Vegas to Wendover, Utah. 7 hours plus stops. Long, straight roads through remote country. 120 mile stretches without services. All day, low, intermittent clouds cast dark shadows over the hills, seeping like black ink across the surface of the land. Midpoint at Ely. After all of this talk about moving earth, we finally get a chance to see our copper mine. The scale is confusing. Each of these trucks is the size of a two story house. This is further complicated by direct childhood experience of these machines in miniature in the form of Tonka trucks. The scale of the operation makes Michael Heizer's "Double Negative" look like only the faintest pencil mark on this earthen canvas. 
As these massive machines continue their operations, one performs a near perfect reenactment of Smithson's "Asphalt Rundown", but this time in raw sienna earth instead of black tar. 
Later, a random stop along a scenic but lonely stretch of highway reveals our first view of the salt flats and a surprise...
-Brent Budsberg
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