Day 3 – Friday
We awoke pretty early the next morning and like Donkey from Shrek, I made waffles for breakfast. It was blowing something fierce, so we were in no hurry to get over to the salt flats anytime soon. After we ate breakfast, I braved the wind and spitting rain and disconnected the RV and retracted the slide-out. While traveling down the entrance road to the salt flats, we noticed a curiously high number of race vehicles loaded on trailers headed in the direction opposite to ours.

When we reached the end of the entrance road (at which point it became obvious to me why this area is referred to as “the boat ramp”) there was a young man from the event standing there assisting people. I stopped and asked if he thought there was going to be any racing today and he replied that he wasn’t sure and that we should go see. He was friendly and helpful and gave each of my boys a Bonneville pin (like flair).

Just before slowly driving down “the boat ramp” to enter the salt, a man pulling a streamliner on a trailer stopped and jumped out of his pickup and signaled for me to stop also. He wanted to ask me some details about our RV because he’d been thinking of buying one just like it. After chit-chatting with me and the boys about the RV, he suddenly said “hold on, I have something for your kids” and dashed off to retrieve something from his pickup. He came back and handed the boys each a small poster of his and his brother’s race cars. He thanked me for the information, and I thanked him for the posters, we shook hands and parted ways. I quickly tried to take a picture of the car he was towing.

After some research, it turns out that the man who stopped us was Rick Vesco and his family has been racing at the salt flats for 50 years! I learned that his brother, Don Vesco, who’s also depicted in the poster, unfortunately died of cancer in 2002 at the age of 63. Don’s streamliner The Turbinator was powered by a 3,750 hp Lycoming gas turbine helicopter engine and once hit 458.440 mph. Just the other day, I saw on TV that it’s now on display at a museum. The car that was being towed by Rick is named “The Little Giant” and in 1958 was featured on the cover of Popular Mechanics magazine.

Entering the salt was a special experience. For a car nut like me, this is hallowed ground. It was a couple miles before reaching the official pit area (which is just the spot on the salt where all the people are) only to see that everyone seemed to be packing up. CB radio is used as the public address system at Bonneville, so being prepared, I pulled out our portable CB and powered it on. After we’d been there about 30 minutes, the organizers announced over the radio that they were officially canceling the rest of the event due to the inclement weather.

We stayed on the flats for the next hour and met racers Shug and Irene Hanchard. Shug is the owner of So-What Speed Shop (get it?) and interestingly enough is originally from Scotland. Like everyone else we’d met there, Shug and Irene were very friendly and while loading their car onto the trailer, answered all our questions.

After the boys finished making their salt “snowballs,” we drove back to Wendover where the boys played outside in the crazy-strong wind while I read and watched TV for the rest of the day. That evening the boys helped me make pasta for dinner and we decided that we’d go back to Las Vegas on Saturday; a day earlier than we’d originally planned.

The boys did some of their homework they’d been assigned and we went to sleep.