Day 13: Saturday June 11, 2022

Today was the antithesis of yesterday.  I left South Jordan and caught Interstate 80 at Salt Lake City and turned west.  Interstate 80 is not my preferred way to travel (because it’s so boring) but it is really the only way home.  I rode along the salt flats and into the mountains and then along the canyons and desert.  The winds today were ridiculous!  They gusts were extreme and beat me like a prize fighter.  The posted speed along I 80 is 80mph so that’s what I rode at but that wasn’t fast enough for some truckers as they passed me and other motorists. There was a phenomenon along the interstate. For miles the number 2 lane (slow lane) was a reddish color and there was a smell of fish or swamp water.  Then I started seeing little creatures crawling onto the freeway and getting squished by the vehicles.  I tried to slow down and ride on the shoulder to see what these creatures were and from what I could tell they looked like a grasshopper and scorpion.  When I checked into the hotel the clerk was asked what the creatures were and she said they’re a mormon cricket.  I found this news article:

Mormon crickets can travel about a mile each day. They do not fly but they do climb. They do not bite, carry disease or pose a threat to animals that eat them. They do present some public safety issues on roads though.

"They're cannibalistic, so if one gets squished, the others come and eat it and they get squished," Jeff Knight, State Entomologist for the NDA said. "There's been reports that that alone can make the roads slick but if that happens and then we have a thunder shower, then the roads can get really slick from the dead crickets."

The sight of the thousands of crickets was something out of a B Grade horror movie.

I rode 384 miles today and settled down in Winnemucca NV for the night.  Total miles ridden so far 3,479.

Joel 2:25  I will restore to you the years that the locusts have eaten