August 28th and 29th
Day 60 + 61
A very unique aspect of camping in the desert is sleeping under the stars every night with very little surrounding light, clear dry skies, and at high altitudes. This combination makes for some great star-gazing. This past night made for an even better combination since there was a lunar eclipse that we were able to see first hand in the desert right around dusk. After another peaceful night sleep in the desert we ate a very filling breakfast at the only joint in town, the hippie-ish café. With a full belly we were both ready to tackle the up and down landscape of Nevada for the day. Halfway up our second climb of the day, we had to make a stop at the only place between our two destinations for the day, which was a bar known as Majors Place in Majors Junction. It was a very strange place for a bar on ‘The Loneliest Highway in America” but we were sure glad it was there. It really is in the middle of nowhere between two ridges and halfway up the dry empty valleys between them. So we had to put up our dollar bill on the wall as a souvenir as hundreds of other people have already plastered the wall with their own. One thing we realized is that Corona goes down very quickly in the middle of the desert… After being fueled back up with fluids we had to pedal quickly uphill to run away from a storm that had snuck up on us as we were in the bar. What made it even tougher was that once we outran that storm, we found we were pedaling directly into another thunderstorm ahead of us at Ely, which was going to be our final destination of the day. Much like the weather in Colorado, the weather in Nevada has really thrown us for a loop. It seems every day it starts off perfect, blue skies, then as soon as you cross one set of mountains a very random storm (or several) appears and threatens to ruin your day. Plus it is very difficult to determine if it is coming at you or not. Anyway, we stopped on the side of the highway on our way into Ely to wait out the storm and try to figure out what was our best option. We had a big storm behind us, to the side of us, and a huge one ahead of us right over Ely, about 10 miles away. Luckily, waiting it out was the right call because the Ely storm blew through town in about an hour and we had a small window to ride into town and rode through the remnants of the storm into the unique little mining/gambling town of Ely. After several days of sleeping outside, we treated ourselves to a stay in the former tallest building in Nevada(through the ‘50s at least), the Hotel Nevada. This Hotel Nevada is a far cry from Vegas, but a cool little place that we didn’t expect to run across. I even managed to come away with the exact amount of money I went in with after a few hours at the $2 blackjack table, which I consider a success any time you can leave without losing a buck.
The following day we loaded up on casino food for a ride that would include FOUR Nevada mountain passes without any services for the whole day. This situation is becoming more and more familiar to us now that this is the third day in a row with no water or food (minus the bar yesterday, which wasn’t on our maps) between towns. One thing that I find fascinating about the Nevada landscape we have experienced is the timelessness of it all. It is almost like walking into a time machine backwards. There really is nothing in between these towns; no towns, no development, no people, etc.. This Nevada is pretty much the same thing a person riding their horse across the desert would have experienced 150 years ago and we get to experience today on bicycles. It is SO quiet and very strange when the only thing you hear while riding is the wind whipping across you and the rolling of your tires on the pavement. This is the same trail that the Pony Express riders took and can only imagine how dangerous of a ride they must have gone through with the desolation, lack of water, and oh yeah, threat of Indian attack. The overall riding is very beautiful with such wide expanses between mountain ranges where you can see the road lead you from the top of one, down through the basin, up into your next climb for 25 miles. The climbing wasn’t too strenuous on the first three climbs, just very long and drawn out. The fourth and final climb was the tallest and steepest of the day, but once we reached the top, were only 5 miles from our next town that was all downhill too. It only took us about 10 minutes to make it into Eureka from the top. We used our trip-honed city park antennas and found our home for the night and have to say they had some of the most comfortable grass we have encountered on the trip. It could be a little sad that I am complementing a city on the fluffy-ness of their grass, but it almost felt like a bed.
Once we settled in town and met some of the locals, we got the recommendation to eat at the Pony Expresso Café for breakfast in the morning and are we glad that we did. The food was served in ridiculously large portions, was very tasty, they made their own pastries from scratch, and was priced the way we like it. While we were eating we met Robbie, who turned out to be a driver for a fellow named Jim Armbruster. Jim is now 60 years old and is walking his way from Aurora, IL to San Francisco, twenty miles a day. Jim is raising money for the MarkLund Organization, which is a not-for-profit network of services providing a full life experience for infants, children and adults with developmental disabilities and his blog can be found here http://www.californiaorbustformarklundskids.org/).
-Brent
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