Keep moving. Nothing to see here.

Burger King for breakfast.

Play in your own sand box. Sand Mountain is a large sand dune sitting out there in the middle of nowhere. This very fine sand comes from a prehistoric sea that once covered Nevada. One would have expected it all to be blown away by now.

A natural oddity but a welcome break from the road.

Two lanes, 400 miles, and lots of brown stuff. Those mountains in the distance aren't even close. At least we remembered top the tank in Carson City.

More than halfway across the state. We stopped at a Burger King for lunch because on the road you just can't seem to get too much of that. When hungry enough, it actually tastes pretty good.

I took over the driving from Paul and decided we needed to make better time if we were not to get stuck at night in the middle of nowhere. The Explorer did about 105 loaded with my lead foot bearing down. Ely (E-lee) dead ahead.

The road has a mirage. You see a flickering of light as the sun catches metal than a car emerges from the mirage and zooms past you in the other direction. This doesn't occur often on the lonliest highway. But when it does it wakes you up.

A flickering of light. A zooming car. 105. I'm awake. Uh oh. 95. Car is sideways in my mirror. 85. Clouds of dirt. 70. Highway patrol car up my ass.

Before that day I didn't realize that they could do subtraction. I thought they had to be on the side of the road to figure out your speed. And who would be out here? Do they really expect people to drive the speed limit in the middle of nowhere on a road that doesn't turn and has no intersections? He tails me for miles before deciding to pull me over. I guess we weren't driving a stolen vehicle or anything.

Hey Paul, what speed do you need to be going before they simply arrest you?

Probably a hundred or so, how fast were you going?

This isn't happening.

And you were complaining that I was drviving too slow?

Officer comes up to the window. He's younger than I am. Sir, step out of the car.

Christ.

I get the shakedown. He looks in the car, looks in the back (filled with bags and skis). I get body searched. Sir, you know how fast you were going?

Is this a trick question? How could I not know? Not too many things to look at, you do glance at the speedometer several times a minute just to get entertained from the rolling mileage. What if he doesn't really know? 90.

I clocked you at 96.

That fast? I must have been distracted by the scenery.

We chat about the road, what we saw, what we did. Those sand dunes are fun. Where we hope to end up before nightfall. Not in Nevada.

Check out Lehman's Cave. It's the best thing out here.

This is good, it means he intends for me to drive away. So I'm going to write you up for 90 since that will be much cheaper than 96.

Thank you very much officer.

And keep the speed under control. I had this uncontrollable urge to look around me. Not a single car had passed us while we were alongside the road. It's too dangerous to drive that fast out here. You know, for the animals. Animals run out into the road all the time and they might get hurt. I'm not making that up. Hmmm... if I hit an animal at 70 it might survive?

He hands me the ticket and I turn around to see all my questions about speeding answered. SUV, deluxe. Skiis. California plates.

Have a nice day officer!

You too, and don't forget to stop by the cave.

I get into the car and read the ticket. $375 DOLLARS! Now that's highway robbery, literally. $300 for the speeding and $75 for the court of Ely, Nevada to process it. And this was the cheap ticket. Then we arrive at Ely. The highway patrol seems to be one of the few profitable businesses in town.

The officer was correct. The cave is very cool. We arrived just in time for the last tour of the day. I suppose part of the fine is to fund these local tourist recommendations.

Stalacites. Stalagmites. Lose shoe. More Stalacites. This really isn't my day.

And I'm embarrassed. Why should I have been? I just inexplicbly lost my shoe and it went down somewhere. Down there. So I march on with one shoe and one soon to be filthy sock. No one seemed to notice. Maybe I was afraid of being accused of damaging some delicate cave ecosystem. Do you know what shoes do to the environment? You destroyed everything! Now we have to shut down this cave and build a strip mall all because of you!

When we got to the car I opened up the back and changed my socks and retrieved my boots. Thousands of years from now someone will discover my lost moccassin preserved in some cave goo. Iit will provide with clues to the people we were and what we were about. Far future generations will come and gawk at this ancient relic. My shoe. A travelling people. A one-footed people. A speeding people. An exhibit into the past, fully funded, by the county courthouse of Ely, Nevada.

Our last stop for the day would be Parowan, UT. That isn't anywhere close to this sign. We'd still have to drive nearly halfway across the state to get there. Had we looked at a map we would have figured out that we were about the same distance from Salt Lake as this shorter intermediate stop of Parowan. I try to go light on the maps on these kinds of trips. I find they remove the elements of surprise. Says the man with an expensive ticket and one shoe. So it would be dark. And we would be tired. After 700 miles of mostly sitting who wouldn't be?