Lovely high desert

Sunday, October 22, 2006
Elko, NV to Ely, NV
187.2 miles – blue skies and sunny!!!

Short day, so we took our time getting out of town. Another day of wide open spaces, miles and miles and miles of rolling hills in the high desert. Nothing to keep me company but the occasional cattle and the power lines. Very little traffic. So I just sang along with the radio and enjoyed the sunshine!


And speaking of radio, thank goodness for Sirius radio – without satellite radio, I’d have been singing to myself and the dogs probably would have rebelled!

So I’m now in Ely, still with no decent internet signal, so I can’t get my mail or log on to my blog. Oh well, Vegas is tomorrow. Hopefully that’s close enough to civilization, if you could call it that, to get a decent signal!

Yea - blue skies!

Friday, October 20, 2006
Jordan Valley, OR to Elko, NV
303.2 miles, clear sky and WINDY

Wow, what a treat to wake up to blue skies! There is no question that I need sunshine to keep a smile on my face. Don’t know how folks live happily in dreary rainy cloudy weather!

Headed out early for a long day on the road - it was OK though because the sun was shining!!

But I discovered that the wind was blowing too – huge winds, all day, mostly crosswinds, of course. My hands were so tired and sore by the end of the day from fighting the winds that I decided to take an extra day at my stop to rest up.

The drive itself was beautiful, in its own way. Many would have found it boring, but I do love the West – the high desert – miles and miles of rolling hills, as far as the eye can see. With almost nothing at all to clutter the landscape. There were cattle, but they have to work almost as hard as those in Southern Arizona to find something to eat or find shade or water. Wide open empty land. I did see the requisite long trains with their lonely whistles – 15 of them today.

If the wind blows like this all the time, I can understand why few people try to live in this land though. It was blowing so hard at one point that the fine sand was filling the air, almost blinding a driver. I was high enough that I had glimpses of the road off in the distance and just headed in that direction. It worked – I didn’t seem to lose contact with the road!

Finally made it into Elko – found an RV park on a hill overlooking town. The industrial end of town, mind you, but at least I had views of the mountains, snow capped already, in the distance. And it’s COLD, and I’m low on propane, and no one seems to sell it here. Gonna be a long night if I run out!

I find that my phone signal is so weak, it keeps losing calls, and my internet signal is so weak that I can’t hold a connection long enough to get my mail or enter my blog. It’s almost like being back in northern Canada, except it’s not as pretty, not as warm (!!!!!), not as clean, not as friendly, with gas prices almost as high as in Canada, and the office here and the bathrooms stink of cigarettes!

Gee, I get cranky when I’m cold. (I did find some propane at an equipment rental place Saturday morning, so at least I’m warm in the coach!)

In looking at my maps, I find that my route is determined by RV parks rather than towns. So I’m off to Ely, NV on Sunday morning. Wanted to make it further south, but there’s no place to park for the night until Las Vegas, and that’s just too bloody far.