February 8, 2008

Route 50: The road has the reputation as being ‘the loneliest road in the us’ and based on my driving experience today, I can attest to that. When I left Fallon in the morning, I had no idea I wasn’t going to come across another stop sign/light until I got to Ely (pronounced ‘e-lee’) – 250 miles away! The next gas station was 110 miles! The final intermediate statistic – on route 40 from Fallon, NV to Hackney UT, there are three towns (Ely, Eureka, Austin) over the course of almost 400 miles.

Route 50 is actually the course of the old Pony Express in the early 1860’s. For some reason, it didn’t develop the status of route 66 in songs and movies. While Fallon pride itself on being lush and green, a few miles east of town, the road stops being lined by alfalfa fields and cantaloupe patches – because that is the extent of the irrigation from Truckee-Carson Irrigation District.

Instead, 50 is a pale black streak alternating through mountain passes of minor mountain ranges and then across desert valley floors through Nevada and Utah until it meets up with I-15 near central Utah. I did, however, come across Sand Mountain Recreational Area, a sand dune over 300 ft tall where there were half a dozen children and man-children motoring on 4 wheel atv’s, carving the dune.

My humorous moment of the day: My colleague Mike called me to give me an update on our project. He was driving West on Rte 50 in Fairfax, VA while I was driving East on the same road 2,000 miles away. When the farms dried up, so did my telephone service and radio reception.

Pics: a) The ‘loneliest telephone’, popular with people with stickers; b) Sand Hill (little dots are little dudes on big atv’s); c) las meninas at 75mph; d) tomb of an Russian undead in Ely; e) an archway to a farm, made completely of antlers



Today Miles: 584; Trip Miles: 6,486
Eureka County Highschool Mascot: Vandals
Size of the Ely-Shoshone Indian Reservation: 105 acres
Longest Coast (engine/mechanical brake assist): 7.9mi (Humboldt NF)
Longest Coast (unassisted): 7.4mi (Fishlake NF)
Where you can get a nifty horn fixture: http://www.horns-a-plenty.com/
KNPR (Nevada Public Radio) transmitters: 9
Soundtrack for zipping across the desert floor: ‘ready, steady, go’ by Paul Oakenfold
Soundtrack for white-knuckling through mountain hair-pins and switch-backs: absolute silence