Eastern Nevada
Friday April 28 -- Ely, NV
I show up at Precision Auto at 8am to fix whatever the heck my warning light was warning me about. Nobody home. At 8:23 a guy wanders into the station on foot from down the highway looking like roadkill. He clearly has had a very bad night. Talking seems to take a lot of effort, but he tells me I have to leave the truck and that the light means something in the emission system is broken. I get ready for the long walk back to the Hotel Nevada for the... wait..., but it finally, what he said sunk in, namely that only an emission sensor is broken, the engine is still running fine. So I get my keys back and resume my previously scheduled vacationing - yippee! The guy seemed relieved to have one less thing to deal with on his Bad Day (he looked like he had many bad days) - a win/win for both of us!
Ely is an interesting town. The old town follows the bottom of a narrow canyon so it's only about 10 blocks wide, but many miles long. The Hotel Nevada is very cool, the public park with the old City Hall and the Library is delightful, and they've put a nice sculpture garden in a vacant lot. It's a mining town, so it's gone boom-bust-boom-bust quite a few times. Now it's a semi-bust but they are trying to cash in on the great nature in the neighborhood. A rise in the price of copper and they will start the giant trucks in the giant hole north of town and it will be boom again.
It's a beautiful drive to Great Basin National Park, through yet more wide and green-ish valleys, on 50/6/93 East (technically, I guess it's 93 North, since odd-numbers roads go up-down :) with snow on all sides, through Connors Pass and Majors Junction, across Spring Valley and around the northern tip of the huge Spring mountains (Nevada has over 200 distinct mountain ranges!). Thence to Baker NV, gateway to the park.
I'm jacked up to be doing what I left the house for, namely spending quiet time in a beautiful place. Once I got there I couldn't make myself sit still and enjoy the quiet. Frenetic day: Visitors Center, up the hill (2500 ft in 4.9 miles), get a campsite, set up tent, almost fall asleep, goof around, all the way back down the hill for coffee, both coffee places are closed for the afternoon. Back up the hill to the Pole Creek Trail. Embark on the trail, have a wonderful time, pretty birches, vibrant stream, snow banks, meadows just liberated from the snow 3 days ago. Back up the hill to watch sunset from overlook, grab a beer, back down the hill for dinner at the only restaurant in town, which was really very good. Back up the hill to campsite, hike up the hill for the view and to digest and warm up. If only it were a fuller moon.
Saturday April 29 -- Great Basin National Park
Slept well, not too cold. Did a little bit of a morning hike up the mountain. Oddly sad today, it's like - I'm just where I want to be, doing just what I want to do, why aren't I happier??" - dontcha hate it when that happens???
Drove as far up the peak road as I could and soaked up the warmth for a while. Breakfast at the same little Baker restaurant.
Drive back to Ely, eschew the Hotel Nevada in favor of a little motel with wifi, start posting this blog, eat, blog, sleep, plan next stop, fix the formatting of cloudyhands (text still not floating at the top as it used to :( ), blog some more.
Sunday April 30 - Ely again
Breakfast special at the Hotel Nevada again, drive the straight shot down the wide and beautiful XX Valley. Camp at Cathedral Gorge State Park, a kind of mini-badlands that makes all the "visit Nevada" photo sets on account of its photogenic beauty.
Desert campgrounds are funny because you have very little visual privacy. Your neighbors are maybe 30 feet away, and there's no underbrush or trees to shield you from each other. This is a relatively nice desert campground, they've planted some little trees and they built up a little central mound so at least you have privacy from that direction.
The park map says there's a nice little 4-6 mile hike that leaves from the campground, winds around the perimeter of the basin and up to an overlook. I plan it so that I finish up the hike after dark. There is a tiny sliver of a waxing moon, and out in the wide open spaces of the desert that provides plenty of light so see the path, I love those after dark hikes.
Mayday! -- Cathedral Gorge State Park
The morning was very pleasant - drive over to the Panaca Market (Panaca is a little straight-laced Mormon community that kind of gives me the creeps) for fresh baked donuts, back to the Shell mini-mart for a large coffee, then back to the campground to enjoy them. All my near neighbors have left, so I have my visual vista all to myself for a quiet morning of reading and writing and even a little yoga!
It was good to bank up that relaxation, because the rest of the day turned out to be drive, drive, drive, drive, drive, 7.5 hours to Hawthorne. I started out with the thought of staying at the Hot Springs Motel in Caliente, but I got there about 1PM, the town itself is pretty shabby and was doing nothing to lift my mood, so I bailed on that. The motel itself looked pretty pleasant and inviting, if you're in the mood. Rainbow Canyon, south of town was hyped as being quite scenic, so I tried a few miles. It was indeed pretty - the whole area is kind of a preview of the stunning geological beauty of southern Utah - , but I Just Wasn't In The Mood....
I felt no impact of the Day without Immigrants, because I was travelling in a land without immigrants - we're all immigrants, but you know what I mean. Southeastern Nevada is pretty much all poor white folk, mostly scary looking desert rats or even scarier Mormoms. If you are a modern immigrant crossing the border for the Land of Opportunity, you sure the heck ain't coming here 'cuz there ain't much opportunity to be had.
Scored a nice room with WiFi in Hawthorne. My first Indian-managed motel of the trip. The Holiday Model, good bargain.
Tuesday May 2 -- Hawthorne
Hawthorne to Reno is an e.z. drive, and quite pretty today. I spend some time along both the Walker River and the Carson. The Carson River Valley near Fort Churchill was especially nice, as the cottonwoods are just starting to leaf out. Good to get home. Getting home early in the day is unusual and was kinda cool - got myself unloaded and back into the home rut before dark!
epilogue
So, did I have a good time? Was it worth it? How do I grade my trip?
Ask me again next week, but I would give it about a B-. When I left Reno, it was still acting like winter, and mid-trip it turned into summer, and the middle of the state gets f---ing hot f---ing quick. I think the weather change kicked my butt a little bit. Six weeks from now I could deal with the heat, but now I just wanted the clouds and the 50 degrees to come back.
The driving-to-fun ratio wasn't so great either. I drove about 1,400 miles in a week, that's 200 mile/day with just little ole me doing all the driving. Nevada is a big, empty state. The two actual camping nights were wonderful, Ely was fun, Mono Lake/395 is always fun. The endless wide empty spaces and long vistas and the general feeling of solitude are always good for my soul.... up to a point. Staying in Eastern Nevada longer would have amortized that driving over more days, but with the heat, it seemed more like work than fun to remain.
I was in a shitty, unsettled mood when I left, and I am in a less shitty but more unsettled mood now that I'm back. Good trade-off, I think! Shitty is shitty, but unsettled has the promise of positive change to it. I sure had a lot of time to chew on my issues out there, and as near as I can tell I didn't very far with them, but change done right is a slow and subtle process, so we'll just see.