Heading Out on the “Loneliest Highway”

View along US 50

2019-10-05 (Saturday)

I woke up today feeling a lot better. I think the chiropractor really helped. I was being careful of how I moved my body, and seemed to be okay. So Joe worked hard to get us all hooked up to leave, when all of a sudden, I got that sharp pain again! Luckily, I lay down and it eased up. I refused to be helpless this time, and put two ice packs on my lower back (where the pain was concentrated this time), and made my way gingerly into the co-pilot seat. We finally left the campground after dumping the tanks, stopped for gas, and hit the road.

And that pretty much describes the day, actually. As I think I already wrote, Highway 50 east of Fallon, Nevada is known as the “Loneliest Highway in America,” for it’s barren appearance and lack of amenities, towns, or even traffic. It certainly lives up to that reputation! We drove and drove, and although it is beautiful in a stark and barren way, there is a lot of NOTHING there! I did take some photos to illustrate it.

And that’s how the day went. We were trying to make it to Great Basin National Park for the night, and after stopping briefly in the town of Ely to get some more water, we drove the last hour knowing that the sun was sinking fast. By the time we got to the visitor’s center, we knew it would be closed—but it was too dark to even read anything without our heavy flashlight. I looked at the map in the kiosk so I knew the general direction, and we drove up a pitch-black road for about 6 miles until we came to the gate of the park. Then we drove carefully, watching for the turnoff to the campground. The turnoff road was 3 miles long and unpaved... it was PITCH BLACK and unpaved and we were driving about 10 miles/hour.

The road ahead-- US 50. It goes on forever.

Then the campground... again, pitch black. I used the lantern to read the payment instructions and look at the campground map, and we tried the one loop with pull-through. I know it was Saturday night, but I was still surprised that every single campsite was taken. In a last ditch effort, we tried the loop which had no large sites— and miraculously, found one where we could simply pull alongside it, along the road. So that is what we did. The RV was very uneven, but it was too late to try to level it. So we just bagged the whole thing, ate a very quick dinner, and are going to bed. We are both quite wiped out.

BTW: We drove this same road in 2007. Here is a link to my description back then.

The view gets prettier and less barren in eastern Nevada