Day 7 & 8: Viva Las Vegas!!

Well, I guess Day 8 isn't really a Vegas, but since Day 7 didn't end until 3 o'clock in the morning, I'm going to go ahead and count our travel day as an actual vacay day. :)

On Saturday we experienced your basic Vegas day. We slept in, had massages, coffee and went shopping. And no, I didn't load up on shoes, but it wasn't for lack of trying!  Maybe a couple of dresses though... Then, we took short naps so we would have it in us for the long haul at night! First, we traveled from the Westin where we were staying, to MGM to eat at Craftsteak.

Here's a quick Vegas tip -- know what's going on around town before you set out! We arrived at MGM with literally thousands of people: Fight Night! If you're thinking Ocean's Eleven, you're thinking right! Wall to wall people in every direction (and all sorts of get-ups!).  Craftsteak was amazing. Literally the best food I've ever eaten. They had a special tasting menu for the fight, so we got to taste a little bit of everything: soup, three salads, two steaks, four sides and four desserts.  I wouldn't have ordered any of it, so it was perfect to try new things.  

From MGM we traveled to Rio to see Penn & Teller. Next time you're in Vegas, you have to see this show! Of course, it's magic, but it's such a smart show -- a highlight of the trip. And then, if it's 11pm in Vegas, what to do? We flitted around from casino to casino, playing some penny slot machines and mingling with the weirdest people we've ever seen. :)  

Next year? We're not sure. After a road trip year, we love to have a stay-in-one place trip. We probably will give Maui a serious thought.  Here's a look back at our trip:

Favorite Thing You Saw

Ann:  I loved driving in to Lake Tahoe because it was everything you'd heard about: clear blue water and tall ponderosa pines.

Erica:  I think Belmont Mine was my favorite, but actually, the discovery of Hamilton Cemetery a couple of hours before was so exciting.  I still can't believe we found those places way out in the hills!

Favorite Dirt Road

Ann:  The one to Hamilton.

Erica:  Me too! There was a little excitement because there were some snow covered places, and basic anticipation of finding something amazing.  You know, and the other truck in the ditch… 

Ann:  Yes, it was a little scary and took all of my excellent driving skills. ;)

Favorite Food

Ann:  I think the pea risotto at Craftsteak. 

Erica: Duh.  Craftsteak. I think the Lobster Bisque in particular was my favorite. I don't like lobster, and I don't really like soup…but this was the best thing I have ever tasted.

Favorite Food Outside of Vegas

Ann:  I think the waffle panini in Virginia City -- it was so unanticipated.  

Erica: I'm going to go with the coffee at the Flower Basket in Ely.  So unexpectedly delicious. 

Favorite Photo

Ann:  I liked many of the ones Erica took with the noir filter. 

Erica:  I love the one I took with the "noir" filter of the two old houses in Hamilton.  

Favorite Small Town Moment

Ann:  Getting coffee at the Flower Basket in Ely, especially the second day.  The little old lady was so cute!

Erica:  The bathroom stop in Austin was really my favorite. Obviously the bathroom was a necessity, but that woman was so nice!

Best Thing in Vegas

Ann:  Two things; the Penn & Teller Show, and coming back to the tranquility of the Westin after the chaos of the strip.

Erica: Craftsteak or Penn & Teller? Toss up? But I'm leaning towards Penn & Teller...

Weirdest thing in Vegas

Ann:  I don't want to talk about it.

Erica:  The night is a little bit of a blur at this point.  I will say this: the Victoria's Secret "angel" with the Johnny Depp pirate was not even close to the weirdest thing.  Fight Night brings out the strange in everyone….

What You'd Go Back to See

Ann:  I'd go back to Lake Tahoe, and I'd also see another Penn & Teller show.

Erica: I'm not sure this is a trip you repeat, but I would like to go back to Great Basin to see the bristlecone pine trees (they were just out of reach above the snow line). 

Thanks for traveling with us! We always have such a good time with each other, and we love sharing our adventures with everyone!

Day 6: On the Road Again

On the road again
Goin' places that I've never been


We've played this song every day getting back in to the car and heading down another dirt road. We woke up in Great Basin National Park to 43 degrees and a nice homemade breakfast. And, sigh, no coffee. Today was definitive proof that coffee IS necessary for basic functionality. As nice as free range eggs are, they do not compete with Starbucks. :) We are products of the Pacific Northwest.

Seein' things that I may never see again


Yes, this trip held many things that we have never seen, and are quite sure that we will never see again. There is something special about seeing a portion of the world that you know you will never see again. You soak up what you can, knowing your travels will probably not bring you back.

The first things we soaked up today was Cathedral State Park. It's another geological wonder in Nevada. :) The erosion creates these cathedral looking formations, and cave like things called slot canyons. As we were walking around we found one such slot canyon that went back quite aways. Someone was wearing white pants (you can imagine that was not me!), and someone was bent on exploring. I climbed and slinked and wedged myself through the small opening to get to the back of the canyon. There was a slight bit of anxiety getting back out, as walking down the slippery rocks was a little more terrifying than climbing up. But, as you can imagine, I figured it out. :)

And I can't wait to get on the road again

Honestly, most of the day was spent on the schlep to Vegas. It was several hours of very uninteresting terrain. And while the middle of Nevada has so much mining history, there seems to be not much that has happened on the southeastern border. I admit to sleeping while mom continued on the drive.

 
On the road again
Like a band of gypsies we go down the highway

As we got within 30 miles of Vegas, boy did the traffic change! We have seen a handful, literally, only a handful of people in the last week. And now, we were surrounded by hundreds of cars! We were overwhelmed before we even set foot in a casino. Plus, the temperature had risen to…97!! But here, although we feel like fish out of water after the last week, we are thankful for many of the amenities that Vegas offers: coffee, plush pillows, and amazing food! Our only complaint at this point is the fire alarm that has been going off for…2 hours? I can exit a building with 28 of my closest friends in record time, but apparently that skill is not valued here. A busted sprinkler is apparently to blame. Needless to say, we won't be sleeping until the intercom shuts off in our room!

We're the best of friends
Insisting that the world keep turning our way and our way


Hopefully it is extremely evident that we love Spring Break. We love the adventure, we love the spontaneity. We love forgetting what we do and remembering who we are. And we love doing it together.


Tomorrow we are living it up Vegas style: massage, pool, dinner, show, casino…Wahoo!!

Is on the road again
Just can't wait to get on the road again
The life I love is making music with my friends
And I can't wait to get on the road again
And I can't wait to get on the road again

Day 5: A Gravel Road and a Styrofoam Container

Or:
Margaret Thatcher Never Tap Danced in a Charcoal Oven.

At this point on Thursday evening we are well past self amusement. We are sitting in the most adorable bed and breakfast in the Great Basin National Park.  The people are lovely and the log cabin is so cute. It feels like home, so much so that we have caught a little bit of the silly bug. Although to be fair, the Margaret Thatcher bit started much earlier.

We left Ely this morning and headed out towards Great Basin with our eyes on a stop at Ward. We bought supplies for the day at Ridley's (believe it or not!) grocery store.  There was an overwhelming abundance of canned goods, and we left with more processed foods than I'm sure mom has seen in a year!  We packed our cooler, and headed off!

We stopped first at Ward and saw their townsite and cemetery. Was this the actual first stop? Um, no. The first stop would have been when I hit the fan shortly after turning on to the dirt road. Our newly acquired styrofoam cooler was jumping all over the backseat. I opened our survival kit in hopes of finding duct tape and found a knife the size of a kindergartener (thank you BSHSW).  I ended up securing it with our sweatshirts and was quite proud of myself. That lasted until we drove in to a small ravine (emphasis on small).  So the rest of the trip, the cooler was seat buckled and creaking and groaning and squeaking with every movement of the vehicle.

Back to Ward: Unbelievably most of this town was moved across the valley to Taylor when the mine stopped producing.  Moving an entire town 10 miles before 1900 seems so hard!

After the cemetery and townsite were the Charcoal Ovens.  These were amazing! Built by the "carboneri" (Italian worker), these provided the charcoal to run the mine at Ward and other surrounding mines.  So much timber was required to produce the charcoal needed to run the mines, that often the timber surrounding charcoal ovens was cleared in about a 35 miles radius.  There was an intricate 12 day process that was taken to create the charcoal.

The ovens have been well kept, and were fun to walk around in. The acoustics were amazing, so I did a little tap dance in each one. Flap, flap, flap, flap, cramp roll, paddle and roll...  It was gravel, and I had to dance around the cow pies. And I was wearing Chacos.  And my hair looked like a bouffant. I'm not sure why the bouffant mattered so much, but it added to the experience!

From Ward we headed to Great Basin National Park.  A big draw in this park is the Bristlecone Pine trees that are thousands of years old. We were hoping with the nice weather the road would be open, but it was still snowy. Next time! We did drive as far as possible and walk up the closed road quite a ways. These were the first actual trees we've seen (tree being something that is at least taller than our car!).

We were warned at the park about altitude sickness which has symptoms including: nausea, incoherent speech and headache. Wait, isn't that every day! Ha!

Afterwards we had a nice little picnic by Lehman Creek.

After driving briefly in to Utah, we are back in Nevada at Hidden Canyon Ranch for the night.

Tomorrow, a little less conversation, a little more driving…onward to Vegas!

Day 4: This is what we came for!

Today we took full advantage of our 4WD and had the high adventure we were after. After finding some really great coffee at a local flower shop, we headed back west on highway 50 in search of real ghost towns. We turned south on…well, we don't really know which road! The map we were working off was…fluid, at best.  :)  Basically, we turned south and headed in to the mountains.  Again, we spent the day driving through mountain passes!

The first "town" we were looking for was Hamilton. It was another community built to support silver mining in 1868.  The road was gravel and dirt, and had deep ruts in places, but was dry, except for some snow melt. The going was slow and very bumpy!  One of us was dreadfully carsick, and the other was killing it with amazing driving. :)

After several miles we were sort of stumped with our whereabouts. The roads (can you call them roads?) in front of us didn't resemble the map at all.  As we came around one corner, I happened to look back behind and saw a grave marker. Aha! We had stumbled upon the Hamilton Cemetery.

As with all old cemeteries, this one held us in a bit of reverence.   Most of the graves were overgrown, or broken, and there were very few that were marked. We poked about, inferring the stories that lay before us, and tracking a few of the families.  At 8,000 feet, the views were amazing; white grave markers, red dogwoods and white capped mountains.  At the top of this small peak, we could see nothing for miles.

Knowing we were close, we zoomed (you know, at less than 15mph) down the hill a ways to find what was left of Hamilton.  Nobody lives here anymore and we were free to walk around, explore and take pictures.

After Hamilton, we followed a park service type sign to Belmont Mine. This wasn't in our book, but I had seen it online, and it looked amazing. Getting there was…trying.  We were way past the road less traveled.  :)

Honestly, when we came around the corner (not the first corner…) we were blown away. That this mill was tucked away in the hills, unseen, was amazing.

This felt like a ghost town -- abandoned, ruined, and lots of weird noises as the wind blew.  This was what we had been looking for. Belmont was hard to find, and we reveled in standing in a place that few have stood in that last hundred years or so.  In its day, it served as the mill for the Babylon Mine, and still has part of the tram standing.

 Of course, all of these pictures were shot from outside the structures, complying with our safety first motto...  Adventure on!

We spent our entire day about an hour from our hotel, but we saw absolutely no one. We were nestled between the Pogonip Ridge and the White Pine Range, between 7,000-8,000 feet in elevation.  There were roughly seven other mines on our map in the area, but none were apparent to the naked eye. Almost 150 years later, the land has not changed that much! It was such a beautiful area, but so hard to imagine how people found veins to mine, how they traveled here and ultimately lived and worked.

Tomorrow is National Park day -- Great Basin here we come!

Day 3: The Loneliest Road in America

Today we found that the moniker for Route 50 is so true. But that comes later in the day!

We started the day just outside of Fallon at Grimes Point looking at petroglyphs.  Yesterday we spent the day living and breathing the Comstock Lode, and going back so far in time to petroglyphs was fun! There weren't real recognizable images, but it was a fun discovery none the less.

After Grimes Point, we headed just around the corner to Picnic Cave.  The full trail included hikes to Hidden Cave which is more famous, but it was SO hot, and at around 6,000 feet, so hiking for me in particular wasn't super conducive.  I packed 3 bottles of nail polish, but not my inhaler…  Nice.  I was a little bummed not to see the famous "lizard" petroglyph, but we wound back down a different trail to the car. And there it was!! This was the most recognizable petroglyph, and very easy to see (meaning it was one of the newer ones).

Next stop was Sand Springs Station and Sand Mountain. Oh, and sunburn capital of Spring Break. At this point it's unclear what is sunburn and what is heat rash…  I suppose given a few more hours it will be clear! Sand Spring Station was a Pony Express Station. Of course we are saturated in Pony Express information, and we won't bore you with all of it, but here's a quick fact I thought was interesting: horses were changed out every 12-15 miles, but riders were changed out every 75-100 miles. In the photo below, note the preferred rider!

The terrain here was…hot! Actually, that's not what I was going to say. :)  I'm just sitting here watching my skin get redder and redder!  The terrain was actually very diversified.  There was quite a bit of sand, which turned in places to salt flats.

Sand Mountain, which was in the back is this amazing 2 mile long, 600 foot tall dune, right in the middle of…nowhere!  The sand is from a dried up lake (you know, 4,000 years ago), which blows around and because of the way the wind blows and the surrounding mountains, drops right where the dune is. That is an incredibly simplified explanation, but it's close enough! The other cool thing is that it is a "singing dune". We didn't experience this phenomena, but evidently when the wind blows, the sand "sings" as it blows across the dune.

This is where the Loneliest Road comes in to play.  Driving east on 50, we saw…lots of nothing. Amazing mountains and valleys, and not a lot of people. We pulled off the road whenever there was a historical marker, and we went down random roads in search of adventure.  One of these adventures was in search of the Fairview Fault Lines. I know, who seeks out a fault line? This took us on to Naval Air Station land, across a very washed out road. I ended up driving for a large portion of this stretch. You know, driving, instead of yakking… We didn't actually get far enough to get up to Fairview Peak to see the fault, but this was high adventure -- 4 wheel drive, cows, weird military stuff…  The stuff that  Spring Breaks are made of!

In Austin, we stopped at the International Hotel. It was the "free bathroom" sign that caught my attention. I had by-passed an outhouse earlier in the trek. You know, because I have an irrational fear of something jumping out of those things. Not kidding.  The International Hotel was actually built in Virginia City in 1859 and moved to Austin a few years later. It isn't a hotel anymore, but has the best bathroom for about 100 miles, and a lovely lady who bakes a mean cookie.

After Austin there was…wildlife? I mean there was almost nothing.  The land changed over and over. We went through 9 mountain passes, made elevation changes totaling about 3,000 feet and saw a lot of animals that we didn't expect to! Lots of cows, donkeys, lizards, jackrabbits, deer, and 3 extremely large elk that were too close to the road for us! What we didn't see a lot of was…water.  Nine mountain passes, means there were quite a few valleys, but no rivers or lakes. Even driving through River Valley ( BSHSW -- we are not making that up!), there was not a river in sight.

It took the entire day, but we finally rolled in to Ely.  We are filthy, and exhausted, and loving every second of this really weird vacation we're on!!