Off we go. Over Mt. Rose to the German store in N. Reno to get _good_ instant coffee. Not that hideous Taster's Choice junk. We must do this since some places we'll be staying are...primitive. Meaning no coffee pot. So we have an immersion device. The German store had Jacobs instant coffee and we figure it has to be decent. That and a couple brot rolls and down the road we went.
First stop: Lovelock, which hasn't much more interesting going on than a round courthouse and a park where people bring padlocks with their names scratched in or Sharpied-on to. They fasten these permanently to chains in the park. Why?
Come on. You _know_ where this is headed.
To "lock in their love", you sillies!
So, after checking that out, we motored on out towards I-80 and found:
Real prisoners in those real white and black striped outfits. Exactly like in a Bogart movie. They were working under the eagle-eyed, studious, and diligent eye of a Sheriff or corrections officer, who managed to perform his duty in a very cool, even nonchalant sort of way. We surreptitiously snapped a couple photos from the Safeway at quite a zoomed-out distance while said eagle-eyed officer's eye was cast down the street away from us -- lest we be invited to join them. After all, we had other places to go. And face it, nobody wants to wear white after Labor Day.
We then headed down the road figuring we'd maxed out on the weirdness meter for the day.
We were wrong.
Our next stop was the Thunder Mountain Monument, for which the term "quirky" was invented.
This junkyard-meets-sculpture-meets-the-Winchester-Mystery-House is the creation of one Frank Dean Van Zant who was born in Okmulgee, Oklahoma in 1921. Okmulgee is Indian country, and, Dutch surname or not, Van Zant considered himself a full-blooded member of the Creek nation. Guess he wanted to build a tribute to Native Americans.
And so, upon his arrival in 1969 in Imlay, Nevada, Frank changed his name to Rolling Mountain Thunder and set about building three cement/stone buildings, including a 3 story cement house (5900 square feet, quite livable). The structures have walls with glass windows (homemade), and there are lots of bottles and other artifacts stuck in the cement.
And he build a lot of figures and face sculptures. A lot -- about 200 painted cement figures and faces. Those figure/face sculptures depict Native Americans and their protective spirits. In fact, there is even a large framework around the main house that forms a large handle so that, after Thunder's death, "the Great Spirit can carry it away."
He also found, let us just say, lots of other materials to decorate his creation. There are loads and loads of other bits of Americana embedded in the cement walls and fences.
The walls and fences have lots of weird things including an old TV, old typewriters, old cars, a tricycle, a modern depiction of "The Thinker" (which this writer immediately threw open to various other interpretations), and more. A WWII era ambulance, fences and other outbuildings complete this explosion of poured cement art.
By the way, the main house had running water and other amenities, including a library and viewing deck; the glass bottles actually let light in (in a kaleidoscopic sort of way).
We saw other visitors, one of whom claims to have seen this on Discovery or the Travel Channel and realized it after whizzing by it on the freeway.
After that, we were on to Elko, completing 300 miles today. Along the way was more open empty highway, a nice rainbow and pretty desert scenery. And much conversation from Tuna, who eventually created sort of a babushka out of a towel and settled in after eating some French fry bits.
After a well-deserved RON at the Best Western, it will be a challenge to attempt to re-pack the car as it was done today. Wish us luck on that.
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