Nevada - Day 20 - Valley of Fire, to Alamo

Picketts RV Park, Alamo

Wednesday, 20 April 2022

today's route

Google said today's drive would take almost 3½ hours, which meant to me a likely trip of at least 6 hours, so we left before 8:00.

While I was waiting for the first traffic light to turn green, I saw a young woman cross the street in front of traffic that had a green light - including a large truck and a bus.  She seemed completely oblivious to them, despite being lucky not to be killed, and was singing or talking or something the whole time I saw her.  I'm guessing she was on drugs, but it wasn't a safe kind of drug, given her seriously dangerous behavior.

You can see from the map that the whole first part of the drive paralleled the shore of Lake Mead, much farther north than I was the other day.  You may also be able to see that the road parallels the route of the Old Spanish Trail.  I saw an exhibit about it that I thought was interesting.

This is what the whole sign looked like,
and below are enlarged versions of parts of it.

This is the land they were traveling through at this point.

The Old Spanish Trail was one of the most popular and one of the most dangerous of all the trade routes through the US.  This section, though not plagued so much by canyons and roaring river crossings, was - after all - desert country.

It was already so warm today that I was wearing a tank top and had the air conditioner on, and I heard on the radio that it was 35° in Elko, where I plan to be in a couple of days.  Whiplash.

The road took us through mountains of jagged rock in shades of brown and rusty red, with large dirt mounds on the ground in front.

We turned into the Valley of Fire State Park, which was Nevada's first (since the 1930s) and is its largest state park (more than 40,000 acres).  I guess the area was named for the amazing red rocks found throughout the area.  

They're made of red sandstone and were created from the sand dunes that existed here 150 million years ago when dinosaurs roamed the earth.  During the intervening years, those sand dunes solidified, I guess.  The area was once covered by sea, and petrified logs in the park attest to forests also being here.  Imagine what it must have looked like then - sea, forests, sand dunes.  Today we've got desert.  Life is truly amazing.

There was an unstaffed booth at the entrance and a sign saying non-NV residents needed to pay $15.  There was another sign saying the credit card machine was broken and I should stop at the visitor center.  There was no sign saying where the visitor center was, and there were no maps available.  There was, however, another sign saying they'd charge a $25 fine if I didn't pay.  And I thought, how would they know if they don't staff their entrances.

I'll just finish that story by saying that the visitor center turned out to be about halfway through the park, except there weren't any signs saying something like "visitor center in ¼ mile".  So I happened to be passing a bicyclist at exactly the point where I should have turned to go to the visitor center.  And there were zero places where I could turn around anywhere for miles from there.  

But I got lucky (?) and found the exit station was staffed.  Maybe they get more traffic coming into that entrance so they've put someone there, and didn't bother with the other one.  I mentioned the situation to the nice young ranger when I paid my entrance fee, and she said having more signs was a great idea but their budget couldn't afford them until the next fiscal year.  I tried.

Anyway, back to the park.  As we came into the area, we passed a sign saying "Watch for Wildlife."  Then, at the unstaffed entrance where I'd intended to let the dogs out for a walk, we were stymied by this guy.

Actually, I think it's a gal - a female Bighorn Sheep.

But she showed no signs of moving on, so I couldn't let my dogs out, and we went on down the road looking for a place to rest.  Remember, at Lake Mead I'd seen a male Bighorn Sheep immediately after I'd seen a warning sign to watch for them.  Maybe the sheep can read these signs?

By accident I noticed that a very large rock had a small parking area beside it and quickly turned in.  The rock was called Lone Rock, and that's just what it was.

This photo shows just part of one side; I've lived in apartments smaller than this rock.  It wasn't completely solid and included several holes.

I'd hoped this photo would show the critter that I thought was a chipmunk that ran into this hole when the dogs got out of the RV.  I've blown it up as far as I could and I think I can see it in there, but it's just not as clear as I'd hoped.  Anyway, the park said it was a White-tailed Antelope Ground Squirrel.

White-tailed Antelope Ground Squirrel
(but it looks like a chipmunk to me)

This deep whorl in Lone Rock was higher than my head.  It'd make a challenging jigsaw puzzle.

Farther along the park road we came to an area with what the park called Beehives.

The park's brochure (that I got from the ranger at the exit) said these are "examples of geologic cross-bedding" like that's supposed to mean something to me.  So I looked it up and learned that "geologic cross bedding" means the grooved lines you can see.  They're going in different directions and represent different layers of silt that were deposited at different times.  The different directions show the angle that the wind or water was moving at the time each layer of silt got deposited.

At that same area I saw a sign that answered a question I'd had.

 I'd been seeing a lot of things that I assume now were wind holes.

With so many holes, they look like organ pipes.

And now I know where they came from.

And one more photo. 

Red rocks, wind holes and cross bedding: it's the whole bag of tricks.

I'd seen several ranges that looked like regular mountains but take a look at the half-hidden red rocks in them.

But as the road climbed out of the valley (making it clear we were in a valley) the view suddenly became very bland.  Creamy tan hills.  Nothing wrong with them but certainly not as eye-catching as vibrant red rocks.

During the rest of the drive, I passed 2 areas where I'm sure I saw large bodies of water at a bit of a distance from the road.  But according to the AAA map, one of them was "Fike Dry Lake" and the other was "Desert Lake (Dry)."  I really wouldn't have thought it was the kind of weather that would show me that fake water you see on roadways on hot days.  And these weren't on a road but instead off into dry land.  Still, I have heard of mirages.  But 2 of them?

And along those lines, we were all ready for another break but hadn't seen a rest area for miles.  Finally, when I turned from I-15 onto US-93, I saw this strange little oasis with brilliant green fields for baseball and for a dog park.  Everything else around it was wide flat tan parking area across the street from a gas station.  No town anywhere around as far as I could tell.  So we stopped and I let the dogs into the small fenced dog park for a few minutes.  We had some lunch and then got back on the road.

We passed a VAST solar field, followed by the Chuck Lenzie Power Plant and the Silverhawk Power Plant.  So of course I figured those plants were using that solar power.  But they weren't.  I looked them both up and learned that they're both gas-fueled power plants.  Weird, isn't it?

On NPR I heard an interview with Glenn Boozan who wrote, There Are Moms Way Worse Than You.  This woman is hilarious and it sounds like the book is a must-have for every parent who worries they aren't doing a good enough job.  Or as she told her sister, pregnant with her 2nd child and worried that she wasn't doing right by her first, "Hamster moms eat their babies."  Here's a link to the interview and a sample of the book.   https://knpr.org/there-are-moms-way-worse-than-you

I saw a Montana license plate that said: LIV2FSH.  No translation needed here.

The map said the whole area we passed on our left was the Desert National Wildlife Refuge.  What I saw was the broad valley we drove through, sandwiched between mountain ranges, and covered with Joshua trees and other yuccas and desert plants.

We crossed into Lincoln County and I mention it only because I saw an electronic sign touting Lincoln County, including moving pictures, and it was out in the middle of absolutely nothing.  I don't even know where the electricity came from.

Nevada has a town called Elgin (as some other states do), and a sign told me I could go there if I drove for 38 miles down a dirt road on the right.

I passed 3 separated signs warning of a "Major Deer Crossing."  One of them had flashing lights.  I saw no deer at all.  Clearly, they can't read highway signs as well as Bighorn Sheep can.

Farther along I saw a couple of lakes that were actual lakes - according to both AAA and highway signs.  Upper and Lower Pahranagat Valley Lakes.  They were in the Pahranagat Valley, which was in the Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge near the Pahranagat Range.  I have no idea where such an unusual name came from.

As we neared Alamo, we started to see a whole lot of green fields - both grass for cows and horses and also crops.  Given the relentless surrounding desert, I'm guessing irrigation is big around here.

Alamo, elevation 3,450', and a 2020 population of 1,128, says it's named for the abundant poplars in the area.  But I learned in New Mexico that "alamo" is the Spanish word for cottonwood.  And it was cottonwood that I saw a whole lot of here.  

At tonight's campground it was inches deep in the cotton from the trees that shaded the campsites.  I'd've thought Nevada was a state that could translate Spanish as well as those New Mexicans, so I looked up the words and found that they're both species in the genus Populus.  And I sure could've been wrong but I can't imagine I was wading through cotton from anything but a cottonwood tree.  It got into everything, including getting stuck in the pads of the dogs' feet when we went out for walks.  I had to pick it out tuft by tuft.

Nevada - Days 13 - 14, 16 - 17, 19 - in the campground

Las Vegas KOA at Sam's Town, Las Vegas

Wednesday, 13 through Thursday, 14 and 

Saturday, 16 through Sunday, 17 and 

Tuesday, 19 April, 2022

While I was staying here, I made 2 trips to sightsee, one into Las Vegas and the other over to Lake Mead.  I'd intended to stay only a few nights, but my campsite was convenient and fairly comfortable and I needed to try to catch up, so I extended for a week here.

The campground intended my site to be a pull-in, meaning I'd pull straight in, leaving my back end to face the campground, and then I'd have to back up into the road to leave.  I'm not comfortable with either of those ideas, so I backed into the site (much safer because no traffic is coming at me from a blind spot) and I was close enough to the utilities that I could plug in the power and water just by extending the hoses to their full length.  Much more comfortable for me.

The dogs (Lily's just fine)

The campground had hundreds of campsites and 2 separate dog parks; we spent time in both of them.  The first day, I took my kids to one where there was already a dog playing, and the other dog and its owner could both see they'd all be fine together (all tails wagging), and they were just fine.  But for some reason, the other owner got nervous and took her dog off early.  Too bad for them all.  

On other days we were joined by other dogs, and I was really pleased to see that mine behaved well.  Dexter has really grown up on this trip.  I've learned that if everybody's tail is wagging when they're on opposite sides of the fence, they'll be all right on the same side, and so far, that's worked.

Mostly, the dogs spent a little time sniffing at all the smells since their last visit, and then they spent their time lying in the sun (Dexter) and shade (Gracie).  I think they just like being out in the fresh air - and who could blame them.  The RV must get really small to them after a while.

Gracie's starting to have balance problems again.  She managed to go for - what was it? - most or all of our time in California without any of the falling over that she'd been doing so much of in Arizona.  I was starting to hope maybe she really did just have inner ear problems that lasted longer than vets said they should last.  But when she started falling over again while we were out for walks - just stopping on the walk and suddenly keeling over on her side with no warning - I figured we'd just had a lucky break for a while, and now that brain tumor was acting up again.  Now she's having several incidents per day.  Worrying.

Internet

The campground's wifi was very very slow, and my own hotspot wasn't much faster.  It took me 3½ hours (all one morning) to figure out reservations for 3 different towns, when it should have taken just a fraction of that.  It took me half an hour just to download 2 photos onto my blog.  Very discouraging and meant I couldn't get done anywhere near as much as I'd hoped.  I only managed to finish 8 blog posts while I was here, and it should have been a lot more.

Those 8 posts included California, which I finally finished - on the 16th.  That's just nuts - to spend half of my time in Nevada trying to deal with California.  It was odd, but it had taken so long that I was almost too tired of it to be relieved.

I finally managed to get enough internet connection to work out where I'd be going for the rest of this month, and to make reservations along the way, and to plan driving routes to get there.  I decided to do the whole next 2 weeks because I'd had so much trouble with wifi that I figured I'd better do it all now, while I could, albeit extremely slowly.

Weather

I'm back in a desert climate again, so my skin is very dry and the static electricity is fierce.  I can make sparks easily, I'm afraid to pat the cat because I've hurt her with the electricity, and I can't comb my hair because it takes weird positions like that Wooly Willy children's toy, you know with the iron filings that move with a magnet.

On the other hand, I noticed one day that I haven't used my inhaler since I left Arizona.  I don't think I used it once in California, and I haven't needed it here.  I'd thought it was the dry climate that made me need it, but it sure is dry here and I haven't needed it.  Though that may change after a month here, but my next state is Oregon, which has a climate more like California's than like Nevada's.

I just realized we haven't had any thunder since South Dakota, which was August of last year.  It's been a long time.  Don't they have thunder in the American West?  Or has this just not been the right time of year?

A couple of evenings here, there were high wind warnings, and I watched people put away their chairs and food tents.  The wind came up enough to rock the RV around.  At least this time it wasn't accompanied by a sandstorm.  Wind doesn't scare me as much as it used to.  It makes me more careful when I drive, but except for mountain passes, I'm not afraid it'll tump us over.

Campground life

Campground life can be a little strange.  One morning I saw a woman outside her RV doing jumping jacks.  Real jumping jacks.  I haven't seen anyone do those since 9th grade PE.

One night we had a rented RV pull in next to us with a family from Brazil.  I think only 1 of them spoke English - she said she'd been in the US before but none of her family had.  I think that was their 1st night with the rental and they seemed to be having trouble getting used to it.  They left the next morning, though, and I hope they had a good trip.

This campground had more rental RVs than I've ever seen in one campground before.  KOA nationwide offers a temporary membership to people who rent RVs from Cruise America.  I know, because that's the company I rented from in 2008 when I moved from Washington to Texas with 2 dogs and 2 cats (not the same ones I have now).  So I often see one or two in any given KOA I'm staying in.  But here there've been as many as a dozen or maybe more each night, plus rentals from other companies.  I finally decided there must be a dealer here in town, and folks are flying in here, renting an RV, staying a night at this closest KOA, and then heading out for their trip.

I saw a long-term stay that had a sign on their cabin door that said "Please Use Doorbell." And sure enough, below the sign was a small button installed in the door that I guess made a sound inside.  Maybe they have dogs that bark when someone knocks but not when the bell rings?  Or maybe it's an IQ test for visitors.

One RV had a sign on the back that said Mobile Bat Cave; the jeep that was traveling with it had a license plate that said Bat Jeep.  They were from Idaho.

Having managed to find slow cooker liners, I cooked a chicken one afternoon, so I'll have easy meals for a week or more.

On my last night, I opened the champagne I'd bought, and enjoyed it with some French bread and parmesan-reggiano and an avocado and some small tomatoes.  

I'd tried several grocery stores to find smoked salmon, but all I could find was smoked farmed Atlantic salmon, which is nuts.  There're plenty of delicious products that use wild-caught Pacific salmon, and Nevada is a lot closer to the Pacific than the Atlantic.  And I found several products that were from Scotland (also farmed).  Farmed salmon is a far inferior product than wild-caught salmon.  I know.  I spent a couple of years helping prevent Alaska state legislators from legalizing a farmed salmon industry there, and I had to learn all about what I was taking on in order to defeat it.  There's simply no comparison between the 2 for taste and wholesomeness.  And it turns out there's not much difference in the price, which makes the choice of farmed salmon galling.  Anyway, I bought sardines instead, which are also light years away from what I wanted, but they were wild-caught sardines - not that that turned them into salmon.

I was doing all this to celebrate finally being done with California (it was a long slog in some ways) and finally starting to post about the state I was actually in.  I figured Love Actually was the most champagne-type movie I had, so I watched that.  Sure it's about Christmas, but it's really happy.

One day I had a company come by and give my poor little RV its first bath in ages.  I've been wanting to get it washed for a long time.  But I've been moving around a lot for the past month or more, plus a lot of campgrounds say absolutely no RV washing, plus there don't seem to be that many mobile RV washes.  But one advertised in this campground's handout, and they charged me a lot of money - $111, weird amount - but I finally managed to get it done.  And I hoped to get off some of that sand that got blasted into my poor little thing at Tonopah.  It was amazing to see that parts of my RV were actually white, instead of the vaguely beige color they'd become.

A woman I met in the dog park told me her kids live near Lake Tahoe and said it had snowed there 2 days ago.  Here the grackles and doves were courting and the oleanders were in full bloom - Spring was here.  We had several days in the upper 80s and one or 2 days above 90°, so most of our stay was very pleasant.  I could see that when I started back north on the 20th, I'd be finding much colder weather, so I enjoyed it while I had it.

Nevada - Day 18 - Lake Mead

Las Vegas KOA at Sam's Town, Las Vegas
Monday, 18 April 2022

today's route

One of the places I wanted to visit during my month in Nevada was Hoover Dam, once the world's tallest dam (others have since beaten it out) and now not holding back much water because of drought and climate change.  But when I was planning this day trip, I found there were several reasons why I wouldn't be able to see it.

The dam, and Lake Mead which it created, straddle the border between AZ and NV.  The visitor center for the Hoover Dam is on the NV side, but there's not a lot of parking area, so they funnel all oversize vehicles (like mine) to the parking area in AZ.  That means crossing a bridge.  A very high bridge.  It's 890' above the Colorado River and 1,700' away from the dam.  I'm sure I could get a wonderful view of the dam by crossing the bridge, but the way I am with bridges, I'd be having to focus all my attention on getting across alive and sane.  Here's an online photo of it.

Hoover Dam and
Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge

I just couldn't bring myself to try to cross that bridge, and that meant I also gave up any chance of seeing the dam.  

I did make three attempts, though.  First, I tried to get to the visitor center anyway, in hopes I could figure out a way to squeeze my little RV into a parking space.  But the road was blocked by inspection officers.  I think they might have been Homeland Security.  Anyway, they wanted to inspect my RV, and wanted me to open up all those outside doors (they're all locked and I'd have to remember where I carefully stored those keys).  Instead of doing that, I just asked about parking my RV at the visitor center.  The nice guard tried to convince me that crossing that bridge was no big deal and perfectly safe and had trouble understanding that I just don't do well with either heights or bridges.

I turned back after that discussion and headed toward a Lake Mead viewing area.  But instead of going to the viewing area, I tried to turn onto a side road that Google maps showed might go to a place where I could see the dam without going to the visitor center.  That road turned out to be gated with a chain sealing it.

So then I went on to the Lake Mead viewing area, hoping I could see the dam from there, but I couldn't.  I had to give up an in-person view of the dam, but I did see Lake Mead, though.  What's left of it.  And I learned about all these landmarks.

First, Hoover Dam.  It was built over a 5-year period during the Depression by thousands of workers, more than a hundred of whom died during construction.  Congress named it Hoover Dam in honor of the previous president, but FDR's administration named it Boulder Dam.  Congress changed it back again in 1947, after FDR died.

Here's a display about the dam at the Lake Mead viewpoint.

It's a concrete arch-gravity dam, the largest concrete dam ever built at the time, and used unproven construction techniques which seem to have worked out just fine.  It used enough concrete to pave a 16'-wide road from New York to San Francisco.  It created Lake Mead, the largest reservoir by volume (when full) in the US.  Before the new bridge was built, all traffic was routed directly across the dam as part of US-93.  But that road has hairpin turns, so truck traffic couldn't safely negotiate it.  And the dam itself had weight restrictions, so even a bus couldn't travel across if fully loaded with passengers and luggage.  And then 9/11 happened, and security clamped down tight on such an important piece of infrastructure.

Next, the Hoover Dam Bypass, its original name, or as it's now known, the Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge.  O'Callaghan was a governor of Nevada and the editor of the Las Vegas Sun.  Tillman is well-known (even I've heard of him) as a football player for the Arizona Cardinals, who quit to join the Army and was killed in Afghanistan in 2004.  

That arch in the bridge that you see in the photo is a 1,060', twin-rib concrete arch and the largest of its kind in North America.  The bridge is 1,900' long.  And I still think I made the sensible choice, given my phobias.

Looking at Lake Mead today is enough to make the biggest skeptic wonder if maybe climate change might not be real.  It's remarkable to me that the country's largest reservoir could be held back by that nicely arched batch of concrete.  But it doesn't look like it's the largest reservoir any more.  Here's what it looked like maybe 20 years ago.

from a slightly weathered display at the viewpoint

And these are photos I took April 18th.

All of that pale rock should be covered with water.

Compare to the first photo - only the dark tops
of those islands used to be visible.

The lake is 110' below its optimal level, and that's 50' below its maximum level.  Most of the drop has come in the last 15 years.  This lake is created by the Colorado River, which starts in Colorado's Rocky Mountains and fed primarily by streams that get much of their water from rain and snowmelt.  Neither of which the West has had much of recently.

But here's information from its earlier incarnation:

There were some interesting exhibits at the Lake Mead visitor center, one of which mentioned that this area is part of the Mojave Desert.  And the Mojave sits in between the Sonoran and the Great Basin Deserts.

That little hook below Lake Mead is where the Colorado River makes a turn,
which I think was caused by tectonic plate activity that changed the river bed.

Those deserts are created, at least to some extent, by the rain shadow they sit in.  The text was too fuzzy to show here, but it's the clearest explanation of "rain shadow" I've seen, so here's what it said: 

 Storms off the Pacific ocean are forced to rise when crossing the Sierra Nevada mountains.  As a storm rises, it cools and contracts like a sponge being squeezed, releasing either snow or rain.  When the storm reaches the other side of the mountains, little moisture remains, creating a "rain shadow" over the desert below.

So that's what all those mountains were doing that I saw in California.

Two more notes from the visitor center.  Look at this!

Remember the non-cactus called ocotillo I saw
in Arizona?  Those bundles of dried-up sticks?
Remember that I was finally able to see one with
leaves on it but it was the wrong season to see
it flowering?

I couldn't believe my eyes when the dogs and I
happened upon several of these planted at the visitor 
center.  In full bloom!

Pretty neat, huh?

And there were other real cactus just starting to bloom.

Look at all the little buds on this one.
It's about to be stunning.

On the way to and from the lake, I came across several places of note.

Boulder City sits very near Lake Mead, which makes sense when you learn that it was a planned community - the first in southern Nevada - built for workers on the Hoover Dam.  It was known as The City That Hoover Built.  It didn't allow alcohol or gambling while the dam was being built (enough workers died sober, I guess, so they didn't want to make things worse).  It's still Nevada's only incorporated city that doesn't allow gaming.

We stopped to walk in their Bicentennial Park, a nice large area of well-kept grass and trees and bushes.

Soon after I'd left town, I passed a warning sign showing a Bighorn Sheep, saying watch for the next 6 miles.  Farther on I saw another sign with no words, just the picture of a sheep, and almost as soon as I'd passed it, a Bighorn Sheep jumped uphill from right beside the road.  Pretty neat.

Coming into Las Vegas, I finally passed the first solar field I've seen in this sunshine-y state.  And though it may be the only one they've got, it was enormous.  The very biggest I've seen.  It went on for maybe miles on both sides of the interstate.

I saw 2 billboards that surprised me.  One told me that Blue Bell Ice Cream is now in local stores.  They're a long way from Brenham, TX.  The other urged me to buy "Fit Friendly" vodka.  I didn't see the brand name but online have learned that Blue Ice Vodka offers the "lowest calorie 80-proof" vodka "in the United States' marketplace."  The Blue Ice version is 52 calories per ounce, and they've got a couple other types that aren't much higher in calories.  Maybe it's for people who still like the Drinking Man's Diet.

I passed a sign saying, "Turns out, you can buy your way into Paradise."  Paradise abuts Las Vegas and is an unincorporated census-designated place.  With 235,087 residents in 2020, it's the largest census-designated place in the US.  (I think those c-dp's are places that get counted officially but aren't incorporated towns.)  Paradise is also one of the hottest places in Nevada (which is saying something), with 131 days a year when the temperature is above 90°.  It got its name more than 100 years ago due to its high water table (a plus in the middle of a desert).  I don't know if it still has that high water table, given all the entities pumping water out of the ground to satisfy huge numbers of people who insist on living in a desert.

On the way to the recycling place one more time, I passed the National Atomic Testing Museum.  It's an affiliate of the Smithsonian and chronicles the history of nuclear testing in NV.  If I were going to be here longer, I'd want to visit.

Nevada - Day 15 - errands and the Las Vegas Strip

Las Vegas KOA at Sam's Town, Las Vegas

Friday, 15 April 2022

today's route

closer view of the Strip

I plotted a driving route that would take me to a park (for the dogs), several chores, and down all of Las Vegas Blvd.  I was able to take no photos of my own but have found a few online to give a feel for what I saw.

I noticed that some of the metro buses were double-deckers.  Not painted bright red as in London, but instead muted browns and greens.  And I couldn't help but think of Joan Mitchell's song Twisted.

I passed a place called Jake's Bar with a sign: "The Time Travel Seminar Will Be Held 2 Weeks Ago."

Our first stop was the Jaycee Park, which was very large and very nice, with lots of grass and trees, a separate dog park (being used, so I kept my dogs away from it), playground equipment, picnic tables and shelters, and dozens of homeless folks.  Really, dozens.  I'm not sure I've ever seen such a large concentration of them and wondered if the city was allowing them to camp here - though I didn't see encampments, just people hanging out.

What was maybe a result of that was a lot of chicken bones lying around on the grass, which both my dogs grabbed several of, which upset me a lot because those bones splinter something awful and all I need is an emergency vet bill and a very sick puppy dog.  So instead of having a nice walk through a nice park, I felt like one more thing had gone wrong (added to nearly dangerous static electricity, and extremely slow internet connectivity that makes it hard to get anything done).  We left the park much earlier than I'd planned because we couldn't seem to walk anywhere that didn't have discarded food lying around.

We stopped at a post office and then went on to a shopping center where there was both a laundromat and a grocery store.

The laundromat was a little weird and I was really glad of the very helpful staff member who showed me the system there.  The machines used cards, which I had to purchase for a specific amount of money (trying to figure out in advance how many minutes I'd need in the dryers).  Once I'd inserted money in the card-buying machine, I discovered there was a $1 fee to buy it (what a rip-off).  But the nice woman told me to make a fake account using any name I chose plus a local address that she made up for me - and presto, I got credit for the $1 it had taken off my card.  Absolutely nothing on the machine tells any of this - the $1 fee or how to waive it (serious rip-off).  

Then at the washers, I discovered that though they said they charged $4, that was only if I used cold water.  When I said I wanted warm water, it said it would charge an extra 25¢.  I'd bought the card assuming a $4 washer, so I backed off the warm water.  Again, no sign on the machines or anywhere else that warned me of this (more attempt at rip-off).  

A pair of women doing their laundry not far from me talked nonstop while I was there.  Or, one of the women did.  Giving excruciating details about how her son was/wasn't adjusting to some sort of supervised living arrangement he was in and what she told the supervisors to do about his maladjustment and what she told her son about it and how he'd misunderstood her good intentions and how she'd gotten his father to say the same things but in a different way so the son understood.  I put my clothes in a dryer and left.  

When I came back to fold them, the woman had moved on to how she had insecurities that resulted in not trusting her husband to not have affairs and how he'd cried when she told him this and said he'd never cheat but how she was sure some of the "street ladies" he worked around were after him so she didn't trust him anyway.  She sounded to me like she was about to get herself a self-fulfilling prophecy if she wasn't careful.  

Oddly, she was in a wheelchair and the 2nd woman had volunteered to bring her to do her laundry and got stuck with listening to this monologue, and I think if I were stuck in a wheelchair and dependent on my husband's good nature and commitment, I'd treat him a little better than she appeared to (and maybe get some counseling to deal with those self-admitted insecurities) - and almost interrupted to say so - but managed to make it out of there with my clean clothes and my mouth shut.

After this I went next door to the Albertson's (that did have liners for slow cookers - so there, Reno), and then moved to the back of the parking lot to walk the dogs and have lunch.

We headed down Fremont St. and I unwittingly came across a tourist attraction, sort of.  

Fremont East District arch

Online I learned that this section of town is a more down-scale version of the entertainment offered on the Las Vegas Strip - an area where blue jeans are appropriate dress.  I'm guessing it's more popular with locals than with tourists, though.  The tourists come for glitz.

Several blocks from this arch I came to Las Vegas Blvd., where I encountered major road construction work.  The city says it's doing sewer and water improvements, and it's torn up almost the entire length of this street.  I drove past 6 or 7 miles of it.  This left me to try to gawk at sights along the way while dodging orange cones and marked-off areas and pedestrians.  I still managed to get some gawking done.

For the length of the street, I could see what was labeled Strat Tower.

Strat Tower

This turned out to be the Stratosphere Hotel and Casino, and as you can see from this online photo, it dominates the skyline.  The Top of the World restaurant is in that large circular area near the top, more than 800' up.

I passed familiar hotel/casino names: Sahara, Circus Circus, Treasure Island, Venetian, Mirage, Harrah's.  All along the way were rows and rows of shops of all kinds, ranging from Walgreens and Ross Dress for Less to Louis Vuitton.

Caesar's Palace seemed to take up blocks and blocks of buildings, with many pseudo-Roman statues.  There was an incredibly elaborate fountain, which I had a hard time finding a daytime photo of online.  These don't really do justice to what I saw.

This fountain is what I saw, but this photo doesn't begin
to show the elaborate nature of those figures -
it focuses more on the building than the fountain.

I don't think I saw this batch of statues, and it's a nighttime
photo, but I'm including it because it shows more clearly
how elaborate this place was.

By the time I'd gotten as far as Caesar's, my jaw was hanging open due to the extraordinary amount of excess I was seeing.  The Las Vegas Strip is one long illustration of elaborate hype and total lack of restraint and total presence of excess and over-the-top display of glitz.  

Next to Caesar's Palace is the Bellagio, where I had to miss the fountain display.  On weekdays, which this was, they operate on the half-hour from 3:00 to 8:00, and then on the quarter-hour until midnight.  I was there too early in the day to enjoy them.  

And what I also learned is that I would likely not have had a chance to enjoy them anyway: there was no street parking at all and I didn't have any illusions about my ability to park somewhere on the grounds of any of these hotel/casinos.  

Plus, I was absolutely astounded by the hordes of people walking from one place to another.  The Strip is several miles long, and each of these places occupies a fair amount of street frontage, so people were having to walk long distances (many with kids) to get from one place to another.  This may be the only place in the US where ordinarily nonathletic people get so much exercise.

Farther along I passed Bally's, Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville, the Flamingo, Mandalay Bay, MGM Grand, New York New York, Tropicana, a Travelodge and the Luxor.

I saw these things.  They're really there.

The Luxor has an enormous sign saying it hosts America's Got Talent.

At the far end of town, I came to a shopping center with a Total Wine (that had actual champagne, as well as a reasonable wine selection), among many other shops.  This shopping center was incredibly crowded and I had a rough time finding a parking space I could fit in.  In fact, the one I finally grabbed was too short for me, but I was tired of looking for something that didn't exist (a big-enough space) and I just did my shopping as fast as I could.

By then the dogs were seriously ready to get out, and I accidentally found a back parking lot that didn't have much for the dogs to sniff on but at least it was subject to less traffic, though still plenty of it.

On the way back north, we passed what used to be called McCarran Field but is now the Harry Reid International Airport.  (I'd forgotten he was/is from Nevada.)  I saw many private jets - some of them quite large - as I passed.

Then the famous sign:

The city has bowed to reality and added a small parking area in the median on the southbound side of the road.  Both times when I went by, the area around this sign was packed with people taking photos.  (You can't read this sign going southbound, only going north, which is why I drove back north along this road.)  I saw an Elvis impersonator there.  And I saw an entire Little League team taking their turn to stand under the sign while their picture was taken.

I passed Little Church of the West Wedding Chapel.  And I saw a bumper sticker on the pickup in front of me that said, "We Were Married in the Little White Wedding Chapel, Las Vegas NV."  In February of this year, Clark County issued its 5,000,000th marriage license and claims to be the world's #1 destination wedding spot.

I turned off Las Vegas Blvd. on Tropicana Ave, and then drove north alongside the University of Nevada Las Vegas.  Established in 1957, it bills itself primarily as a research school, and I did pass the Desert Research Institute near the campus.  The National Atomic Testing Museum is also nearby.  When I turned there, I found one of the city's recycling drop-off stations, and it accepted every bit of my recycling.  Amazing how fast that stuff builds up.

My overall impression of Las Vegas is a big, glitzy desert town.  But I had a smile on my face from being astounded at the incredible display of excess - and fun.

Nevada - Day 12 - Tonopah to Las Vegas

Las Vegas KOA at Sam's Town, Las Vegas

Tuesday, 12 April 2022

I don't think I adequately described how difficult yesterday's drive through the sand and wind was for me.  It left me feeling stunned, my mouth hanging open with surprise at first.  The whole situation felt a little claustrophobic, being surrounded by the weather so completely I couldn't see out.  It was very near a traumatic event and I felt residual effects for days.  Those photos I posted show much more visibility than I experienced at times.  I felt like I had to power through the storm because I couldn't see any reasonable alternative.  And because I had to keep my wits about me, I couldn't take time to acknowledge the fear I felt - fear because it would be so easy for something to go really wrong, and I had my critters to care for.  And since I didn't allow myself to feel all that at the time, I couldn't really enjoy the sense of relief when it was over.  So today, I was still processing belatedly.

This morning the wind was still 25 mph (per the National Weather Service) and the temperature at 5:40 AM was 22°.  With all that, the official wind chill was 6°.  And Dexter and I felt every bit of it when we went out for our 2 early morning walks.  Gracie loved it, with that double coat of hers.

today's route

Last night's campground was on the edge of town, so this morning I drove through Tonopah (pop. 2,474 in 2020) to see what kind of place it was.  (Remember, it's pronounced TONE-oh-pah.)  It looks like what I think it is: a small old mining town.  It boasts a stargazing park and several museums.  I passed the "World Famous Clown Motel," according to their sign.  Online they claim to be "America's Scariest Motel" because of their location near an old cemetery, their clown theme (I always thought clowns looked sad, not scary or funny), and supposedly being a hotspot for paranormal activity.  Online comments are mixed - some love it and some say it's wildly overpriced for what it offers.

Immediately after leaving town I came to Tonopah Summit, elev. 6,256', and found very high winds again.  You can see on the map that the road goes up and down through a broad flat valley, covered with scrub, and surrounded by mountains.

Off to the south out of my sight was Boundary Peak, elev. 13,147', the tallest point in Nevada, and appropriately sitting on the border with California.  In fact, NV is considered the 2nd most mountainous state after only Alaska.  That seems odd to me - I mean, I've been in Colorado, for instance - so I looked it up and, depending on your criteria, it's true.  Look at this:

   - the state with the highest mean elevation is Colorado

   - the state with the most geologically distinct mountain ranges is Nevada - more than 300 of them

   - the state with the largest percentage of land area used by mountains is either West Virginia or Hawaii

   - the state with 17 of the 20 highest mountains is Alaska

   - but if you count sea mounts as mountains, 100% of Hawaii qualifies - in fact, Hawaii's highest spot, Mauna Kea, is 13,800' above sea level (higher than Nevada's high spot), but its actual base is far below the sea so measured from its base, it's over 33,000' which beats out even Mount Everest

In all those categories, California comes in no better than 2nd, so I guess it only seemed like there were a lot of mountains to me.  And though Nevada has a lot of flat land and deserts, I have been going through a lot of mountain passes just in the few days I've been driving around here.

I heard a rabbi being interviewed on the radio before he left to help deliver humanitarian aid in Ukraine.  He said he kept hearing people asking "where is God to help us?" and he thought instead people should be asking "where is man to help himself?"  He said people should raise their voices when it seems God is silent, that people can effect tremendous change if they'd only bother to try.  Interesting man.  I hope he's able to stay safe.

As I went farther south, I started to see Joshua trees - lots of them.  It was the first cactus I've seen on this drive, which seems odd since this is desert country.  According to the map, it's the Cactus Mountains that I'm seeing off to the left, and they include Cactus Peak, elev. 7,395', so I guess this is the right spot for cactus.

I heard on the radio that Nevada has the largest average class size in the US, which seemed like another odd factoid so I looked it up and it's true.  So despite a 27-year-old state law that mandates reduced class sizes, recent budget deficits have resulted in class sizes that fluctuate a great deal but have produced at least some high school classes with 50 kids.  I've taught junior high, and my largest class was 36 and it was really tough trying to teach with that many kids to take care of.  I can't even imagine 50.

I also heard on the radio that rents in Las Vegas had increased as much as 30% in the last few months.  But its population has grown by almost 16% between the 2010 and 2020 censuses (censi?), a fact that may explain both its class size problem and its rent level.

I came to the tiny town of Goldfield, elev. 5,690', pop. 298 in 2020, and despite its lack of size it's the county seat.

Esmeralda County Courthouse
built 1907

A good part of the town is a National Historic District, including that courthouse, which is still being used.  I passed the Goldfield Radio Museum, but all I could find online about it was so garbled I don't know what it is or even if it's open.

Goldfield Summit, elev. 6,097', is 400' higher than the town, so I did a lot of climbing to get there, and then a long hill sloped down so steeply my ears popped.

Still lots of Joshua trees.  In fact, a big forest of them.  It seemed like there were as many as in the national parks to the southwest of here.

I passed a group of mountains with sharp peaks, covered halfway down with material that looked soft and smooth, and I figured I was seeing erosion of the peaks and the covering dirt had slid down the mountainsides.

See that soft-looking stuff at the base?  I thought it was a cloud or something at first,
but I'm pretty sure it's eroded dirt.

I took this photo while I was driving down the road, because the only place to stop was in the actual lane of travel and I didn't want to take that chance.  But this is what I saw.  Isn't the contrast odd between the sharp peaks and the soft base?

I noticed the oncoming traffic seemed to be coming in clumps, and I couldn't see any obvious reason - no slow vehicle in front, for instance.  But farther along I found out why: road construction had created a 1-lane road and a pilot car had to guide us through.  I was first in line, so I talked with the guy holding the stop sign, who said he couldn't feel his face after being out in that cold wind.  He told me rocks had been falling in the road from a mounded up area that the road had plowed through, so DOT decided to rebuild that whole section of roadside.  

I asked him if he had trouble getting people to stop, and he said all the time, and that the worst offenders were the CDL drivers (professionals) who ought to know better.  He told me the previous week a truck carrying big heavy equipment ended up going off the road because he hadn't tried to stop in time.

While I was sitting there waiting (it was a long wait), I heard an ad on the radio for "Trump RVers" to come check out his campground at Westgate, wherever that was.  Imagine what those folks might say if they heard an ad for a campground that wanted anti-Trump RVers to come stay.

Once finally through the construction zone, I pulled over to let 11 cars and semis behind me to pass.  One semi blared his horn at me and one car thanked me, thus illustrating the DOT worker's point, I guess.

I passed turns for Boiling Pot Road, followed by Bailey's Hot Springs, which may explain what the boiling pot referred to.

I passed an old sign for Brothel Angel's Ladies, but the road to the buildings was closed.

At Beatty, elev. 3,300' (we had continued to drop down), we took a break at Cottonwood Park.  It covered a city block and had lots of trees and grass.  Gracie rolled around twice on her back, because it's been a while since she's seen grass.  Both dogs got stickers in their feet and Dext twice found something he considered edible.  But other than that it was a nice park.  Beatty says it's Hornet Territory.  It also says it's the Gateway to Death Valley.

The wind was still very strong and cold.

Farther along I came to another 1-lane road amid construction, this time with a sign saying "30 minute delay possible."  As it turned out, the delay here was much less than at the previous one - I clocked only 11 minutes this time.

I passed a sign saying for "Big Dune" turn right.  No hint what that was, but online I've learned it's BLM land, and is the local name for the Amargosa Dunes, that cover 5 square miles and stand up to 500' high.  Apparently locals use it for off-roading, but comments say it's hard to get to, which may be why more don't use it.  But the BLM said it's home to sensitive plants and animals, so it's likely just as well it's not very accessible.

I passed a sign telling me I was in Amargosa Valley, elev. 2,660', but there was no town and no nothing.  I learned from the map that the town is off the main road, though I saw no signs telling me that.  But Amargosa Valley, like Beatty and Hawthorne (from yesterday), has a road running from there on US-95 across the border into California.  

At the highway junction I saw the World's Largest Firecracker, and here's a photo and some info about it - be sure to scroll down past the first section to get the info.   https://www.roadsideamerica.com/firecracker  I also saw a sign saying, "Welcome to Nevada," and another one saying "Area 51 Aliens."  It was a fireworks store, which may mean something.

I saw a Mustang with a NV license plate that said, "PVT JNES."  We're only young once.  (Just as well, maybe.)

Near Indian Springs (pop. 881 in 2020, down from 991 in 2010), elev. 3,123', I passed Creech Air Force Base which has, among other activities, the training site for the Thunderbirds, a close formation flying squadron, like the Navy's Blue Angels.

I saw another one of those wild bull signs with another saying "open range."

The land was thick with Joshua trees along here.

The road passed through the Las Vegas Paiute Indian Reservation.

As I was coming into the Las Vegas area, I started wondering why I hadn't see any solar installations since I'd been in Nevada.  Just as I had the thought, I saw a few on house rooftops.  But in this countryside of seemingly nonstop sunshine, I thought I should have at least seen some solar arrays - particularly when hydroelectric power wouldn't be available in this desert.

The driving skill in Nevada is surprisingly lacking.  I've had several people pass me in clearly marked no-passing zones.  I've seen several people run red lights with no excuse at all - they just ignored them.  In Las Vegas I saw a man using a walker and a boy on a skateboard cross a 10-lane road against the lights.  These folks must be a little nuts.

I saw a license plate frame that said "I 💚 Guam - Where America's Day Begins."

On US-95 driving through downtown Las Vegas I ran into a traffic jam at 2:30 on a Tuesday afternoon.

I made my stop at an Office Depot to make a copy of my handwritten Schedule 1040, plus several other schedules.  Then I went to a post office not far away and mailed it; it'll have no problem getting in before any deadline.  I had a hard time finding any place to walk the dogs because the shopping centers were crowded and people drove with a surprising lack of caution.  The critters needed a break, so I drove straight to the campground, which was part way out of the main area of town on the road to Henderson.

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.