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

Leaving Lassen (posted out of order)

Mount Lassen, seen from scenic overlook

2019-10-03 (Thursday) (This blog should come before “Ow!”, Friday’s blog)

Our day started very early, as Joe and I awoke hearing a strange clicking noise. He immediately identified it as our gas furnace attempting to turn on; the clicking meant that the battery in the RV was dead. I thought we could manage another hour--it was warm in our sleeping bag--but he is a bit obsessive about taking care of the batteries, which is of course a good thing. But poor Joe, it meant he got dressed and went outside and had to jump the RV battery from the Jeep, and then we had to run the RV engine for about an hour to juice up the batteries again. I felt terrible for the others in the park whose quiet early morning was possibly disturbed, but I suppose they would have understood if they knew we had no heat.

Anyway, the furnace went back on, the engine was turned off, and I think we both dozed off again around 7 a.m., until a little after 8. At which point we heard another odd sound which woke us up. It turned out to be a noise from the radio (which was on?) coming through the speakers over our heads in the bed. That was the final straw, and we decided the RV wanted us to get up. So we did.

Since we were leaving the park this morning (waaahh!!!), we had to hook up the Jeep. We drove a short way to the boat launch near the campground, which was flat and long and almost deserted, so we weren’t in anyone’s way. The hook-up went smoothly. Then I noticed it was about 10 minutes before 11:00. I suggested to Joey that we drive to the Visitor Center (a quarter-mile or so away) and watch the park film which is shown every 30 minutes. I figured we have 45 hours of driving time to get back to New Jersey, so how much difference is 30 minutes more going to make?

We parked and ran into the Visitor Center, getting there JUST in time for the movie. It was very interesting, and gave us a great overview of a lot of the places we’d visited yesterday, plus historical photos and videos of the volcano erupting in 1915. In some ways, I think I got more out of the video seeing it after I’d toured the park, rather than before! Afterwards, I took some time to look at the museum exhibits I’d hardly noticed yesterday morning when I’d stopped in.

Alas, by noon it was really time to stop postponing our departure, and so we headed out. We made a brief stop at the same store we’d bought gas at two days ago, to pick up a couple of cans of propane (our small propane heater was no use this morning, since it too ran out of fuel during the night.) Then we headed toward the town of Susanville. Almost immediately, we saw a sign for the Hat Creek Scenic Overlook, and we took it.

Wow!!!  The view was incredible. We had about a 180-degree view of the valley around us, with Mount Lassen in clear view, and Mount Shasta faintly visible in the distance. There were a number of panels identifying the different mountains we were seeing, and pointing out three distinct areas which had suffered from forest fires. The outlines were very clear. But mostly I found that I was having the most elated feeling being up there! I simply felt ecstatic--it was fairly warm (I was only wearing one long sleeved shirt, and the sun was shining), there was a slight but warm breeze, and the air was so clean and revitalizing. Every time I turned toward Lassen Peak, I got another rush!! It is so hard to describe.... I could have stayed up there for hours. As it was, I stood out there for at least 20 minutes, just drinking it in, and staring. Joe also agreed that the landscape was simply extraordinary. I felt so energized and thrilled just standing there. It was so very hard to leave!

Sadly, we continued south-east to Susanville, which turned out to be a cute historical town on the side of the mountain, with a main street sloping down the hill rapidly (a bit like Butte, Montana, actually.) We only could catch glimpses of it, because there was no good place to pull over on such a steep slope. So we went through, and picked up US-295 toward Reno, Nevada. We passed a number of beautiful hills at first, but then the road seemed to become more drab. We stopped to fill the RV’s propane tank, and when I walked Cassie, what looked like grass turned out to be sticker plants low to the ground. The poor thing immediately got stickers in her paws, and we had to dig them out with her. It seemed like a metaphor for leaving such a glorious location behind us.

Soon enough, we crossed into Nevada. It seems that US-295 is also not worthy of a “Welcome to” sign. That’s TWO welcome signs I got cheated out of-- California and Nevada! But even without the sign, we are here. Our sadness at “turning left” to drive eastward was compounded by finding ourselves in a 3-lane each way traffic jam! It was rush hour, of course, and we were stuck in it for a short time before all the traffic thinned out. But it could not have been more the antithesis of our glorious Mount Lassen and Lassen National Forest. Frankly, it was horrible.

Once we were past the main city area, traffic was not bad, and the scenery along I-80 was beautiful rocks again. After we arrived in Fernley, we luckily could leave I-80, since we decided we couldn’t stand to just come home on the Interstate after such a wonderful western experience. Every road has been beautiful since before the end of September! So we are taking US-50, “the Loneliest Road in America”, as it is dubbed, straight through Nevada, Utah, and Colorado. Unless, of course, the weather stops us.

As it is, it was actually gorgeous weather today, warm and sunny and almost mild. We stopped for the night in Fallon, the last “big” town before the Loneliest Road really gets going (there’s nothing for another 100 miles, or more). We’re at the Fallon County Fairgrounds, where we were able to park for $15, including water and electricty. We are in a lot of company, because currently there’s a shooting competition going on here! The guy in the next RV over said he’s not a shooter, he is selling western wear clothing at a booth. We spoke to a guy dressed like Matt Dillon or some other 19th century western denizen of Dodge City, who told us he was in one of the competitions today, and placed 10th out of 48 entries. We are hoping that the event opens again tomorrow before we leave, since that would be quite an unusual event for us to attend! But if so, it will delay our arrival at our next destination, Great Basin National Park. So we will see how the morning goes.

I should add that I do have great photos from today, and fabulous ones from yesterday, but the internet here is not working so well. It is allowing me to update the blog, but not upload photos (or download them, for that matter, into my computer.) So I do hope I’ll have a chance to do that soon. Some of the photos I took yesterday should really be postcards, and the ones of Mount Lassen from lunchtime today are just beautiful. But I’m pessimistic about my connectivity for the next few days, so we will have to see how it goes.

OW!!!!

2019-10-04 (Friday)

Today was one of those bumps in the road that we just have to swerve around or go over. I hope it all turned out okay (I’ll know better tomorrow.)

The morning was as usual— we woke up to discover that although it had gotten cold overnight, the sky was bright blue and the sun was warming the world up nicely. We were packing up to leave, when suddenly I had a sharp sciatica pain shoot through my hip, down my thigh, and into my back. I was stunned to realize I could barely walk or move into any position at all without pain.

Joey quickly told me to go lie down, suggested some positions to relieve the pain, etc. but nothing helped. At last, he gave me some of his super-meds. One of them took away the pain after a while, but made me definitely dizzy (clearly I was not going to be driving!) The other one was supposed to work on inflammation, the presumed source of the pain. While I lay for a couple of hours resting, he unhooked the Jeep and took it into town, buying supplies he’d need to change the RV oil, and getting the Jeep serviced at a Jiffy Lube in town (town being Fallon, Nevada—we are parked at the county fairgrounds.)

By around noon, however, the meds had worked, and I seemed to have fully recovered. We decided that, since we were in a good place to do so, he should change the RV oil before we actually left. I, meanwhile, was able to walk the dog, and put away odds and ends in the RV. When Joe was done, we had some lunch and once again packed up to leave. But suddenly, just after he’d hooked up the Jeep, I took a step and zoom, pain returned—not as bad as before, but again I had to lie down for a bit.

While I was lying down, Joe decided that we should not drive today—it was already 3pm and obviously I wasn’t doing as well as we thought. Then he suggested calling a chiropractor. He thought that would help. So he did, and found someone who had good reviews on Google, and could take me at the end of her day. So we both rested for an hour, and at 4pm, we drove over-I was able to walk pretty well, but obviously I wasn’t standing straight and I did have pain. I used a step stool to help me get into the Jeep, which I always have difficulty with because it is so high.

The chiropractor turned out to be a lovely woman who spent 30-45 minutes working on getting me straight, applying heat, and doing mysterious things until the end, when she cracked my spine a. Bit straighter. I was definitely standing taller and in a lot less pain when she finished! We gladly paid her very reasonable fee, and I climbed carefully back into the Jeep.

Since we were just across the street from the Safeway, I told Joe we should stop there before heading home. He was a little dubious about me walking, but I felt so much better and didn’t want to waste the chance to pick up the few things we needed. So we got ourselves a couple of bags of groceries, and also stopped at the ATM in the store (I’d paid cash to the doctor, and didn’t have a lot more.) And then we came home.

I crawled into bed,  because by then i was feeling a bit drained. Joe made some Mac and cheese for dinner, but we both went to sleep pretty early; it was a stressful day. However, my last thoughts were on the bright side. Thank goodness this happened in a place where we could find the resources we needed; and thank goodness even MORE that it didn’t happen a couple of days earlier, in Lassen, when we’d have had to curtail our visit to the park. I was in physical pain today, but that would have added so much psychic pain to the situation. So hopefully, today, all’s well that ends well, and I’ll be able to drive tomorrow. I think that the hiking on uneven ground, missing my regular yoga class, and not having a massage for a long time, has caught up with me a bit!

Philosophy

Well, this looks like it may turn out to be a really boring day—in fact, Joey just announced that he is bored (he’s driving down a featureless highway). I wish I had a book on tape (the one thing we didn’t bring!) After we left Lee Vining (where we couldn’t find our “borrowed” wifi, and so couldn’t upload the blogs), we headed out of California and into Nevada. This is the route I was worrying about before we left, which has a 170-mile stretch with no gasoline. After getting much better gas mileage than I expected (well over the 5 mpg that I was using as a base calculation, as pitiful as it sounds!), we figure that we can make 170 miles on a tank of gas. But we haven’t even reached that 170 mile stretch yet, and the landscape is beyond boring—flat sagebrush prairie, with uninteresting mountains on either side of us and no change expected until we reach Tonopah, the gas-up point and beginning of the 170 mile stretch.

The first part of the trip, however, was less boring. In fact, I was thinking of referring to it as God’s Amusement Park. First we had the spectacularly beautiful and nail-bitingly scary descent from Tioga Pass. After that, we hit about 30 or so miles of road which bore every resemblance to a kiddie roller coaster—up and down and up and down and up and down. After 10 miles or so of this, the road sign warns of “dips” and we wondered, it gets WORSE? It did, actually, for a while; several of the rises and subsequent dips were fairly significant. I decided there is a reason those amusement park rides only last about 3 minutes—it is all the human stomach can tolerate!

Speaking of tolerating, I have not been tolerating the altitudes very well. Last night I was awake again with chest aches and nausea. Joe says that there is a simple medication to take for altitude problems—who knew I’d need it? But for now, I think we’ve left the highest mountains behind. And so far today, the only really interesting photo I have to share is this sign:


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I wrote the above at about 1:30 or so, just before we arrived in Tonopah, NV. Joe pulled into the first gas station we came to, which included a Burger King, which also had a wifi. So while he filled Mo’s tank and walked Roxy, I uploaded my last two blogs. We decided to splurge on a BK lunch just for a change, and then switched drivers. I pulled out onto the highway, accelerating as I turned left, and suddenly the most horrendous crashing noise came from behind me—it sounded as if half the RV had fallen off! It turned out to be not so serious—Joe had neglected to lock the refrigerator door while we were stopped, and it swung open, discharging most of its contents and those of the freezer (including a full bag of ice) onto the floor. I pulled over immediately onto the shoulder, and fortunately no harm was done, nothing was broken or spilled.

After Joe put the fridge stuff back, and picked up all the other items which had fallen off the bed in the back (it’s amazing what a simple turn + acceleration can do!), I restarted Mo, pulled out on the highway again, went about 200 feet, and the engine suddenly cut off. I steered onto the shoulder again, alarmed because of the suddenness and the loss of my steering. Joe, ever calm, said that probably the fuse had blown again. But when I went to turn the engine on, it turned over, but didn’t catch—meaning it wasn’t the fuse. We looked at each other and I told Joe that HE should take the driver seat and be the one to turn the car back on; for some reason he is better at starting the engine up than I am.

To our alarm, the engine continued to turn over, but refused to catch. It was exactly like what had happened two weeks ago in Sioux City! As a sense of fatality settled over me, Joe began to trouble-shoot, but after 30 minutes or so of trying everything, we had to give up and once again call Good Sam Road Service. I kept trying to look on the good side—this happened IN Tonopah, not 60 miles down that long stretch of highway coming up. Tonopah, small as it is, is the county seat, has a Dept of Motor Vehicles, a hospital, and lots of motels; I was sure there HAD to be a repair place somewhere nearby. OTOH, it is Sunday, and also, we did not NEED this again!!!

We talked to Good Sam, and as we were waiting for the rep to call us back with some plans, and I was examining the map of Tonopah in our DeLorme program, Joe, of course, was still fiddling with the engine, and suddenly, he started it and it caught! We sat there, stunned, trying to figure out what to do next! I asked what he’d done, and he said he had tightened the wires to the distributor cap. He voted that we should keep driving, but I was scared to move—what if it was only a brief temporary fix? What if we got stuck again, this time in a worse place?

I suggested we drive through town, and look for a “better place to be stuck”, such as a truck stop or even a large parking lot by a grocery—someplace a little less on the fringes of town; and then shut the RV off and see if it started again. So we did that, several times, and each time it started right up. So we decided that since it now seemed “normal”, there was no point in simply hanging around in Tonopah, we might as well keep driving and hope for the best. We headed down the road, but had driven only a mile when we had to stop to readjust the engine cover (inside the cab—we could tell it was on wrong.) At that point, I said I wanted to go back to the grocery store I’d noticed—I had suddenly realized we only had 2 gallons of drinking water left after 4 days in Yosemite, and I envisioned us breaking down in the desert with no water.

This turned out to be a good move, because both Joe and I were a bit unsettled by the events of the previous two hours, and doing something plebian like grocery shopping was good for us. After 30 minutes, we were back in the car going down the same road yet again, when I saw a mileage sign for Las Vegas. “Huh??” I told Joe we were on the wrong road—in our search for a “better place to be stuck”, I had not noticed the turnoff for Route 6. So back we turned around for the second time, in the very same place, found the correct route, and kept driving.

And now I am writing this tonight from a KOA in Ely, Nevada, 170 miles down the road from Tonopah. We arrived here with no further trouble from Mo. Needless to say, we are beyond relieved. But we did come up with the moral of the story from this episode. I told Joe I never wanted to hear him say “I’m bored” again on this trip! I told him that God was punishing us for saying that, and for having the chutzpah to complain about anything on this wonderful trip! He responded by quoting the book of Amos, with a twist: “Are you not like the Ethiopians unto me? Is not the desert I made just as beautiful in its own way as Yosemite National Park?”

And it’s true, as we travelled, we discovered that the landscape did have its own beauty, and that in fact it doesn’t stay the same anyway—we saw rangeland, we saw beautiful mountains of all kinds, and in the dark, a KOA after an 11 hour day can be pretty darn beautiful too! So we are here for the night, and we are hoping for the best for the rest of the trip. We really have no idea what might have happened—Joe thought maybe the engine flooded, and it was because we finally let it alone for 30 minutes that it finally started working again. All we can do is continue on our journey and be grateful for all of it—the beautiful and the scary.

Nevada Desert in the morning

Nevada desert, evening coming, 60 miles south of Ely

Nevada desert, 30 miles south of Ely

We did have one casualty today--my MP3 player was fried by the wrong cable. It means our music selection for the rest of the trip will be VERY boring, I'm afraid--all my favorite stuff was on the MP3 player. But considering what else happened today, I am not fretting too much over it. We will just have to hope that we find some good radio stations along the way!

The Road Goes Ever Onward

Tuesday morning, Sept 11
As I type this, it is not yet 7 a.m., and we are very homey. Joe is driving west on I-80 in Nevada, between Wells and Elko, with Bonnie Raitt on the CD player and the sun rising on the mountains ahead. I am sitting at the dinette typing, with my cup of coffee and my laptop. And Roxy is stretched out on the opposite bench, dozing. Now, for all you RV skeptics, doesn’t this sound lovely?

We started yesterday on a very cold morning (about 40 degrees, with some frost on our back-up camera lens) in Sinks Canyon State Park. But it was SO beautiful, as I think you will agree from this photo of Mo nestled into a campsite, and the sun rising over the mountains right behind us. After two days, the rain and clouds were gone, and the bright sun came back.

We made an early start, knowing we had a very long driving day, and also needed to make a stop at Walmart to stock up on some groceries and other odds and ends before we got to Yosemite (that reminds me, a few days ago we passed a small store called “More Odds Than Ends”!) By 7:30 we were back on the highway heading south in Wyoming. Wyoming may be the most beautiful state in the US. There are SO many varied mountains and vistas, it seems you see something different around every turn. Of course, there’s nothing BUT scenery in Wyoming, also. Not much in the way of cities, and the few that there are, we haven’t visited. We drove from the northeast corner of the state to the southwest corner, and it was beautiful almost every mile of the way. Even from the Interstate.

I-80 in Southwest Wyoming

After lunch and Walmart, we crossed into Utah. At first it was very Wyoming-ish—very pretty. But within 30 minutes, we were climbing the mountains surrounding Salt Lake City, and coming down into a major metropolitan area. I think Salt Lake is the largest city we will be driving through, and just to make it a real city experience, we got tangled up on the 3 interstate highways which cross through the city, and missed a turn. No big deal, though, just a delay while we took the next exit and turned ourselves around. But we are not used to travelling in city traffic with Mo, and it was a little hairy (I also had to drive faster than usual for us, just to keep up with the traffic.) Almost as soon as we left the beltline of the city, however, civilization pretty much disappeared and we ran alongside the Great Salt Lake for a while.
The last 100 miles of the Utah panhandle west of Salt Lake is what is called the Great Salt Lake Desert, and it is precisely that. Nothing but white salt flats stretching as far as the eye can see. In the far distance are mountains, but for a couple of hours there is just NOTHING to see but salt! What a horror it must have looked like to the pioneers.

Great Salt Lake Desert

As soon as we hit the Nevada, the terrain changed—and not just due to the ultramodern casino sitting precisely on the state line. Suddenly we were in the very mountains which had been our distant goal for two hours, and we spent some time climbing and descending. Our planned stop for the evening was Wells, a town about 60 miles into Nevada. It was dark, about 8:30 “body time”, but only 7:30 Nevada time (we crossed into the Pacific Time zone when we crossed the border.) Unfortunately, the campground we’d planned to stay at was full. We decided that rather than stay at the second-choice RV park (which was basically just a parking lot style anyway), we’d go to the Flying J which was right there, and simply “dry camp” again. I already knew I was too tired to do the laundry I’d hoped to do at the campground, and even too tired to write and upload a blog (I had driven the last 6 hours straight, from the Wyoming border to Nevada—clear across Utah!) So we didn’t see any reason to pay $25 or so just for an electric hookup. We pulled into Flying J, where once we actually stopped for good, I realized how exhausted I was. So Joe whipped us up a quick dinner of scrambled eggs and kasha, and he even did the dishes while I jumped into bed!

I am sure some of you are wondering how anyone could spend the night in a truck stop, but the Flying J has special RV-only parking spaces, and many people do what we did. After all, after dark with all our curtains closed, we could be anywhere. Even with the obligatory casino, it wasn’t too noisy, and we spent a very comfortable night. And even in a truck stop, morning can be beautiful! Joe filled up the gas tank while I took this snapshot, and then we were on our way.

Sunrise over FlyingJ, Wells, Nevada

We are now 10 miles from Elko, where we plan to get off and borrow some Wifi to upload this blog. Then we will be driving all day to get to Lee Vining, CA, the town at the base of the Tioga Pass road, the route into Yosemite. I am dearly hoping to find Wifi there, to wish everyone a happy Rosh Hashanah before we enter the park. But if for some reason that doesn’t work out, I will have to say now, everyone have a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year.