From rainy Richfield to rainy Ely

Today we moved from one rainy city to another. In between, we saw some of the finest Great Basin desert country the West has to offer, all of it, incongruously enough, bathed in sparkling sunlight and unseasonable warmth.

All of our highways today were narrow, two-lane affairs which meandered from one tiny, one-horse town to another. We passed turnoffs to towns with names like Aurora, Sigurd, Oasis, Oak City, Holden, Hinkley, and Deseret, farming towns of which we'd never heard nor ever had an occasion to visit. Even the towns we cruised through at 25mph like Scipio and Salina seemed curiously stuck in an earlier time. We stopped in just one town, that of Delta, which proclaimed an interesting museum. Delta showed up on the itinerary an hour or so prior to the lunch hour so we thought it would be a good leg-stretching opportunity before we stopped for our sandwich and chips.

Much to our delight, the museum turned out to be so much more than a leg-stretching opportunity. Still, to view the museum from the street it certainly didn't look like much. In the front yard sat an old, woefully dilapidated frame house from the 1920s, the location of the original museum we later learned. Set well back from this house and the street was a sort of concrete block building with the entrance door barely discernible from where we stood. Since we'd seen the museum's road sign, we knew the entrance had to be back there somewhere so we set off to find it. Moments later we discovered the entrance hidden from view behind the 1920s house.

As you know if you've been reading this blog for any time at all, Concetta and I just love museums. For an hour or two we consider them just the finest entertainment you can have. The museum in Delta proved no exception. And, this time, our museum experience came with our own personal guide and interpreter. What could be better?

When we first entered we found two elderly ladies waiting to greet us. The older of the two, a one-time surveyor's wife turned docent, simply beamed at the prospect of showing two newcomers around her facility. We couldn't have been happier. The museum's collection runs to everything from rocks and minerals, to western art. From mining and railroading equipment, to a authentic example of a Japanese internment camp barracks. Everything was a bit crowded, but very artfully and tastefully displayed. LaWanna, our guide, reassured us that the museum collection, though it contained substantially more in its collections than we were seeing, was destined for a brand new museum building in the very near future. Certainly we should make time to come back and see it some day.

As it turned out, we thoroughly enjoyed the museum and LaWanna. I even got her to pose for a number of photographs. She good naturedly complied, though I suspect I was probably the one and only person who had made such a request. Several displays took my eye, but none more firmly than the switchboard that, according to LaWanna, was still in use into the 1960s. The reason that I was drawn to the switchboard was because my Dad spent much of his career at the Western Electric Company installing them. Can't you just hear all those switchboard operators in all those old black and white movies say, "Number pleeeeeeease!"

As usual I tried stumping the resident docent, LaWanna with some of the rustic antiques in the section of the museum devoted to more primitive tools and such. I pointed to a couple of ice saws and dared her to tell me what they were used for. Darn if she didn't know exactly what use was intended for the six-foot saws. I couldn't stump her at all. Pretty smart cookie, she was. I did find one tool that I couldn't identify (photo lower left). Oddly enough, they had two of them, as did Rick in Saguache, Colorado. Rick hadn't known what to make of the tools, either. I have included a photo of the sort of hook thingy here in case you know.

After the museum at Delta, we set out again, only stopping when we found a wonderful flat section beside the highway some miles out of town. The lunch spot came complete with a terrific view of the mountains to the west (photo below right). The rest of the day we just cruised, listened to our book on tape, and enjoyed the bedazzling array of cloud formations and as they scudded across the blue vault of the sky. Virtually no towns or habitations of any kind do you find between Delta and Baker, Nevada, so the scenery just had to do. Every once in a while I'd just have to stop and photograph the stunningly empty landscape. Everything felt so remote and untouched by humans, I just loved it. This particular stretch of road, Highway 50 from Utah to Nevada, has escaped my notice until this trip. Oh, I've been up and down Highway 50 in Nevada on numerous occasions, but east of Ely always looked like venturing a little too far into the wilderness for my tastes. On the contrary. This little stretch of real estate is just fabulously wild and beautiful. The towns, where you can find them, are full of friendly, welcoming folks who would like nothing better than to help acquaint you with their hidden secrets. I for one intend to take them up on their offer.

As we approached Ely, perhaps from a distance of fifty miles, we began to notice a tumult of slate-gray clouds piling up against the foothills and peaks of the Egan Range. After cruising in the soft fall sunlight of western Utah and eastern Nevada all day, the promise of rain in the very hours that we would be arriving and setting up in camp certainly did not excite us. Still, it looked ominously beautiful and we couldn't turn our eyes away.

Just as we suspected, just a hand-full of miles from the Ely KOA, the rain began in earnest. Great. Just what I wanted was to get soaking wet again. But, as fate would have it, this time the rain backed off to a half-hearted drizzle once we had checked in and were assigned our spot. Then, by the time I had put the front wheels on the blocks and hooked up water, sewer, electric, and cable TV, the rain stopped and the afternoon sun began to struggle through the cloud cover. Wow! The sun on the wet landscape, the voluminous storm clouds, the stark look of the sun-glinted distant peaks was too much to ignore. I grabbed the camera and disappeared for a half hour while I prowled around through the dripping sage and juniper trying to get the perfect shot of it all (photo below left).

Tomorrow we are faced with perhaps the longest day of our trip at just over 300 miles. We almost never attempt to drive more than 175 miles in one day, usually far less. Were we to drive more miles than that, we would inevitably sacrifice any opportunity to stop, be distracted by some interesting museum, park, antiques shop, or photo opportunity. Fortunately, much of the Highway 50 corridor that we will be traveling tomorrow we have traveled numerous times before in our exploration of America's first transcontinental artery, the Lincoln Highway. So tomorrow, we'll probably zoom right by Austin and Eureka, ignore the turnoff to the scenic 722 bypass, and turn our heads away when antique shops loom on the horizon. This is not to say that I'll be ignoring the inevitable photo ops, I know there will be some of those. But in all probability, I'll spend so much time driving tomorrow that I won't be sitting down with the computer to finish this particular saga tomorrow night. Hopefully, I'll catch up in a day or so be sure and tune it to catch the wrap up.

Until then, we wish you good food, good wine, and exciting destinations. Oh, yeah!

Ciao.