Walk the Bonneville Salt Flats Where Cars Hit 600 MPH

Departures run morning and afternoon, and the operator moves the afternoon start with the season: 1:30 PM from November through March, 3:00 PM from April through October. The morning run is the same year round.

The booking form will take a single name. Both the listing text and the operator's own page say the tour needs two guests to run, and the cancellation terms let the operator cancel a departure for insufficient travelers. Book as a pair, or accept that the date depends on who else books it. The operator's own terms say a single guest may book, and that if no second booking lands on that departure it will offer another date or a full refund.

The crust is not the same surface every month. The Bureau of Land Management writes that motor vehicle use is limited by seasonal closure during the spring, when the salt is moist or has standing water on the surface, and that closure dates vary and are posted by sign. That limit is written about vehicles. It is not a statement about walking, and the agency says the flats are generally open to the public for recreation.

The agency's own brochure for the flats puts months on the water. In the cooler months, November to May, groundwater floods the salt several inches deep; when the heat returns in late spring and summer that water evaporates off and leaves fresh crust behind. The closure is not a thing you can look up before you drive out — the agency says the dates go up on a sign at the flats. The state park at the other stop does keep a conditions page, with its road and its launch ramp on it, carrying the date staff last touched it.

Something else lands on the salt in early spring. Potash mining at Bonneville leaves salt behind as a by-product, and the agency describes brine being produced in holding ponds over the winter, pumped north of Interstate 80 once it reaches the right concentration, and discharged onto the southern section of the flats near the access road. As temperatures rise and the salt dries out, that brine joins the natural crust.

One of the photographs the operator supplies to the booking page shows the flat under a thin sheet of standing water. The crust is somewhere under it, and it is the same place.

One of the two stops is Great Salt Lake State Park, out by the marina. The listing marks admission there as included, and the operator says it donates five dollars a head from this tour to preservation of the Great Salt Lake.

The park publishes its own gate rates: ten dollars for a private car with up to eight people, thirty for a commercial group or any vehicle over eight seats, two dollars a head on foot or by bike. Drive the same two places yourself and the day costs ten dollars at the park gate and nothing out on the salt, where the land manager charges no day-use fee. What the fare buys is the van, the driver and the narration.

The park also answers something the listing leaves alone. Its own visitor guide takes on the smell that is sometimes at the lake, putting it down to organic reactions in the hyper-saline water and to decaying algae and brine fly casings washed up on the shore, and calling it the ordinary smell of wetlands and beaches.

Which side of the salt that stop falls on depends on the departure you book. The booking page and the operator's main site both put it first, on the way out to the flats. The operator's day-tour site says the morning run takes it on the way back instead, and only the afternoon runs take it on the way out. The length is disputed too: the booking page allows ninety minutes there, both of the operator's own timetables about thirty. Plan around the shorter figure.

The second stop is the sculpture standing at the edge of Interstate 80. The booking page and the operator both call it the Tree of Life. The location record behind that same booking page files it as Metaphor - Tree of Utah, which is the name that will find it again on a map.