WENDOVER, Utah — Are you a Wendover person?
My grandma was. She would go a few times a year, sometimes riding the fun bus with friends, sometimes losing enough money to get a comped room.
Grandma loved to gamble.
I loved playing cards with her, but never took to the casino thing. Still, I think I am a Wendover person, why? Because Wendover is a place of geographic solitude and connection to history.
It's also a place with affordable hotel rooms if you are a reporter doing a travel story in January and would prefer not to camp.
Just saying.
Blue Lake: A geothermal oasis in the desert
My first stop was Blue Lake, a geothermal pond hidden in the Great Salt Lake Desert. This 60-foot-deep natural wonder occupies about ten acres of land on the boundary of the Utah test and training range. I've been there three times now and I haven't been bombed, strafed, and no one buzzed my tower Top Gun style.
There isn't a tower at the lake, but Top Gun references never get old.
Blue Lake is well-known by SCUBA divers who often train or just play around in the lake. My son and I went during my SCUBA training.
Despite the January air temperature, I decided to test the waters and they were plenty warm for my taste. Lke a cold swimming pool.
I had grand plans. I'd rigged my safety vest with a tether so I could dive without losing it. I didn't get the chance to use it. The water was too silty to see what was below.
I do dumb things, but in a considered way. My survival instinct kept me swimming on the surface.
Still, I had a lot of fun. I did a circuit around the buoys that mark underwater dive sites. I saw birds. And the shallows by the dock have lots of little fish I could swim with.
I even got to do a little Good-Samaritan-ing picking some trash off the bottom.
Blue Lake is isolated. There's an outhouse, but no services. You'll often run into divers or anglers, but you need to rely on yourself and be aware of your capabilities.
I'm a good swimmer and used to cold lakes, so the water was comfortable to me, but I rushed to get warm once I got out. The freezing temperature immediately set my teeth chattering.
Wendover Airfield Museum: Where history took flight
My next destination was Wendover's historic airfield, now a museum preserving World War II aviation history.
I got a spontaneous tour from the Museum's curator, Landon Wilkey.
"Wendover was a bombing and gunnery range, 1.8 million acres out here through the West Desert," Wilkey explained. "Our tagline here is 'walk where they walked.'"
The museum holds particular significance as a training ground for the most consequential flights of the War.
"This is where the folks that dropped the atomic bombs did their training," Wilkey said.
The museum features vintage military vehicles, aircraft including a C-123 used in the film "Con Air," and interactive exhibits like a partially operational Link Trainer from 1929.
Wilkey loves the job.
"On any given day, I can be researching in my office for an exhibit, cataloging artifacts, hanging insulation in one of the buildings we're restoring or climbing on top of these hangars for maintenance."
The museum aims to become a living history site where visitors can immerse themselves in the world of 1940's America at war.
I'm not above joking about Wendover. As a guy who loves maps...Wendover illustrates the weirdness of political boundaries. I love the absurdity of a painted line where on one side you can participate in a free-wheeling laissez faire Nevada lifestyle, and on the other you have Utah where laissez faire means something like mixing cherry Jello with slices of carrots.
My thought? Do both if you like the nightlife, take in a concert maybe, but be sure to go outside and look around.
There's real grandeur away from the bright lights.
