Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
Day 10
Day 11
Day 12
Day 13
Day 14
Day 15
Day 16
Day 1 - June 29
Reno, NV to Salt Lake City, UT
Miles traveled: 571Local Music: The Boogie Monsters, Reno based blues-funk band. Good stuff.
Q: What do you get when you mix concrete with crazy people?
A: Thunder Mountain Park.
This site, right off of Hwy 80 in Imlay is the creation of the eccentric Frank Van Zant, aka "Chief Thunder Mountain". In the 70's & 80's, he built this house, and all of the various art around the property, out of a lot of concrete and whatever he could stick into it. The place is in a pretty bad state of decay now (having been subject of vandalism, and having been poorly constructed out of junk in the first place) but believe it or not, it has been named a state historical site and is in the process of being restored.
I’m particularly amused by this piece of "art" found off on a corner of the property away from the main building. Evidence of a cargo cult in north central Nevada?!
Next stop, the Hotel Star Family-Style Basque Restaurant in Elko. (Thanks Loren for the suggestion.) Not much to look at from the outside, but the food made for it. Actually, all of the sides were pretty lackluster, but the filet mignon was simply outstanding. Not only delicious, but huge. It would have been four servings at an upscale steakhouse in Reno.
The folks in the picture are Earlene and Frank, with whom I shared a table. We swapped life stories over an incredible amount of food. Earlene and Frank were out celebrating their 17th anniversary, so I picked up their tab. They say "Hi" to everyone reading this. Happy anniversary guys!
It happened by pure chance that today was also the first day of the annual Basque festival in Elko. So I decided to stick around and watch the running of the bulls, which wasn’t supposed to happen until 7. This is a shot of the crowd waiting for it to begin. Sorry, no shot of the actual running, turns out the bull delivery never made it to town. No bulls, no running of the bulls. They didn’t inform the crowd of this until about 8. People weren’t happy. Any everyone tried to leave at once. The traffic getting out of town was horrific!
I guess that's what happens when you put all your Basque in one exit.
On the plus side, it left me with an extra hour or so to explore town. Discovering White King in one of the local casinos in the process. This stuffed polar bear is an absolute monster at 10+ feet tall. Most are between eight and nine. This is supposed to be the world’s largest.
He must have once been a significant drawing force, as he is reproduced in an even more giant form as the sign above the front door.
Apparently, they would give away free postcards of him back in the day, but not any more. Shame – the postcard photo give you a much better idea of just how huge he was than my picture does.
Once it became clear that there would be no bulls tonight. I took off towards Salt Lake City, pulling in at about midnight.
On to Day 2
