All too soon it's home again.

We're home! The run from Ely today was just a milk run. We broke camp at 7:00 a.m. (it would have been sooner but I got into an RV discussion with the camper next door) and, after a quick stop for petrol, headed for the wilds of the Great Basin and that storied "Loneliest Road in America."

First thing we did was plug in our very last book on tape and sit back for twelve disks full of what appeared to be a very well written murder mystery. Alas it was not to be as the disks had been poorly recorded and spent much time bleeping out every third word or so. Disappointed, we popped in some of our Italian music and just enjoyed the scenery, each other, and, thanks to the Italian tunes, much thoughts of past trips to Italy

Today was one of the finest trips across central Nevada that we can remember. The sky was so blue that it hurt your eyes even with sun glasses. Here and there wild horses roamed close to the highway. The road was so sparsely traveled today that it was an unusual occasion when someone passed us -- well except for the chap in the jeep 4x4 who was going so slow that we had to pass HIM, and that on a hill no less. We figured he was probably a geologist and was trying to memorize the road-cut strata as he drove.

One thing about Nevada, if you like geology it's all there to see. I don't think it's quite as interesting as what we so recently enjoyed on the Colorado Plateau, but with the sparse vegetation, you don't have any trouble finding it.

We didn't do much stopping today so I don't have many photos. However, at lunchtime we stopped at the Rock Creek Butterfield Stagecoach station and I snapped the accompanying photos. Of course there's not much left of the stations but low walls of igneous rock. Any wood that might have been found has long ago been burned up in one wild fire or another.

Not being content with just surveying the surrounding sagebrush-covered playa from the safety of the pull-out. I scooted under the barbed wire and went in search of something to photograph. Interestingly enough, I ran across a lone stone wall that ran for perhaps a hundred feet north to south and didn't appear to have any usefulness at all. Now I know that in times past nearby ranchers would mine the old stations for rock, so maybe the wall had once been an enclosure, but it certainly was odd to see it sitting there at least three or four hundred feet north of the Butterfield Station.

I scanned the hills surrounding the stage station. Wow! How I would love to climb those rugged hills and peer from behind a boulder while pretending to be some lone native American keeping watch on the stage company's employees. It looked to me that the strategic position was definitely those hills and maybe, just maybe, those station keepers had to keep a sharp eye on them as well.

After stopping at the Carson post office and newspaper office to pick up our accumulated mail and papers, we dropped by the local RV park and pumped the holding tanks for the final time. I'm getting so good at this routine that in less than ten minutes we were on our way again.

We arrived home about 2:30 p.m. and set about unpacking all the goodies in the RV before we ran totally out of energy. Tomorrow, we'll finish up the rest and then the only thing left to do is find the fiberglass expert who's been recommended to us so I can see about fixing the damage that some unfriendly cottonwood tree in Sedona inflicted on the upper left corner of the cabover when I innocently passed by just minding my own business.

So, that's all for now. We're not totally sure how soon we'll hitting the road again because there's a million things to do at the ol' homestead this summer. And, come fall, we're probably going to be called back to work for the legislature for six or eight months during the upcoming session. Still, I can tell you where my thoughts are going to be: out there on the open road. So ultimately, we'll be right back here with more adventures. So stay tuned.

Bye, y'all.