Ward Mountain, Nevada

August 15, 2022

Upon leaving Lamoille Canyon and re-provisioning in Elko, we took the interstate from Elko to Wells where we found a dump station and filled up with gas. After paying over $5.50/gallon when we were in Idaho, we were (almost) thrilled to find Nevada gas prices to be in the $4.60-ish range. (Just our luck to be starting this lifestyle with gas prices at an all time high!) 

After Wells, we dropped out of "civilization" and headed south.  We quickly noticed that our route was not commonly trod. We passed through some scenic Nevada high desert mountain scenery, though.

We passed a couple of old motels that looked like they had been closed for some time.

We were surprised when we eventually encountered an actual rest area. We stopped and were the only ones there. One could almost hear the lonely clatter of a distant saloon door flapping in the breeze 😉. We found signs about the Pony Express and the Lincoln Highway, both which happened to go right through this area.  Rick took the opportunity to test out the new cell phone booster and found that it actually did do something --success!

It was a bit challenging to find a parking spot.

The clouds ahead looked foreboding for the final stretch.

We arrived at our campsite with dark clouds threatening overhead, but fortunately the rain waited until after we had unhooked and were settled in for the evening. The campground had been recently renovated, and our site was quiet and spacious.  The surrounded area was a forest of pinion and juniper trees that were relatively short as far as trees go, and there was no understory--just gravely "soil" covered with pine needles. It smelled really nice when we arrived.  As a bonus, we had good cell coverage, so this gave us a good chance to catch up on internet stuff.

Our site had good solar as the trees are not much higher than the camper, so when the sun was out in the afternoons we were putting in almost 80 amps into the batteries and were able to fully recharge each day even with the clouds rolling through in the afternoons, as they did pretty much every day. We felt almost like we had unlimited electricity here, and we even switched the water heater over to electric.  We  ran the microwave, toaster, coffee maker and sometimes the induction cooktop in the mornings, and we ran the induction cooktop, dishwasher, lights and TV in the evenings with no issues. Because we were running the electric water heater, the batteries would drop to 65% in the early morning, but we would typically be charged to 100% by 4 pm.

The weather forecast for the week called for scattered thunderstorms every day.  It turns out that this meant that it would be sunny until at least 11 AM then get a bit cloudy for the afternoon when there might or might not be rain and thunder.  This gave us a chance in the mornings to take bike rides around the area.

Our first ride was along a trail right off the camp ground. It was a bit sketchier than we would have liked, but it had nice views.  Overall it ended up being a 7.5 mile ride.

The trail portion near the campground was broad and easy, but it became narrower and rockier as we ascended.

We eventually ended up on a gravel road.

After we bailed out of the trail and went back to gravel roads we crossed the main road and started following county road "CR 44A" which seemed to just be a dirt track.

On our second ride, we decided that the trails were a bit too narrow and the drop-offs larger than we liked, so we stuck with riding random gravel roads for around 8.7 miles. 

We noticed a strange odor and then quickly found the source.

A subtle suggestion to keep out

One of several copper-producing open pit mines in the US Southwest. This one extracts copper-gold-molybdenum ore.

Storms always seemed to spawn over this mountain. Mount Doom perhaps?

On Saturday, we headed into the town of Ely. As is the case in most of Nevada, there were casinos everywhere. Ely also had a surprisingly high number of motels scattered about, perhaps due to its relatively close proximity to Great Basin National Park (about 65 miles away).

The Hotel Nevada used to be the tallest building in Nevada (at 7 stories).

We went to the Renaissance Village which is a grouping of small houses that are decorated with antique furnishings representative of the different cultures of immigrants that settled in Ely. The village is advertised to be open Fridays and Saturdays until 4pm. However, when we arrived there at about 3, there was a small wedding event going on, and unfortunately most of the buildings were closed. We were able to walk through two of them, though--the English house and the Spanish house. Houses that were not open included French, Italian, Greek, Irish, and several others . 

These were belongings of the first hairdresser in Ely.

A couple of evenings, the surrounding storm clouds cleared enough for some nice sunsets.

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