We are traveling across Route 50 which is known as the Loneliest Road in America. We say Maine is rural but you haven’t seen anything until you’ve traveled here. As a result of the ruralness we had a hard time finding a place to stay. Last night stayed “off the grid” in a place called Hidden Canyon Retreat. It had electricity and satellite TV (Randy got to watch the Bruins game) but no cell service and internet was spotty at best. It was pretty though. On our way there we decided to take a side trip to Price, UT to a Paleontology Museum. There are a lot of dinosaur quarries in Northwestern Colorado and Utah. It really was quite interesting and impressive for a very small community.
Today, we are in a little town of Eureka, NV, population 315. It is know as the Friendliest Town on the Loneliest Road. On our way here we went to Great Basin NP only to realize we had needed reservations to tour the caves there and the road to the highest summit was closed. :(. Went part way up the mountain and did have some beautiful views of the Great Basin. The Great Basin is what we have been traveling through and stretches from Utah to California. It has a beauty all of it’s own but very few people live here – hence, the loneliest road.
In the town of Ely we stopped at a train museum. It had been a very active town up until the 1980’s when the trains discontinued. The trains were known not only for opening the west but were a critical part of copper mining in this area. It was a fun museum and we were able to go into the train maintenance and repair shop where they refurbished the old train engines. Not something we would have planned to do but turned out to be very educational and fun.
We are running into challenges with road closures – especially in NP – due to snow. We were going to go to Lassen NP in California and Crater Lake NP in Oregon but they are both closed. Similar to today when the road to the summit of Wheeler Mountain was closed. Not sure if I mentioned this before but we feel like we are a couple of weeks too early. If we had waited though, we would have run into more crowds and that creates it’s own challenges.
On to Reno tomorrow. Scroll down for updated pictures.
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