March’s Big Adventure — Death Valley & Nevada Road Trip

We took in these expansive views from high up at Zabriske Point:

and low down at Badwater Basin, the lowest point in all of North America: 

It was incredibly hot during our visit (as expected…it is called Death Valley after all).

 

including enjoying one of Jac’s delicious canister lunches:

and getting to hug a giant cow en route 🙂

Next–Small Town Nevada

Beatty
We spent the night in small town Beatty, which isn’t terribly noteworthy except for the tame burros that roam around the town.  Brought to the area during the mining boom of the early 20th century, they were left behind once it ended and now roam around looking for food and looking adorable for tourists.

Rhyolite
Just outside Beatty is the ghost town of Rhyolite.  That was our first stop.  Here’s a little intro:

Rhyolite began in early 1905 as one of several mining camps that sprang up after a prospecting discovery in the surrounding hills. By 1907, Rhyolite had electric lights, water mains, telephones, newspapers, a hospital, a school, an opera house, and even a stock exchange. 

It was a very short lived boom.  The town’s population peaked at 5,000
in 1908.  By 1920, it was close to zero!!!!  After the richest ore was exhausted, production fell.  Then, there was the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the financial panic of 1907, and an independent study that found the mine to be nearly exhausted. By 1911, the mine was closed and the miners had moved elsewhere. Soon, nothing was left except these eerie buildings:

Goldwell Open Air Museum
On the drive into Rhyolite is a very odd collection of statues centered around this ghostly life-sized interpretation of The Last Supper by DaVinci.  It was interesting and creepy at the same time.  The shapes were made by draping plaster-soaked burlap over live
models until the plaster dried enough to stand on its own. Yikes! Here’s a few snapshots of the scene:

Goldfield
En route to Tonopah (our stop for the night), we drove through a number of insanely run-down towns.  Scenes you would think were just recreations for a movie set.  Scenes you would expect to see in some poor, far away land.  Whoa!  Who lives here?  How?  Do they have a job?  Do they have electricity?  We drove around for awhile, trying to wrap our heads around scenes like these (again, not movie sets!):

International Car Forest of the Last Church
While in Goldfield we visited this other crazy scene — a bunch of old, graffiti covered buses, cars and trucks buried in the ground like they’d been tossed down from above.  Super weird, but oddly cool at the same time.

Tonopah
By mid-day, we reached our final destination for the day–the old mining town of Tonopah. First things first: lunch a la Chef Jac, who was serving up mouthwatering bbq sandwiches…from the back trunk of the car, located alongside an abandoned old building.  It was a funny, weird experience to be cooking and then dining in a dusty old parking lot, but…wouldn’t change a thing!  A fun and yummy memory!

Then, time to explore Tonopah.  From all I had read and all Jac heard from his brother, Tonopah was a pretty cool place to visit.  Not to be missed.  You’ll end up wanting more time here. 

Uh, no.  What?  It was passingly interesting, but we were done after a few hours and then had to search for ways to kill time!  Here’s a scene of the little town from above.  Like the towns we’d seen before it, Tonopah is dusty and decrepit and pretty darn depressing.  Who lives here?  Why?  We drove around for quite awhile, checking out the neighborhoods, wondering what life would be like living there: