Eureka to Pioche

This was a day of driving, along long stretches of desert and mountains with little else to see. There is only one town, Ely, on the 180-mile road from Eureka to Pioche.  We began the day with a tour of Eureka, another old mining town.  Eureka has only a population of 431 but seems more a town than did Austin.  The town is just a few blocks long but has several well-preserved old buildings, including a lovely courthouse.  We visited the museum, which has the largest printing press equipment collection in the United States.  We wanted to see this since Uncle Jack was in that business and it was a fabulous collection.  The museum is housed in the old Sentinel newspaper building; the paper was published there from 1879 to 1960.  There were also other collections, including the type of school desk I had in grammar school.  There was another couple visiting the museum, which was the most tourists we've seen since we started our trip.  What a great time of year to be traveling, the weather is perfect, there is no traffic, there are no crowds, and the Nevada highways are well maintained.

Ely is 77 miles from Eureka.  This was once a booming copper mining area, and the famous Liberty Pit is still in use in Ruth, just west of Ely.  The mountains of mining dirt waste are visible from Highway 50 and we decided to drive up the road and see if we could get closer to the activity.  Magically, an old locomotive pulling a car of coal came down the tracks and seemed to stop just for us.  After admiring it, we continued driving into the hills to Ruth.  This little village brought back to me descriptions of mining towns I'd read about, with small houses for workers and derelict buildings that may well have been the "company store".  It's an active town but there are also many boarded up buildings.  We followed a sign for a mining pit overlook, only to be met by a gate.  Mark pulled over and sweet-talked the ladies at the gatehouse to let us through.   A few miles up into the sky, it seemed, and we were at the tip of a huge mining pit.  Even though it was a Sunday, it was a beehive of activity.  Some workers in huge trucks were at the bottom of the pit digging out the copper and others were taking the waste dirt to those mountains of waste we saw from the road.  It was a fascinating sight.

On into the metropolis of Ely, at 4400 population the largest town on the Nevada leg of our trip (after leaving Carson City, the capital).  Ely is a modern looking town, not much of interest, although it is situated in a pretty valley surrounded by mountains.  There is a small old downtown and we made a short stop at the Nevada Club casino, a historic building that sadly has modern slot machines.  Mark lost $1 and that was enough for us.  Some girls on the corner were selling Coolade, so we gave them our business.  I can't remember how many years since I've had that taste in my mouth.  Yuck.  We made a short stop at the one grocery store to get fixings for lunch and dinner (the one restaurant in Pioche is closed on Sundays), then continued our drive.

Ely officially marks the eastern beginning/end of the Loneliest Highway.  We continued south on Highway 93, with majestic mountains, some over 10,000 feet high, on both sides of us.  I haven't mentioned before that most of the land in the part of Nevada we've been crossing is owned by the public.  We've seen a few signs of ranching and think they may be grazing rights.  Perhaps there are a few hundred acres of privately owned land here and there.

We made a detour 11 miles down a gravel road to the Ward Charcoal Ovens.  These ovens were built and used to provide charcoal to the local silver smelters.  Each beehive-shaped oven could burn 35 cords of wood at a time.  Each cord in turn produced 30-50 bushels of charcoal.  The process of turning the wood into charcoal took several days.  The ovens were only used for about three years in the late 1870s, but were later used as shelter for prospectors, hiding places for stagecoach bandits, and even, it's reputed, as a honeymoon suite.  They are still in remarkably good condition.  We ate our picnic lunch off the back of the truck, reminiscing about sundowners in South Africa last year.

We took another gravel road back to Highway 93 and headed north a short distance to an elk viewing area.  We had hoped to see some elk, as this is rutting season and apparently there are often a lot of elk in view.  Not our day or time, though, so off we went south again.  The scenery continued to be magnificent, with huge mountain peaks on either side of us and desert sagebrush close to the road.  The road itself is about 7000 feet elevation.  By now it was late afternoon and the shadows added dimension to the scenery.  We listened with interest to an audio book of Mark Twain's "Roughing It", which describes his stagecoach trip along the Pony Express Trail.

We were a little concerned about our night in Pioche.  Our options were an old hotel with no elevator that only allows pets in smoking rooms and an 8-room motel on which I could find no information other than name and phone number.  After I called the guy at the motel and heard how friendly he was ("No, the PIoche restaurant isn't open on Sundays but I could cook you some hot dogs"), I decided to make the reservation and hope the room wasn't too awful.  It turned out to be a very clean, comfortable place.  We are the only ones here.  The guy has a friendly puppy and a cat, who actually like each other.  I'm sitting outside the room typing, with a beautiful view of the mountains and clear blue sky.  At 7:30 in the morning, it is already hot.  There isn't any internet service here, so will do the posting when we get to Utah.