USA-Ride Diary

Happy birthday Sarah Thomas!
      We are now in to Nevada and the last-but-one state of our journey. After a while heading North along the border with Utah for just over a day we ventured West once more in to Nevada, and across a higher latitude to avoid the extreme heat of further south. We stopped in several ’small’ places which have been very quiet…Milford, Baker and now Ely. To say these places are lively would be an outright lie. Infact it would require imagination to make these places busy! 
To get to this stage of the desert, we have travelled on some of the straightest roads we have ever seen. Roads which have even put Kansas to shame. At the top of our second climb yesterday, we could see the road disappearing off in to the distance. It looked as though the road might be heading downhill for about a mile and then another long climb again. But after nearly 15 miles the hill still went down, yet looked like it was going up! A really strange perspective, which made judging the distances nearly impossible. 
We are in what is called the ‘Basin Range’ and basically we are climbing or descending continuously. As soon as we are at one summit, we descend back down to our orignial elevation and then begin another climb back to the top. At times it is pretty hard going, especially when the object visible in the distance remains there for far, far longer than anticipated. I don’t know how many people have seen Monty Python, when the knight is riding up to the castle and the guards can see him galloping along, but never gets any closer…then all of a sudden he is there??! Well that is kind of what it is like! Only, I found more humour when it happen in Monty Python!
Today we started out on Route 50 which is known as the Loneliest Road in America…and we can see why! We have been fortunate to have the company of a few cars briefly today, but over the next three days until we are clear of the desert we are expecting to have a little less company…over to the Pauls to entertain us?!
So that is us to date. We are in to Nevada and on the edge of a pretty barren few days. We are looking forward to passing through a series of ghost towns pretty soon - a chance to take in what life was like when the Pauls were a little more youthful.