The “Loneliest Road in America” Is Fine

This refers to Highway 50 going across Nevada. I’ve driven lonelier. On this trip I drove lonelier. That stretch from Elko, Nev. to Snowville, Utah, for instance, much lonelier. And uglier.

Whatever, I guess.

We started this part of the trip in Ely, Nev., which based on my short trip to the one grocery store in town appears to be a mostly meth-based economy. I then made the bad decision to go to some state park rather than go to the railroad museum :(.

I took this picture while at the park and trying to find the trail, which I think the road itself might have been, except for it was supposed to cut uphill to the left somewhere and never did and anyway the dog just kept wanting to sit in the shade and there were way too many patrol cars at the entrance to let her off-leash ‘cuz I sure didn’t want to get stuck in a jail cell with anyone from Ely.

Also, the Carl’s Jr. in Ely was very popular.

Anyway, lonely road:

And then getting close to Fallon NAS, we drove into this dust storm.

And then we drove into another dust storm that was way worse than this one — like, it was a complete white-out where I was stopping the car and hoping whoever was behind me did the same, because there was no way to see anything because of the dust storm. Like, that kind of dust storm. Which is apparently a thing now.

Then we eventually turned off ’50 and headed up to Reno. Loneliness averted.

Nah, this probably didn’t deserve its own post, but it’s kind of too late now.

Summary: If you have to drive across all of Nevada and you can’t cheat and just go through the skinny bottom part, this route is less tedious than I-80.

bkd