Loneliest Road in America

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In 1986, Life magazine designated the 400 miles of US Route 50 through Nevada as the “Loneliest Road in America”. The article was written more like an insult, warning motorists to avoid the drive unless they have survival skills. However, the state of Nevada embraced the moniker and turned it into a tourism program that exists still today. Our reason for traveling this route was less about being able to say we made it across this road in one piece. It’s simply Route 50 is the most direct route from Great Basin NP to our next real destination - Lake Tahoe Nevada and California. We could go north to catch Interstate 80 but doing so would add about 200 miles to the journey. We will take our chances with Route 50.

We’ve already covered about 15 of the miles crossing the border from Utah to our stop at Sacramento Pass where we’ve spent the past 5 nights. As to be expected, it’s a desolate part of Nevada with only a handful of small towns along the way. We had watched several videos about what there is to see and do on the drive so we have a few stops picked out to fill the time. Our next stop will be the town of Ely (pronounced E lee not el E). This is the first town along US 50 coming from the east. We want to take a train ride and tour the railroad yard to celebrate my birthday. We checked with the train company to confirm their parking lot is large enough to park our motorhome while taking the train ride. They told us no problem so we head out bright and early the next morning to make it there in time for the 9:30 AM departure. When we got in town, we drove past a truck stop where we could potentially park overnight after we finish our adventures and it looked like a decent possibility.

Nevada Northern Railway Terminal

Tracks Behind Terminal

There is a paved parking lot for most visitors at the Nevada Northern Railway as well as a very large gravel lot a bit further east. We felt where we were parked would also be a good overnight boondocking if they would allow it. So as we were purchasing our tickets, we asked if it was possible to spend the night where we had parked. They were okay with that which will save us needing to drive to a different spot less than a mile away.

Throughout the year, they offer a wide range of specialty train rides and have two routes. Since we are forced to this specific day, our only option is the Robinson Canyon Route. We opted for the standard tickets but they do have a couple of upgrade options. One is to ride in the caboose and a second is to ride with the engineer in the locomotive. Both seem rather pricey and I’m not that into trains to make those worthwhile for us. The train pulls up 10 minutes before our scheduled departure time. There were around 25 people waiting to board.

Our Train Approaches the Terminal

This ride had two passenger cars, one open air car, the caboose and the diesel locomotive. Quite a bit smaller than the ride we took in the Rocky Mountains back in June. It was a beautiful day so we stick with the open air car for the best views. We knew our ride took us to the west so we were surprised when the train started heading backwards through the train yard. It did take us past our rig and spot for that night. It turned out that the main track is north of the station and we need to backup to be able to be switched onto it.

Open Air Car

Our "Camping" Spot

The train heads past the town as it works its way to the west. The town was a bit larger than I was expecting.

Looks Like a Horse Ranch

Our Conductor

Once past Ely, the route heads up into the canyon. It basically follows the same path that Route 50 does. We do get to go through a couple of tunnels just outside of town. One gets us through the side of a mountain and the second gets us under Route 50.

Entering First Tunnel

Entering Tunnel Under Route 50

A few miles outside of town is the Robinson Mine. This is a large open pit copper mine. The view from the track isn’t down into the pit but rather of the tailings forming a huge hill with a very unique quilt-like appearance. The color variation of the soil is rather varied.

Approaching Mine Tailings Hill

Colorful Debris

Far Side of Hill

As we come around the edge of the mine the track has a sharp left hand turn towards the town of Ruth. The conductor announces that we are approaching the end of the track that previously led into the mine. There is a replica of an old mining town. Likely built by the railroad to have something to look at while we are stopped learning about the area.

Replica Town

Fake Cemetery

The train ride to this point was only about 8 miles. They have a switching wye so that as we start to head back to the station, we only need to back up a quarter mile or so in such a way that we are now pointing locomotive first as we head back down into Ely. It wasn’t the most impressive train ride we have taken but it was something to do along the Loneliest Road.

Back at the station, we disembark and head over to tour some of the buildings within the train yard. We had been told that there would be tour guides in the machine shop and locomotive repair building. This will turn out to be the highlight of the stop.

Locomotive Building on Left

Surprisingly there were only a handful of visitors that took advantage of the tour. While there are some fulltime employees, many of the people working here are strictly volunteers. We had two of them take us around and talk about the various projects that are in progress.

Disassembled Steam Locomotive

This One is in Better Shape

It was very interesting but it does seem like some of the locomotives are years from completion given the funding and availability of skilled workers needed to complete the tasks. One of the things that struck us as unusual was the nearly unfettered access visitors have to the facility. There wasn’t much actual work taking place so we didn’t have equipment running, but many of the trains have open pits beneath them and there is no fencing or other safety cones around them. To a certain degree, it was probably good that some of the small children that had taken the train ride weren’t here to find out how dangerous or at least dirty the place is.

Wooden Wheels for Sand Castings

Pit Below Another Train

The machine shop area has some monstrous machines. I commented to the volunteer about the size of the lathe they have to turn train wheels and he mentioned that they actually have an even larger one in storage but don’t have room to set it up and they no longer have the need to turn wheels that large. We left with a newfound respect for the guys who are so into trains that they volunteer here. Maybe it’s just because there isn’t anything else to do in Ely?

Nice Paint Job

HUGE Lathe

We wander around some of the other buildings in the yard. Most of them are not open but there are signs around explaining how each building was used back in the day.

Coal Silo and Water Tower

Looking Down the Tracks

The last stop is in the main depot building where there is a museum upstairs. There are more signs explaining about the business of the railroad and how things operated. We learned a lot while visiting.

Big Ledger Book

The Big Wig's Office

For dinner, we go to a nearby restaurant that was suggested by one of the volunteers. It’s tied in with a local casino - not too surprising for Nevada. We had a nice meal and headed back to the rig for the evening. Fortunately the tracks are not part of some larger track system so there were no trains keeping us up all night. It wasn’t until the following morning when the volunteers arrive to prep for the train ride that the place started to show signs of life again.

For the drive today, we were planning on traveling about 200 miles to the town of Cold Springs where we planned on staying at a private campground for a couple of nights. We had other boondocking options along Route 50 but our final destination in Nevada was to be at an Elks Lodge in Gardnerville not far from Lake Tahoe. This lodge has electric and water but no sewer or dump station. Since we plan on staying a full week there and have already camped 6 nights without any services, we really were in need of a place where we could dump our holding tanks and catch up on laundry. So a private campground with full hookups at the midpoint would work out well.

We had some preconceived notions of what driving The Loneliest Highway was going to be like. We were expecting desolation and other than around the few small towns along the way, it was definitely desolate with little signs of civilization. We were also expecting very little traffic. In fact, I had challenged Chris to count how few vehicles we see just to give her something to do on the boring drive. This expectation turned out to be false. There was a fair amount of traffic. We might drive five minutes without seeing another car but I was expecting to drive an hour in solitude.

We knew this part of Nevada was high desert, so we were expecting a flat and boring landscape for the bulk of the drive. But as we start the drive out of Ely, we are surprised to see how varied and interesting the terrain actually is. We had learned a bit about the topography of the area when we were visiting Great Basin National Park. We had known about the Continental Divide and how water falling on the eastern side of side of the divide makes its way to the Atlantic Ocean and water falling to the west made it to the Pacific Ocean. We had also learned about the Great Salt Lake when we were staying in that part of Utah. But we really hadn’t comprehended the concept of the Great Basin until traveling across it. Most of northern Nevada, western Utah and small portions of Idaho, Wyoming, Oregon and California are all part of the 200,000 square mile area that drains water internally. Water or snow that falls in this region never makes its way out to an ocean. It either evaporates, sinks into the ground or flows into lakes that have no drainage out of the basin. But instead of this basin being a large flat area like we had envisioned, it has numerous mountain ranges running through it producing a Basin and Range topography. These mountain passes provided for a much more scenic drive than expected.

I had mentioned in the last blog post about how we were having a new issue with the motorhome engine overheating during heavy load. It ran at a normal temperature when running at highway speeds even going up a slight grade, but when the grade was steeper like on a mountain passes, it tended to overheat. I had discovered a fuse associated with the cooling fan had blown when we were stopped in Ely. So I had replaced it, hoping this was the reason for the problem. We would have 3 passes on the first part of the drive into the town of Eureka Nevada. This was going to be our first planned stop of the day. It’s supposed to be a cute town but didn’t seem like a place we needed more than a couple hours to experience. It is about 75 miles from Ely so it should be a decent place to stop for lunch and visit.

Robinson Pass is the first one we encountered coming out of Ely. I could tell that the engine temperature was climbing so my replacement fuse had not done the trick. But by staying at 35 MPH and keeping the engine RPMs up, I was able to keep the temperature below the danger point. As we came down the pass, the engine temperature dropped back to a normal level pretty quickly. We had two more passes before Ely, but before we got to them, we caught up with an oversized load. It was big enough that there was a safety vehicle in the front and behind.

At first it was going at an acceptable speed so I just kept my distance. But as it started up Little Antelope Pass, it slowed dramatically. It was too wide for me to pass and traveling this slowly kept my engine temperature at a normal level so I just followed patiently. On the far side of the pass, it picked up speed and while several cars passed us and the truck, it didn’t look like there was a lot of room for them so I continued to follow. The last major pass before Eureka was Pinto Summit. This one was the steepest of the three and we really slowed down. On sections of the road where there was a guardrail on both sides, the lead safety truck would actually force oncoming traffic to pull off the side of the road prior to the guardrail to allow the large load to fit between taking up both lanes.

Following Wide Load at 12 MPH

At the top of the pass was a very long pullout. As the truck got there, it pulled over allowing us to easily pass. It turned out there was another identical truck with its two escort vehicles waiting there. So had I managed to pass that one truck earlier, I would have simply had the same problem with the second one a few minutes later. During the drive across all of US 50, we saw several other oversized loads. I can only surmise that the regulations for large loads on US 50 are less onerous than using Interstate 80 to the north of here. We make it into Eureka and find that the road through the center of town is two lanes wide in both directions with a parking lane on either side as well. There weren’t many other vehicles parked so I had no trouble finding a spot to pull over.

Parking in Downtown Eureka

It was before 11 AM when we got into Eureka so we decide to wander around town first before having lunch. It’s not a very big town - maybe a mile long and several blocks wide. It had been a prosperous old mining town so there are lots of old buildings that seem to be well maintained.

Court House

Eureka Museum

Hotel/Saloon

Just a block west of US 50 is a building with a sign out front for the Eureka Museum. It appeared to be open so we wander in. There was someone there to greet us and explain how the museum is laid out. It includes two floors full of history of the town. At one point, a few other visitors come in as does another worker. The two workers start discussing what their plans are for Halloween. Apparently the museum goes all out for this upcoming holiday even though it’s over 2 months away.

Printing Equipment

Dolls and Toys

As we were finishing up the museum, the one worker asked the few of us visitors if we would like a tour of the Opera House. It’s still used for events but isn’t open for tours on a regular basis. Sure we say, and the four of us follow the woman over to this building that was built in 1880.

Eureka Opera House

The main room is used for all sorts of movies, plays and parties throughout the year. It wasn’t currently setup for any event so the main floor was clear. The stage is quite ornate with an old timey curtain with advertisements from former local businesses. She even took us behind the stage to see some of the lesser toured areas. Over the years, a wide range of performers have played in this opera house and many of them have personally signed the walls backstage. It was a great and unexpected treat.

Main Stage with Curtain Lowered

Backstage Signatures

Signed Head Shots of Performers

It still wasn’t quite time for lunch and we had more buildings to check out further down the street so we walk the main drag and take in the sights.

Retired Railway Car

Eureka was definitely a worthwhile stop on the Loneliest Road. There is likely more to see and do in the area so it could have been a place to spend more than a few hours but we have lots of plans for the Lake Tahoe area and don’t want to miss out on those. We head back to the rig and have lunch before pulling out. We had seen the two oversized loads come through town early in our stop, so we don’t expect that we will catch up with them before reaching Cold Springs about 120 miles away.

Loneliest Road Advertisement

Metal Horse

There was one more town on the way to Cold Springs. Austin seems like it might be interesting to stop and check out but the parking situation wasn’t as good as Eureka so we simply passed through town. The rest of the drive was generally downhill and we pulled into Cold Springs Station Resort. This is definitely one of those campgrounds that stretches the term “resort”.  There was nobody at the main office to check us in mid afternoon on a Tuesday. Chris calls the posted number and they tell us to look for the guy with the hood of his truck raised. Seemed like an odd way to describe how to find somebody but it became obvious once we looked around. He got us checked in for 2 nights and directed us to our spot. It was a bit warmer here than the past few days but not too hot.

Cold Springs Station "Resort"

While we were getting caught up on chores, we heard a low flying helicopter passing by. As we looked for it, we saw it was a firefighter copter with the large water bag hanging beneath it. We scanned the area for smoke but saw none. But the. The copter circled overhead and started to come down. There is some sort of facility next door to the campground, possibly a Nevada DOT complex. The helicopter landed and shut down in the gravel lot. There was a refueling truck sitting nearby and after 45 minutes we heard the copter start up and take off again heading to the east. It wasn’t clear where the fire was but apparently close enough that this spot works as a place of the pilot to take a break while refueling or spend the night.

Helicopter Sets Bucket Down

And Lands for Refueling

Heading Back to the Fire

We had stopped in Cold Springs to dump our holding tanks and catch up on laundry but the reason we decided to stay for 2 nights was to do some additional sightseeing in the area. Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park is about an hour’s drive to the south of camp. There are two very different aspects to this park. The Berlin Site is the location of an old silver mine. The state park owns the old mine buildings and has a walking tour of the operation. The second part of the park is dedicated to the skeletal remains of ichthysaurs - marine reptiles that swam here 225 million years ago. Both aspects sounded worth checking out on their own and having them both located together makes the 1 hour drive more acceptable. While travels along US Route 50 seemed remote, this state park embodies the “middle of nowhere” moniker perfectly. The last 18 miles travels up and over one mountain range and leads to the base of a second range. Since there isn’t much out here, the road even where paved isn’t in great shape and the last 2 miles is on gravel.

Desolate State Park Location

We had tried to time our arrival to take a guided tour of the fossil area which is another 2 miles further into the park on even worse dirt roads. But we timed our arrival for 15 minutes before the 10 AM ranger tour. We were optimistic that there would be a tour since the state park vehicle was sitting in the parking lot. We took advantage of the restrooms after the bumpy drive to get here. The  restrooms had multiple dinosaur themed cartoons hanging that were entertaining.

Lifesize Ichthyosaur Mural

Fossil Building

Dinosaur Humor

The ranger invited us in early to look around while she waits to see if any other visitors would be showing up. There is a minimal fee for the tour but it is worth it since the building is locked at all other times and visitors can only look through the windows.

Fossil Excavation Site

A Small Ichthyosaur

Similar to the mammoth archeological site in South Dakota, this place has built a building over the dig site of the fossils to protect from the harsh environment - especially in the winter. The ranger was very knowledgeable about these animals with a name that’s tough to pronounce. These fossils were first discovered in the late 1920’s but it wasn’t until the 1950’s that the paleontologist Charles Camp started the serious excavation of the site. This was definitely one of those tours where it was critical to have a guide pointing out things. She would describe some portion of the fossil and then point to it with the laser pointer. It takes a very keen eye to make out some of the features. Midway through the talk someone shows up who is either a paleontologist or at least a very knowledgeable fossil aficionado. He starts to ask all sorts of questions that we didn’t even understand.

Find the Vertebrae

When the tour was over, we go out to the car to gear up for a hike. The Richmond Canyon Loop starts out of the same parking lot and heads up the mountain next to us. It’s a 2 mile loop with about 500 feet of elevation gain so it’s not too serious but it does go over 7400 feet elevation so it will be a bit of a workout.

Start of Hike

Lizard Watches Us

As we gain elevation, we get a great view of the drive into the parking lot and the other mountain range we crossed earlier. The uphill climb was okay, but the descent was rather rocky and made for poor footing.

Looking Back at Road In

As we came down through the canyon there were some old mine shafts that are gated. We also find an old cabin that used to be used by the archeologists that were working on the site 70 years ago. When got back to the car it was just after noon. We had lunch with us but hoped to find a shaded picnic table along the way as we head back to the mining area. There was an old adobe brick building from mine workers. It was in rough shape but still standing.

Archeologist's Cabin

Miner's Adobe Brick Home

We never found a suitable lunch spot so we ate in the car before exploring all the mine buildings. We picked up a map with all the buildings numbered and what each one was used for. The first mining operation started here in 1863 but the town of Berlin didn’t really come into existence until 1895.

Site of Berlin Mine

View Inside

Most of the building are closed but there are some with gates on the door so you can look in. Others require looking through the windows.

Mining Equipment

Mine Shaft

Conveyor Structure

The mainly dry weather here has helped these century old wooden building to mainly stay standing. It’s clear that some have received metal roofs or support beams but most of them look original.

Mill Building

Inside Mill Building

One of the large old buildings was open. It didn’t look too unsafe and there were no signs telling visitors to keep out so we went in to get a better look.

Inside Machine Shop

Furniture Remains Inside Cabin

A little to the north of the main park entrance is a path to the Diana Mine. This old shaft is gated but when I looked inside, I swore I heard something rustling around inside.

Diana Mine Entrance

Anybody in There?

Hand Rail Tracks

As we finished up and headed back to the car, we could see a vehicle approaching. With the view from here, you can see over five miles and the dust cloud from the gravel road means it would be difficult to sneak up to this place. We enjoyed the visit here.

Incoming Visitor

On the way back to camp, we had a couple stops to make. One was to find a geocache in another Nevada county that that fortunately had a cache hidden in the one mile section of our drive that happened to pass through a corner of that county. The second place was a restaurant called Middlegate Station. This is a renowned spot to stop for travelers on the Loneliest Road. It definitely looks a bit rundown from the outside but supposedly has excellent burgers.

It was midafternoon on a Wednesday so we were very surprised at how busy this place was. There were only a couple of table open when we arrived. The place definitely has some a quirky atmosphere. The ceiling is lined with cash usually signed and stapled overhead. There is also a geocache hidden inside that has nearly 100 favorite points so we had to try to find it. We ordered a couple beers and our burgers and I went searching. It’s not a big place but finding a container inside a business like this makes me feel suspicious. Fortunately there were a lot of pictures hanging on the walls so I was able to disguise my searching as simple curiosity. I eventually made the find and go back to the table.

Middlegate Station

Money Lined Ceiling

Since it was busy, the burgers took awhile to arrive. There was a table of 6 next to us and when the one guy’s burger showed up, my mouth almost dropped to the floor. It was HUGE! At first I was worried that all the burgers were this size but when some more plates arrived at the same table, the burgers looked more like normal size. Turns out the guy had ordered the “Middlegate Monster”. It appears to have 4 patties, cheese and all the fixins including some onion rings skewered to the tops and a bunch of fries. The meal costs $29.95 and you are challenged to eat everything but the skewers. There is no time limit but participants are not permitted to leave the table or go to the restroom. If you finish and keep it down, you win a prize - a T-shirt. The guy started out strong but had slowed down dramatically as he progressed. Our normal burgers came and we were only able to each eat half of ours so there was no chance we could have passed the challenge. We finished and left before we got a chance to see how he did or how long he was there.

Now THAT'S a Burger

Back at camp, we finish up our chores. Tomorrow we will complete the drive across Nevada on the Loneliest Road in America. It will turn out that much of that drive will be through much more populated areas so the terms won’t really apply. But I will say that we enjoyed seeing this part of Nevada. I doubt we will find the need to return to any of the spots, but it was fun nonetheless.