The Border Inn sits just outside Baker, Nevada along Highway 50. It straddles the border … literally. On the Nevada side, you can get a breakfast beer, play a slot machine, and buy coffee. On the Utah side, you can fill up on gasoline or rent a motel room. It’s a good illustration of how porous our state laws are. Don’t like the Boston sales tax? Do your shopping a few [...]
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Like Guadalupe National Park, Great Basin National Park is an island in the middle of the desert. The Great Basin desert, to be exact. Great Basin National Park covers part of the Snake Range, a mountain range running close to the Nevada/Utah border, and the tallest point is Wheeler Peak, at 13,063 feet. At treeline on Wheeler Peak and a few other high points you can find Bristlecone Pine trees [...]
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Drive Highway 50 long enough across Nevada, and you’ll eventually end up near Baker, Nevada (you’ll have to detour south about two miles on Highway 487). Baker is the gateway to Great Basin National Park (more to come on that). But let’s stop first in Baker. Baker isn’t much of a town, it just seems to exist because Great Basin National Park exists and every park needs its gateway city. [...]
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The Loneliest Road in America: Highway 50, east from Reno straight across Nevada. At least, as straight across Nevada as is possible. You very quickly get into a rhythm on Highway 50. Cross broad, flat valley, climb mountain range, descend mountain range, cross broad, flat valley. The rhythm lulls you into a kind of peaceful, meditation-y state. The few diversions stand out like welcome mirages. The road is a smooth [...]
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Las Vegas, when it dresses up, pretends it’s another city — New York, Venice, Rome, Paris, ancient Egypt, Circus-ville, Strato-opolis. Reno, when it dresses up, pretends it’s Las Vegas, old-timey Las Vegas. I find this tremendously endearing. It’s just so … precious, so cute, like a younger sibling copying its big brother or sister. But it’s a bit more down-and-dirty. I got panhandled while buying coffee in the morning inside [...]
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We went back to Death Valley for the third time, a place we said we wouldn’t visit again on this trip, at least until we got a more rugged version of our Toyota Sienna (lift kit, anyone?). But it was a place that I still thought about, endlessly, and I’m so happy we had a chance to return. We managed to find plenty of new things to see, along with [...]
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Barack Obama, president of the most powerful country on earth and the primary cause of the world’s economic troubles, took bold action today lowering our gas prices from $4.49 per gallon to $3.49 as we crossed the California border and entered into Nevada. Why he took this action for only us is unclear. However, as the sole puppet-master behind the global petroleum market, we thank him. It is also unclear whether the [...]
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Most people zip through the few-mile-long Artist’s Drive on their way to the “destination” spots in Death Valley, like Badwater or Furnace Creek. We spent the equivalent of one full day on the drive and suggest anyone looking to get away from the crowds and find some amazing scenery do the same. Artist’s Drive cuts through the heart of some of the best badlands in Death Valley. We stopped often, [...]
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Rhyolite was a boom town thanks to a successful gold mine. A series of uncontrollable financial disasters led the town to ruin though the mine wasn’t depleted until the late ’90s. Many of the original buildings were moved to new towns. Others were stripped of their precious construction materials, especially the wood. Wood was rare and very expensive to get in the the desert. Textures of Decay Paul became fascinated with the [...]
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