town then on the ‘Loneliest Highway in America’ to Ely. While the scenery was worth while it sure was lonely with no amenities, houses pr people to be seen. Quite a radical change from the 10 lane freeways around the big cities we have been to. The children were excited when we saw a living thing including a few grazing cows. Of interest however were patches on the road that were strewn with what we initially thought were hundreds of frogs but on closer inspection turned out to be swarms of locusts which we had never seen before. They are somewhat like a giant weta but they have the added bonus of being able to fly. The road was covered with them in certain areas and many met their death on our windscreen or under the tyres.
Also of note was the odd spectacle of Sand Mountain which was just that, a giant mountain of golden sand rising up from the ground . It was like somewhere in Egypt and it was 40 degrees to match.
We were excited to get our first rain in 5 weeks however it only lasted about an hour and the temperature gauge on the car dashboard still indicated we were in the late 30’s despite it.
Now we are in Utah about to descend on the many National Parks’ here, more than any other state. Some interesting facts about Utah are of the 2,000,000 population, 70% are Mormon’s. Another fact as Tim discovered last night when going to buy some wine, he found that you cannot buy alcohol except for beer with a 4% or less alcohol content. It is a ‘dry’ state due to the amount of Mormon’s.