Farewell to Reno

30 deg. F in the morning, but sunshine and clear roads! We were awake early and after packing we took the hotel shuttle to the Airport at 8:30 am. Picked up the rental car - a pretty small Ford Fiesta (bad choice in regard to luggage, but fine for this short time) - and started our drive to Vegas. Our first stop was in Fallon, before we hit Hwy. 95, at a hardware store.
We wanted to check out the garden department and were surprised to see little chickens of different breeds and turkeys being sold out of big buckets (pic). In the local Walmart we bought breakfast then and some other provisions for the drive before we headed out on Hwy. 95 (two lanes only!) into the wide open Great Basin with the snow-covered Sierra to the West, following the coast, and different Great Basin mountain ranges inbetween.

Everybody we talked to, had told us that the trip to Las Vegas will be horribly boring, but this is only true in regard to infrastracture, not to landscape. Not many villages or towns are on the route, sometimes it's 100 mi. or more between gas stations. Landscape appears partly as a "moonscape", not much more than brownish sagebrush - the official "state flower"! -, some Cholla cacti inbetween, and, later it slowly merges into Mojave desert landscape with Joshua trees. The Great Basin is not very "desert-like", rather high (up to 6.500 ft., 2.100 m) in elevation and it didn't become very warm in the course of our trip.

First, the road went straight through the Walker River Paiute Reservation, along Walker Lake - with beaches! The Great Basin collects all the water from rivers as the Truckee, Walker or Humboldt River. None of them enter the ocean.

Hawthorne U.S. Army Ammunition Plant, which we passed next, is the largest ammunition plant in the world. Not much signage there, same is true for the mines. Just open pits or remains of equipment is to be seen in the landscape. Not too many active gold and silver mines are to be found in this area anymore. Therefore, also the towns are pretty "ghosty", e.g. Tonopah (Station) - 6000 ft. in elevation - an old silver mining town with the historic Mizpah Hotel from 1905 (pic). This hotel is famous for Whyatt Earp, who supposedly was a barkeeper here, and for the "Lady in Red", a famous ghost. The "Mining Park & Museum" showed remains of old mines and equipment, but, even better was the second-hand bookstore in town (pic below), where we spent some time.

Passing Nellis Airforce Range, famous for Area 51, the most secret military test area in the world, Goldfield was the next old gold mining town with many empty buildings. Going over Gold Field Summit we had reached the Mojave Desert and on we drove to Beatty - the "Gateway to Death Valley", where we stayed in a modest Motel 6 after about 330 driven miles (530 km) today.
Motel 6 has changed quite a bit in the last years: rooms are much smaller, though a little nicer furnished no free WiFi, no hairdryer, no Kleenex, no breakfast (as offered in motels like Comfort or Days Inn nowadays), same shabby thin blankets. But, scenery in front of the hotel was almost "tropical"...

Having no other options, we ended up in a funny place this evening: Happy Burro Chili & Beer. Before we could turn back, we were smack in the middle of a smoke-filled, tiny, crowded bar. It was cramped with memorabilia and Johnny Cash was singing for the local "characters", teeth missing old miners, ranchers and cowboys of all sorts. Had a bowl of excellent chili and a burger and a beer and were the talk of the bar.