| Driving from Elko to Squaw Valley, 2/26 |
We woke up bright and early on Sunday, 2/26, to leave Elko and eventually get to Squaw Valley, CA. We drove 3 hours to the Belmont Mill and spent some time there exploring and taking pictures. We had some unexpected fun leaving the mill due to the condition of the dirt road. Then we drove another 6.5 hours from the mill to Squaw Valley, with a brief stop over to see some petroglyphs we happened upon along the way.
It was a very nice drive. I50 through Nevada is very remote and goes through some beautiful countryside. There are a surprising number of small mountain ranges in that part of the state. There was no one on the road either. We would go for an hour sometimes without seeing another car! All-in-all, this was the most beautiful scenery of the trip.
We saw a lot of trains along the road.
And we saw lots and lots of cattle. We even saw two real cowboys on horses rounding up some cows near the road, but we failed to get a picture of them.
We passed this tractor about a half mile after seeing a sign that indicated there could be tractors ahead :)
This was the first and only oil well we saw the entire drive.
The town of Eureka, where we stopped for gas and to inspect the car more closely after our little adventure on the dirt road.
The price of gas was pretty high, but when you're the only gas for 100 miles you can get away with it. We filled the tank.
Helen's self-portrait.
Burros! The only ones we saw.
Coming up to some salt flats. At first we thought it was snow :)
There was this really cool isolated sand dune right near the salt flats above. Apparently it's called Sand Mountain, and it's been there for a long time.
Driving through the salt flats. It really looks like snow in the picture.
For about half of the salt flat, along side the road, people had collected black rocks and spelled out various things: their names, their initials, Jane loves Bob, dirty words, etc. Unfortunately, this was the best shot I got :( We assume this is what passes for a good time in these parts :)
We wanted to go to Wadsworth and get Scott some weird souvenir, but we were too tired and it was too far out of our way by the time we got near there.