Feb. 29 Road Trip (continued)

Caliente/Ely/Sparks, NV:

I would like to tell you more about our road trip yesterday other than the snow. We actually had a very good trip overall.

From Tonopah, NV, we drove southeast through high desert, Joshua trees and a few lakes. We saw a herd of approximately 15-20 pronghorns early in the morning.  

Area 51 must have been one of the places we passed through (the town of Rachel, NV) as there was an "Extraterrestrial Highway" road sign and in town was an "A-le-Inn" motel. We did not see any spaceships or aliens. 

The town of Caliente was a pleasant surprise for a small town. We had time before Bob's first roof walk so we scoped out Kershaw-Ryan State Park about two miles out of town.

Snow volleyball, anyone?

While Bob worked, I sat in the truck and read. He was on roofs for about two hours. When he finished, we went to Pioche, a former mining town and had lunch at Silver Cafe. We both ordered tuna melts with potato salad. Good meal...the potato salad was homemade and very tasty.

Silver Cafe in Pioche, NV

From Pioche, we went to Cathedral Gorge State Park to see spires and cliffs formed from eroding Bentonite clay. Our first stop was an overlook into one of the valleys.

A tad bit windy!

From the viewpoint, our next stop was the Visitor Center where we watched a video on eastern Nevada state parks. 

Cathedral Gorge Visitor Center

Moon "Caves"

Moon Caves--more like slot canyons

It was getting to be mid-afternoon and we still wanted to hike a four-mile trail, then make it home by late night (about a seven-hour drive).

Start of trail

Susan "chillin'" at the picnic area.

Cool formations

Trail through the canyon.

As you can see the shadows are getting longer. It was about 4 pm when we finished hiking. Two-hour drive to Ely, NV, then about 6-7 hours to Sparks. We knew a snow storm was moving in. Time to get a move on.


We high-tailed it to Ely, only to be met by a blowing blizzard with huge, fluffy flakes of snow. We fueled up the truck, got our fast food dinners and hit the road.

See yesterday's post for our experience getting out of Ely.