Day 14 - Crossing the Desert

Captain's Log - Day 14 - 428 miles - 3490 mi. total

Did you ever feel like a postman? You know, rain, sleet or snow. Well, that was us this morning as we left Ely, Nevada in the rain with the temp a mere 43 degrees. That's right, 43! We're in the desert, right? Nevada in June, right? I had expected this leg of our journey to be the hot one, but instead, it ended up being one of the coldest days we have spent on the bike! No kidding, we were in our full gear for most of the day (we didn't have on our thermals or additional layers we will use in the mountains, but we had most of it on). As we left the hotel, some of the guys warned us that the pass just might freeze, "so be careful." The roads didn't freeze, but we did run into hail again. In fact, for the first 30 minutes we ran in the rain and when the hail started, we slowed right down to a crawl just in case!

Most of the day ended up being very pleasant, though. The desert across Route 50 [dubbed the "Loneliest Road"] was not as desolate as we had expected. We did, however, fill up at every town just in case. We thought about trying to make the run from Eureka to Fallon on one tank, but then reconsidered that - why chance it? So we topped off in Austin and made it into Fallon just fine.

As we were filling up in Eureka, we decided to get rid of the Ural from yesterday's adventure because we just couldn't make good enough time. So today, we picked up this little jewel! It will carry as much gear as we want to put on her and man, will she go! A 350 cid motor linked to an automatic tranny, nice wide rear tires for tons of traction, and a front end that reaches out far enough to keep her from flipping when I need to put my foot in it! What do you think of this sweet ride?

As we were running across Route 50 in Nevada, we came across this "shoe tree"! It was crazy and quite the surprise. After all, as we were running across the desert we saw this big ol' tree along the side of the road and it stood out like a soar thumb because it was bigger than anything else around - and bigger by far! So it caught our attention and we couldn't figure out what was wrong with it as we approached (at 70mph) and as we passed, we saw that it had shoes hanging all through the branches! It was definitely worth doing a u-ey to take some pictures. Weird! The real kicker (no pun intended) was that most of the shoes were in really good shape.

This is what we looked at most of the day. Beautiful clouds and pleasant weather. Typical high desert plants and mountains and as we climbed in elevation, we picked up trees and bigger shrubbery (that is, until we climbed too high, then we just had real short mountain grass) and as we descended in elevation the shrubs grew much smaller. The closer we got to the border of Nevada and California, the more sparse the plants became all together!

About 30 miles east of Fallon, Nevada, we came across Sand Mountain. It is a state recreational area that is one gigantic sand dune north of a HUGE salt flat. Those are full size motor homes and campers at the bottom and if you look at the top of the ridge you will see three different sand atv's (two four wheelers and some sort of utility vehicle thingy). They kind of look like one vehicle, but they had stopped up there to talk to each other or something. There were all kinds of vehicles running all over this dune, but most of them stayed on the lower end of the dune to the left (and off of this picture frame )of where these guys are at. A week long pass for the area was $40 and an annual pass is $90. I wanted to take the bike up there but Dawn wouldn't part with the $40 bucks. Go figure! I think I could have made it to the top, too! Haha.

Across from all the scrub brush, you can see the salt flat. It was gigantic! It took us quite a while, running at 70mph, to cross this thing. The road ran off of the picture to the right and it was at least 4 times the length captured in this frame. As we were leaving the salt flat, two bicycles were just starting across it. Poor guys!

Actually, we have seen a bunch of cross-country bicyclists so far on this trip. We have even seen a bunch of them in the mountains! I would die if I tried that.

So tomorrow we plan to see the Coastal Redwoods in California. If all goes well, we will ride across Highway 36 from Susanville to Rio Dell, then turn north on the coastal highway! Oh yeah, we're psyched!

We miss you guys and look forward hanging out with you soon! Take care and God bless!