Fallon, NV

They had a race in town that completely stopped traffic the way we wanted to go, but fortunately the breakfast restaurant was back the other way. After breakfast, traffic was back to normal. We left at 8:30 (our time.) There's a ding on the door, sulk.

I'd hoped to stop at Moqui Cave where there are dinosaur trackes, but it was closed. Then we were in Zion National Park, on the road we hadn't been on before. It's stunning, again. Rich again saved us $20 by being old. There's a tunnel about half a mile long or so, with the occasional vent/window. What an engineering marvel! Then we zigged and zagged down a mountain road. Then, finally, we got to familiar territory. Onward into the town of Hurricane.

The virtual in this town was about the canal which was dug back in the early 1900s, which brought water miles and miles to this dry valley. I'm impressed about this difficult feat! Apparently, that was then, this is now, and they are incapable of keeping their public toilets clean these days.

Onward, to St. George, where we got off the highway to see what has been done at the Johnson Farm dinosaur tracks in the last four years. The development has gone in, all the ticky-tacky little boxes on the hillsides. The tracks are still under canvas, but there are brown interstate signs leading to them (unlike our adventure in 2000!) And again, our cellphone could find no network. I can just hope that the network will expand to the back-of-beyond places we tend to go, and I can be thankful that the car behaved well and we never needed help.

We crossed into Nevada and back to Pacific time. At 12:40 I refused lunch in Caliente because I thought we'd eat at the Little Al-e-Inn. I'd had an enormous breakfast anyway.

The first of our caches was about a half-mile off the highway. We drove part of the way, but didn't want to get stuck in 4WD territory so we walked the rest, looking out for snakes the whole way. As we were driving, Rich pulled to a total halt... I had seen the lizard in the road too and was afraid he'd hit it, but no, and it was a leopard lizard that posed for him. We saw about a gazillion other lizards as well.

Again, the wildflowers were extraordinary. We found a cache at the junction of highway 93 and the Extraterrestrial Highway. I was excited to find another travel bug. This makes 6 I'm now taking back to Sacramento.

The next cache was called Elvis Can't Drive, under the bullet-riddled hood of part of a very rusty Ford that apparently left the road a few decades ago. Then we finally got to Rachel, where there's a virtual cache based on a time capsule put in by Twentieth-Century Fox. The Little Ale-E-Inn wasn't serving lunch any more and we weren't going to wait for their luau. They didn't have many wonderful souvenirs, either, though I really missed Gharlane when I saw one t-shirt. It pictures the evolution of a flying saucer into a green VW!

Rich misread the gas pumps... it has old pumps that don't go to a full dollar, so the $2 was written on the pump and then it was 39.9. Rich didn't see the 2, so he thought the price was $3.99 and he decided we had enough gas to get to Tonopah!

I drove the next 90 miles, almost to Tonopah, and I wonder why it's highway 50 that's supposed to be the Loneliest Road in America! I saw maybe two other cars, including one which also had to wait while the cows crossed the road. I did see a white cow and calf and two groups of wild horses. I counted one, 6 adult horses and two colts. The other was about that size as well.

We finally got late lunch/early dinner in Tonopah. We also got gasoline and one last cache. That makes 65 in 12 days (13, really). I'd thought we might stay in Tonopah, but Rich wanted to go on to Hawthorne, and then felt fresh enough to go on to Fallon.

We pulled in to this Motel 6 at 8:15, almost 600 miles from our start. Home tomorrow!

Highpoint: Leopard Lizard
Low spot: Rachel