Day 13. Trains, Plains, and Rockets

We were off to our normal early start, about 0915. We had a pretty sad "continental" breakfast, if you could call it that, provided by the hotel. Maybe we need to get up earlier! Anyway, we made our first stop of the day the Golden Spike National Historic Site in Promontory, UT. We watched the 2 replica steam locomotives being driven out on to the rails. The National Parks Service does a great job explaining the history of the transcontinental railroad.





Inside the Parks building, John found another penny masher.



When we left, we were on Hwy. 83. We saw a sign that said rocket display. We stopped in the parking lot of ATK, a premier aerospace and defense company, supplier of aerospace and defense products, munitions, smart weapons, propulsion and composite structures.(taken from google search) They had a large display of rockets and rocket motors. Each rocket had a plaque telling how ATK was involved. I found it interesting that each of the 2 solid fuel booster rockets for the space shuttle, burn almost 1,100,000 lbs of propellant in 122 seconds. That's 9016 pounds of fuel burnt every second!! in each booster!!
The ATK complex is in the middle of nowhere and is huge.



In the picture, the large horizontal rocket is the space shuttle booster. The skinny upright missile is a Minuteman. The fatter, stubby upright is a submarine launched Polaris.

We next stopped in Snowville, UT for lunch. We found a neat place, Mollie's.



After lunch, we took hwy 30 south to the Nevada border.
Here we are again in the middle of nowhere... There's a lot of this out here.



Yup, help is 93 miles behind us...






We stopped for the night in Ely, Nevada. Tomorrow, we are going to take Hwy. 50 across the state to Reno.