Promontory Summit and the Golden Spike..and some honesty

We left Salt Lake in the pouring rain and headed north to Promontory where the Central Pacific coming east from Sacromento California met the Union Pacific coming east from Omaha Nebraska. The transcontinental railroad was completed with the ceremonial nailing of a golden spike on May 8, 1869. At Promontory Summit there is an excellent visitors' centre where volunteers re-enact the completion of the railroad. There are also replicas of the two engines, CP's Jupiter and UP's 119. This completed our trek of following the Union Pacific across the US plains.

From Promontory we continued past the rocket engine test facility (remember the infamous "O" rings), this is where there were tested successfully prior to their failure upon launch. A local told us that the reason the test facility is so isolated is that the rocket engines requently exploded !!
There is nothing nearby.....
We pressed on via I84 and moved through drenching rain yet again. The temp was 38F.  We picked the next town Snowville as it had services (per signage) and the interstate had two exits for it.  We were exhausted, cold, and wet. We picked the first exit....it turns out the Snowville has one truck stop, two cafes, one no-name motel with six rooms and a population of 117.  Bev said "it doesn't look open!" so we went to one of the cafes and had a hot bowl of soup.  The waitress said it WAS open and that we could check out the rooms (she also said that the second exit led to the farm pastures)....ok, so over we went into the sloppy wet gravelly muddy parking lot.  There was one broken car parked and no one in the office, just instructions to take a key from the tupperware container on the porch and fill in the registration with credit card information and put the registration card through the slot in the door. The room was VERY basic but it got us out of the rain.....it was over-priced but did exist which was very appreciated.  After settling in, another Harley arrived about 9:30 pm in the dark rain....he left before 6 am......we don't think he paid!!