Nevada - Day 11 - through a sandstorm to Tonopah

Tonopah RV Park, Tonopah

Monday, 11 April 2022

today's route

I made a stop back at the Raley's Grocery I went to my first day here, this time for milk and dog food (life's necessities), and off we went.  I'd seen the weather forecast for winds gusting up to 35 mph, so I knew we might have a bit of a rough ride but wasn't worried.

On the radio, I heard that chains were being required on I-80 - which we were leaving town on - in high altitudes, and I figured that must mean the section of I-80 I came to Nevada on, climbing through the Sierra Nevada mountains past Truckee.  I certainly didn't see anything hinting at snow or ice.

The first part of the road took me past the base of folded hills - green and brown and a rusty red.  The road paralleled a railroad track which paralleled the Truckee River, and I reckon this route went through the only place that could be traveled through without ice axes.

Part way along, I came to a sign that said, "Fog Prone Area Next 2 Miles."  And in fact I could see fog ahead, though it was never a problem with visibility.

At Fernley (established 1904), we left the interstate for US-50.  By then the winds were so strong flags were flying straight out.

I started seeing signs warning of open range areas, but these included a wild-looking bull instead of your basic cow.

I had to look really hard to find this picture of the kind of sign I saw, and I have no idea if it's copyrighted or not.  If it is, I hope whoever holds the copyright will pardon my using this picture.  But you can see this cow isn't your usual placid cow outline but a bull that looks like it's eaten loco weed.  I saw these signs all along the road today.  When I could see a sign at all.

Very gusty winds were blowing tumbleweeds around, and I started to see little dust-nados spinning up.

Fallon, not far down the road, had 9,327 residents as of 2020.  It calls itself The Oasis of Nevada, and I have absolutely no idea why - I mean, it sounds good but one glance will tell a newcomer not to buy it.  I saw a pair of llamas with a horse in a small field.  A pen of goats and a field of horses.  Farther on I saw a pen with several alpacas (the sign said so).

Fallon is home to Naval Air Station Fallon, which was established in 1942 to deal with a fear that the Japanese might try to invade the US's west coast.  It was heavily used during the Vietnam War and, since 1996, it's been the base for TOPGUN.

We stopped for a walk in a city park where there were a number of markers in someone's memory.  And I also saw a 4' tall stone marker that was engraved for suicide prevention with a ribbon and phone & text numbers and a message: "We can get you through this."  I've never seen anything like that.  An engraved stone marker for suicide prevention.

I passed a business with a sign that said, "We only set the bar low for limbo."

I saw a sign saying to expect strong winds on US-95 south of town (the road I planned to take) and that trucks and buses were prohibited.  I decided to keep going because first, where else would I go and second, the wind was high but didn't seem too unreasonable to me.

So back on the road, I saw a sign that said, "When lights flash, trucks prohibited 6 miles ahead."  It wasn't flashing.  But soon after that the blowing dirt got so thick it started blocking visibility at times.  

A sign told me if I turned right I'd come to the Top Gun Drag Strip.  I decided not to.

The winds got very strong and squirrely.  When I passed some semis that were parked on the right side of the road, they blocked the wind coming from that side and wind coming from the left side shoved me so hard I almost hit the last semi.  It was a little scary.

I passed a bicyclist and wondered how on earth he could even stay upright.

Off to the right I saw a yellow dust cloud had formed that was taller than the nearby mountains and so thick I couldn't see through it.  Luckily, it stayed off the road.

At Schurz, elev. 4,126', I saw a sign saying trucks were prohibited between there and Luning, a small town on the far side of Hawthorne down the road.  But a little farther, another sign said it was a "high wind area" and trucks, buses and campers should use caution.  Then still farther another sign said "when flashing - high winds - trucks prohibited."  It was flashing.  I saw trucks on the road anyway.

The road ran close to Walker Lake and I had a pretty good view of it - very pretty, very large, with snow-topped mountains that ran right down into the lake.  The wind was creating waves near the lakeshore.

Walker Lake
I couldn't find anywhere to stop that was closer to the mountains.
Odd shade of blue, isn't it?

As a side note, Walker Lake is a remnant of Lake Lahontan that, in prehistoric times, covered most of northern Nevada.  Pyramid Lake, north of Reno, that I want to visit before leaving the state, is an even larger remnant of Lake Lahotan.

I saw 2 signs that warned of a "major sheep crossing" and lights were flashing.  Farther along I saw a sign warning of falling rock for the next 4 miles, also with a flashing light.  That sign is probably because of the mountains running right down to the lake, as I said.

Not far from the Town of Walker Lake, a sign warned of "Dust Hazard" in the clearest area I'd seen for an hour.

Hawthorne is home to the Hawthorne Army Depot, which claims to be the world's largest ammunition depot.  I'd already passed dozens and dozens of warehouses, so maybe that's what I was seeing.  For some reason, Hawthorne is losing population at a serious rate.  In 2020 it had 2,686, which was almost 18% lower than in 2010.

We stopped for a break at a park in town and found a very nice-sized off-leash dog park there.  They had plenty of grass and trees, and my puppies did a lot of sniffing around.

In a corner of the dog park I found this sign . . .

. . . with a plaque that can't be read from the angle I had to take it.  But it was titled "Pillar of Light" and said:

Debuted in the later forties at the Hawthorne Club at the corner of 5th and E Street, the main intersection of all roads entering Hawthorne.  This was a sign of the times with neon lighting.  It brightened the intersection with its huge display.  The Hawthorne Club was coined as "The Bright Spot On The Corner" because of this magnificent sign.  In June of 1996 the Hawthorne Club was demolished.  The sign was saved, then modernized with donations.  In December of 1996 it was resurrected and now had become "The Pillar of Light" and again it is the "Bright Spot on the Corner."

The lore of local towns is one of the interesting things I've found throughout the country.

Beside the sign, I found 3 whirligigs that look like they were made from ammunition.

This park had memorial stones for local residents who died in the various US wars, beginning with WWI.  And it had a state historical marker.

All Nevada's historical markers
look like this - unique
so far among the states.
See below for plaque detail.

Interesting both for the local lore but also for the view
it gives about long-ago development of these areas.

Leaving town, we passed a USO and an Elks building, and a business that I think was named C-A-H-S, had a picture of a bee on its sign and the caption: Bee Cahs we care.  That turned out to be Consolidated Agencies of Human Services.

I passed a large area of what I think might be/have been fallout shelters.  Each of the dozen+ were large (about the size of a mobile home) areas of ground that was raised a foot or two and had chimneys in them.

I passed still another sign saying "High Winds - Trucks Buses Trailers RVs Not Advised."  But though the wind had been blowing when we were at the park, there were periods as we drove south when it almost seemed to stop, in comparison, though dust blowing around told me it was still windy.

I had wanted to visit the Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park during my month in NV, but I passed the turn for it where a sign said the park was closed.  Apparently they're doing extensive road repairs right now.  The park includes a nearly intact ghost town (Berlin) and the remains of about 40 ichthyosaurs, some of them among the largest ever found.  I'm sorry I have to miss it, though I wouldn't have been able to visit with today's weather.

The road took me through a wide flat valley with mountains on both sides and the road going up the middle.  The ground was covered mostly with scrub, but a large area on the left was bare and looked like sand.

The town of Mina, elev. 4,540', calls itself "ATV Friendly" and advertises "100s of trails."

I passed some buildings with a sign for Wild Cat Brothel.  It didn't look like it had been open for a while and I wondered if brothels were still legal in NV.  According to Wikipedia, they are in specific places; it's an interesting situation and here's the link.   https://en.wikipedia.org/Prostitution-in-NV  And I thought maybe that place looked like it had been closed for a while was maybe because of the pandemic.

Near Redlich Summit, elev. 5,053', the wind picked up a lot and the air was clouded with dirt.  I met a long string of oncoming traffic stuck behind a Class A RV obviously going extremely slowly with his emergency lights flashing.  That should have warned me of trouble ahead, but instead I thought his caution was due to the wind.

Much of today's drive was in a "Use Headlights Area" which I always do, but it turned out to be almost irrelevant in this next stretch of road.  The dust got so thick I couldn't see any traffic until I was almost on top of it.  With one truck I didn't even see its headlights until it was very close, but I did see sun reflected in it windshield.

Can you see the oncoming car?

I slowed down to about 30 mph, and a semi behind me got frustrated - and at the same time my frig started beeping to say it's not working - and at the same time same time my phone started talking to me, but there was so much noise from both outside and inside that I couldn't hear what it was saying.  I guessed it was something like an Amber Alert.  The odd thing about this batch of dust is that I'd seen it form off to the right as I drove south, and it moved across the road just as I got there too.  Visibility went down even farther.

But we moved past that dust cloud and I saw hills of multicolored rock on the left.  The speed limit was 70 mph but there were cattle guards in the road now and then (a function of the open range, I guess) and more dust clouds now and then and sudden winds now and then.  So except in the dust clouds, I've been staying at about 60 mph, and not many folks are passing me.  All of this is on US-95, a federal highway, not some little back country road.

I keep thinking of photos I've seen of the Dust Bowl, though the dust today was intermittent instead of constant.

Again I came to an area of no scenery at all - the view was entirely covered up by the dust cloud in all directions.  And the frig beeped again.  And my phone started talking to me again.  All at the same time like before.  I had to stop again to make my frig stop beeping, and this time I looked at my phone to see why it'd been talking to me - and it wasn't an Amber Alert but instead a National Weather Service alert warning me of zero visibility in my area, telling me to pull off the road and turn off the engine.

But where I'd pulled off was someone's driveway and I couldn't stay there.  And when I got back on the road I couldn't see well enough to find any place to pull off again.  And even if I could see, the shoulder was only about 15" wide and then gravel dropped off somewhat steeply, so there was no place for us to leave the road entirely.  And lest you think I'm exaggerating:

Actually, at several points the dust was much thicker than this
and I literally couldn't see more than 10' in front of me.
But this gives you an idea.

And then it got better, most of the dust got left behind us, and all that was left to deal with was the wind.

We got to tonight's campground by 2:15, 6 hours after we'd left Reno.  Oddly, this RV park didn't have much of a sign by the road.  I'd noticed on Google's street view that I'd need to look for a sign saying "American Quality Suites," and that's how I found it.  That sign also said, in very small letters at the side, "Tonopah RV Park," but they were nearly invisible from the road.  Those alleged quality suites were prefab duplexes, and there seemed to be a lot of takers for them; I wondered if there were a construction project in the area.  

When I checked in they apologized that I might not be able to pick up the wifi signal because of the wind, but I actually could pick it up, and it was far faster than any signal I'd had in ages.

I looked up the page for the National Weather Service, where they explained that "dust channel" they'd warned of was allowing "less than ¼ mile visibility with more than 60 mph gusts."  And they concluded with: "Dangerous life-threatening travel."  And in another place they said the "areas of blowing dust could be seen on satellite."  I knew it had been a rough drive.

Although they were predicting the dust storm would move on by 3:30, they added a "high wind warning" until 5:00 AM tomorrow.  They said to expect west winds 30 - 45 mph with gusts up to 70 mph.  That's a different message from the one I'd seen this morning saying it was the gusts that would get up to 35 mph.

With all that wind, I was afraid to use electrical appliances.  I now have that surge protector, but I still didn't want to plug in my laptop or put a movie into the DVD player.  And I used the microwave only once.  I figured this was a good night to read a book and go to bed early.  With the way the wind and sand were blowing against the RV, it reminded me of one of the scenes in The Martian, right after Matt Damon's been marooned on Mars in a major wind/sand storm.  I didn't mind so much that the RV was rocking, but I did mind that my paint job was getting sand-blasted.

I took the dogs out a couple of times, because that's where their bathroom is so there's no choice.  Lately Gracie's been balking about getting back into the RV and stands around staring at the first step as if it's too high or pretends to smell something interesting on it, and just generally being very frustrating for me.  

Well, she did it again this afternoon when the wind was blowing so hard I was afraid it might break the hinges, which were already off kilter anyway.  I was having to hold the door open with my body pushing against it because of the wind, and I just couldn't manage to be patient or coaxing as I usually am, and I couldn't even put her front paws on the lower step as I sometimes do in frustration, because it was taking all my strength to hold the door open.  So Gracie decided I was going to hurt her (like I've ever done that at all) and backed way away from the door while I was still using all my strength to hold it open.  

I don't know what I said that finally got her inside, but then I couldn't even get me inside while I was still holding the door.  I just slammed it shut and got in through the driver's door.  I figured out that the RV that had pulled in next to me had apparently created a wind tunnel which made the wind much stronger than it otherwise was.  But it was a very frustrating exercise on Gracie's part.