The Central Basin and Range Ecoregion is composed of northerly trending, fault-block ranges and intervening, drier basins. Valleys, slopes, and alluvial fans are either shrub and grass-covered, shrub-covered, or barren.

At higher elevation are found woodland, mountain brush, and scattered open forests and the same flora is found downward along the mountain slopes. The potential natural vegetation is, in order of increasing elevation and ruggedness, saltbush-greasewood, Great Basin sagebrush, juniper-pinyon woodland, and scattered western spruce-fir forest. In addition, tule marshes occur locally, especially along the Great Salt Lake shoreline.

The Central Basin and Range is as a rule, internally-drained by ephemeral streams and in Utah, most of the Central Basin and Range Ecoregion lower than about 5,200 feet elevation was inundated by Pleistocene Lake Bonneville. Extensive flat dried up land where water evaporates quickly, often topped with clay and salty.

In general, this ecoregion is drier than the areas where the Wasatch and Uinta Mountains are located along the west edge of the Colorado Plateau in Utah, cooler than the Mojave Basin and Range in the southwest corner of the state), and warmer and drier than the Northern Basin Ecoregions.

This Ecoregion has more shrubland and less grassland than the Snake River Plain ecoregion in Idaho but lacks both the creosote bush of Mojave Basin ecoregion and the extensive, dense forests of the Wasatch and Uinta Mountains to the east.

Soils grade upslope from mesic Aridisols to frigid Mollisols; Entisols also occur on fans, floodplains, and valley bottoms. Basin soils of this ecoregion are typically more saline and alkaline than those of the sagebrush Steppe Valleys to the north. The land is primarily used for grazing and a greater percentage is used for livestock grazing than in the ecoregions further south. In addition, some irrigated cropland is found in valleys near mountain water sources.

Military bases also are found in this ecoregion and are of environmental significance because of their large area and their unique land uses and management practices.

Awake, dress, drive to the ff-mart for coffee and then leave Elko on IH 80 going east towards Utah and crossing the Great Basin. The first one hundred and ten miles of the drive today is in northern Nevada and which is not much different than it was in the Black Rock Desert a few days ago, just mile after mile of boring flat scrub brush laden desert. Then, I cross into Utah and the desert changes color from gray-brown to gray-white.

From this the location where I enter into Utah, I return to following the Loneliest Highway which continues completely through both Utah and Wyoming on IH 80. Entering Utah, I drive first across the Bonneville Salt Fats. I stop at the first rest stop and take photos of the white flat desert.

Finally, after nearly six and a half hours of driving, I arrive in Rock Springs, Wyoming, turn off at the exit from IH 80 and drive into the parking lot of the w-mart.

After a hiatus at Farmington, New Mexico on the Colorado Plateau, I connect to Harlingen for the weekend meeting and when this meeting is over, I shut down the electronics and begin my drive northwest to Oak Harbor, Washington, now just 1400 miles northwest.

I then cross the Colorado Plateau in Utah, driving a very familiar route on US 191 through Price, Utah and then over Soldier Summit and upon starting down from this summit, I enter the Central basin ecoregion. It is not long before I arrive at the high water mark of the prehistoric Lake Bonneville that once had filled much of the Great Basin.

Upon approaching the Utah valley, I can see in the distance, the Wasatch Range, a very large mountain range in central Utah, now covered with snow. Upon arriving in the Utah valley, I turn northward and drive along the valley, west of the Wasatch Range