MONDAY, JUNE 20, 2011

Reno, Nevada to Ely, Nevada

348 miles//1,506 miles

This morning, we departed from Tom’s house at 7:00am (to Kathy’s sweet farewell, “don’t get schmushed!”), gassed up and got on Route 80, briefly, to Route 50, the so-called Loneliest Road in America, planning on taking it to Ely, Nevada to spend the night there before starting our way northward to Idaho tomorrow and Montana the following day.

The entire day’s ride was under an almost cloudless, bright blue sky, and mild temperatures.  Through we were going through desert all day, it was alpine desert of relatively high altitudes – from around 4,600 ft. elevation to as high as 7,900 ft – so, the temperatures were never too hot and, at times, we were glad to have some additional layers to put on to fend off the chill of the ride, particularly early in the day.  This area of the world receives very little rainfall, with precipitation coming in the form of winter snow or summer thunderstorms.  Interestingly, no water that falls in this region reaches the ocean - no rivers to be found - so it was likely that I would continue my good fortune of not riding in the rain on this trip.

While there are a number of mammals that inhabit northern Nevada – jack rabbits, coyotes, kit fox, pronghorn antelope, for example – as well as snakes and lizards, other than birds, we saw no wildlife to speak of.  Of the birds, the most common has been the magpie – black, with a white underbelly and long tail - often hanging out around the edge of the road waiting, it would appear, for the hoped-for road kill.   We also saw a number of vultures – certainly not a beautiful bird, but they are elegant fliers, drifting in the winds waiting for something to drop dead.  We hoped not to meet them in that respect.  Tom did claim, at the end of the day, that he had seen a chipmunk crossing the road; however, most unfortunately, it was in the context of my motorcycle running over it, which I did not witness.  I was busy contemplating the surrounding landscape, and can only say that, if such a death occurred, it was accidental or involuntary munkslaughter, at worst, not murder. 

We stopped at Middlegate, Nevada for breakfast, a place Al and Tom stopped at last year.  Though Middlegate shows up on maps and, therefore, might be mistaken for an actual town, it is, in fact, one restaurant-bar, with an adjacent, somewhat beat-up motel, of the kind someone on the lam would take to lie low until the heat is off.  Or, perhaps, there’s an evil proprietor (Anthony Perkins in Psycho, comes to mind).  Ramshackle, at best, which fits the description of the restaurant as well, what with the ceiling completely festooned with dollar bills starting who knows when – maybe President Lincoln?



Middlegate Restaurant-bar

Dollar Bills on the Ceiling

Man Outside the Middlegate Bar

 Joe and Al: Ready to Leave the Middlegate Bar

Tom noted that this area of Nevada is used for the flight training of “top gun” jet fighter pilots (alas, we saw none) and, given that there’s not much else around, the restaurant-bar is clearly a hangout for pilots – the walls are filled with flight memorabilia, often signed, a few dusty models of planes and, in the men’s restroom, an aerial photo taken from one plane looking down at another one off its wing, both flying directly over the restaurant.  Even so, it’s hard to imagine more than a handful of customers here; there are nothing else to be seen in the way of civilization as far as you can see.

Just prior to getting the restaurant, we got stopped in construction traffic for 30 minutes – not the first (for me) or the last - with vehicles stopping their engines to wait.  I turned mine off as well.  Unfortunately, when the traffic started, the bike wouldn’t, and The Loneliest Road in America, where cell-phones have no connection, cars are few and far between and houses with a light on and possessing a land line, virtually non-existent, is not a place where you want to be stuck, as you can imagine (remember the vultures?).  Thankfully, after a couple more tries, the engine finally caught, and we got to Middlegate for breakfast.  It was not an enjoyable breakfast for me, because I wasn’t sure the bike would start again afterward, as I have had instances of a balky battery, though this one is only two years old.  At any rate, it did start though, thankfully, I brought my trickle charger along and will charge it every night, just to be sure.



Not a Place to Break Down



After breakfast, Tom suggested we take a road – Route 722 - that he had been on before, which takes off south from 50, but eventually, 61 miles later, reconnects with it further east, in Austin.  We took his advice and discovered that it was, in fact, even lonelier than the Loneliest, announced by the first two signs that we saw: “MINIMALLY MAINTAINED” and “ROUGH ROAD.”  It was a winding wonder, through remarkable canyons, with dramatic rocky outcroppings, alarming precipices at times at the edge of the road, and, at times, straight-as-an-arrow stretches of 25 miles, across valley floors, that I would, initially estimate to be just a few miles across, but your whole sense of scale is changed in this place.


(After I posted this day's blog, Dale sent me an e-mail comment saying that, in the summer of 1966, his family was on a road trip and went via Rout 50, noting that, in fact, Route 722 was the old Route 50 - that some years later, a portion of it was straightened out and the old portion renamed as Route 722.)

Straight as an Arrow

                                                                                          

Treeless on Route 722

The landscape we rode though is virtually treeless, with flat valleys, soft hills, and even the more rugged mountains all covered with sagebrush, easily the most common plant to be seen.  Early in the the ride today, a small river could be seen running through a canyon alongside the road and, there, trees marched along each side of the running water, along with a green strip of grass and, at times, a solitary tree could be seen in the landscape, with no one else of its ilk nearby to talk to.



Al: The Road Warrior



Tom and Al: Leg Stretch in the Middle of Nowhere



Before we turned off Route 50 – about 25 miles east of Fallon, to get on Route 722, just as I was thinking that, while we were going through a desert, it is not a sand dune-type of desert, I saw, in the distance what appeared to be a large area of sand, maybe 50 or 60 feet in height.  As I got closer and saw very tiny sparkles of sun hitting some cars at the base of the dunes, I realized that it was more like 200-300 feet in height.  I was wrong. As I drove past the entrance road to the sand, the sign read Sand Mountain Recreational Area:

Only 10,000 years ago, glaciers filled many of the valleys in the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the west. The cool, wet climate and runoff from these glaciers helped to create ancient Lake Lahontan, an immense inland lake that covered much of what is now northern Nevada.  Scientists say that the ancient lake was once over 800 feet deep in places.  If you visit Sand Mountain today you can spot the ancient lakeshores on the bluffs to the east of the dunes.

As the climate thousands of years ago grew warmer the glaciers retreated and the lake slowly started to dry up.  By 4,000 years ago the lake level dropped below where Sand Mountain now stands.

Quartz particles, which the glaciers had ground away from the hard Sierra granite to the west, eventually washed down the Walker River and deposited in the river's delta.  As the wind blew across the delta this sand was picked up and carried high into the air.  More than thirty miles to the northeast, the wind was slowed by a large basin on the southwest flank of the Stillwater Range.  With its force broken by the mountain, the wind's burden of sand would fall into this natural trap.  Over the centuries Sand Mountain grew until it reached its present height of almost 600 feet.

Sand Mountain with 600-foot High Dunes

As we ride we are, at times, together or, more often, spread out a bit, stopping frequently to catch up, get off the bikes to stretch our legs and talk for a few minutes.  Similar to the horse trip Dale and I took in 1999, where we were typically meandering far behind the rest of the group, chatting and taking photos, etc., I stopped frequently to take a picture or, occasionally, talk to someone along the way.  While we were on Route 722, in the midst of the sagebrush-covered landscape, I saw what appeared to be a very large white area; it was the remains of an ancient lake and I could see several off-road bikes speeding along trails leading into the “lake,” and they continued off into the distance.  A little further along the road, I met up with one of the bikers, ready to take off down the trail. 

Ancient Lake Bed, with Dust Clouds from Dirt Bikes

  

Paul and his eight friends – including his two sons, joining the adults for their first trip – have been coming here every year for ten years, camping out and riding on established trails, enjoying the dusty speed (up to 100 mph) across the perfectly flat lake bed.

At the next gas station, in Austin, it was clearly motorcycle day, as all four pumps were occupied by bikes, with a couple of others waiting.  While waiting, we talked to Bob Summers, who is on his way to Great Falls, Montana, on a 350cc Kawasaki - pretty small for long-distance travel, but he had it piled high with his paraphernalia.  He knew of the lake bed noted above, and had also camped there on several occasions.



Bob Summers



We got to Ely around 5 pm, pulling into a KOA campground, with comfortable, grassy areas to set up the tents, restrooms and showers.  We unloaded, set up the tents, pads and sleeping bags and headed into town for dinner.

At dinner, I am determined to finally hear the story of Al's drunken Army days from one of the few who was there - i.e., Tom; unfortunately, Tom says he was too drunk to remember.  However, Al did reveal a few things about his travails with alcohol though, due to the very strict Code of the Guy Trip, I can't disclose the details.  Suffice it to say that the story includes crawling a great distance on hands and knees and throwing up in bed.

When we got back, I took my bike over to another area of the camp to plug in the battery charger, and worked on the blog – though I had no connection – I am now writing in Microsoft Word, lest I lose another effort in cyber space, as previously noted (GRRRR!).  As the mosquitoes increased, I stopped writing and walked back to the tents and saw that we now had a neighbor, Richard Schwartz, who had arrived on his ever-immaculate Harley – every bit of the considerable chrome on that beast looked showroom-ready.  How he manage to do that while on the road for a month, I have no idea.  As in turns out, Richard is an architect as well, so we chatted shop for awhile – he’s retired, but knows my firm, Cannon Design.

Richard With His Shiny Harley

  

Tom and Al: at the Ely Campground



Joe at the Ely Campground, Looking for Something



While talking to Richard, we hear a load crash coming from the area where my bike was charging and I immediately thought the worst – a car backing up into the bike; I hustled over and saw that the bike was OK.  A van, immediately adjacent to the bike, had backed into a low branch and the rear window of the van had exploded into a million pieces, showering the area, including my bike - though harmlessly, fortunately

We hit the sack, looking forward to the next day.