The Loneliest Road

6 September 2011

It was 49 degrees when I left Cris's place so I piled on the warm riding gear. Ten minutes later it was in the low 80's, such is the micro climate situation here. Dick and Cris and I had a final breakfast at the Woods Creek Cafe before they headed to work and I headed east.

My plan is to visit the National Parks in Nevada, Utah and Colorado over the next several days. I left California via the Sonora pass on highway 108. It was yet another beautiful and majestic pass but my camera batteries died and I didn't find a suitable place to stop and replace them until I was coming down the east side.

Once down the east side of the mountain I picked up highway 50 east, shown on the map as “The Lonliest Road”. This road crosses Americas only cold desert, with elevations between six and eight thousand feet. I found it enchantingly beautiful, especially the vast seas of sagebrush with bare mountains in the distance. After weeks of riding through conifer forests, this was a stark contrast. The speed limit is 70MPH, and with little traffic and plenty of passing opportunities I made good time and ended up in Ely, Nevada, after ten hours in the saddle.

I took 160 photos and whittled them down to 63 keepers. I hope they give you some idea of the beauty of this place.

One of the highlights of today was encountering three dust devils, one of which was huge and lasted for at least 45 minutes (the time I had it in sight), which is quite rare. It probably existed for more than 90 minutes – it was going strong when I started descending into the valley and was still going strong as I left that valley. When I first saw it from a distance I thought it was a road on the far mountain. As I got closer I finally realized what it was and took heaps of photos. I had been slammed with vicious gusts out of the blue several times earlier in the day and suspect it was similar vortexes without the dust and therefore invisible.

Americana for the day: dust devils on the Loneliest Road

Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/T.Micheal.Young/USA201102