10/17 The Loneliest Road

It's true, it's very lonely out here!

We packed up and pulled back onto Hwy 50 westward.  A beautiful sunny day.  We stayed on this highway all the way across Nevada, a loooong road.  Officially known as The Loneliest Road.  We can vouch for that!  The highway is pretty well maintained, with some spots that need a little TLC.  Very little traffic to contend with. Very little cellular signal.  Mostly no signal, with a few moments of unexpected "Bars of 4", followed by nothing!  We did get to participate in our Hansen family bi-weekly Zoom call, for about 15 minutes, before being unceremoniously dumped!

The Nevada stateline gave us the gift of one more hour in our day!  I've always wished for more hours in my day, it's nice to experience that, even though it will be taken away eventually as we drive back home.  We are bound for Truckee, CA, and our kids and grandkids there.  It's just west of Reno, NV, so the excitement is increasing!  We could have probably made the drive all the way today, but the weather forecast is predicting snow for them overnight.  Not knowing when or if that would actually happen, and whether it would be snow, ice, sleet, rain, made us cautious enough to not want to arrive in the dark, too.  Brita and Ben live at an elevation over 6000 ft. at their house.  Reno is at about 4500 ft., so there is a climb of over 1500 ft. above that via I-80.  There are some bad things that happen on that stretch of interstate when it gets cold and icy (remember the Donner party?) and it's a main haul route for lots of trucks.  They have laws that require tire chains and/or snow tires in bad conditions.  We don't want to get into the middle of that!

So we found a spot for the night at Cold Springs Station RV Park, NV.  The 'Station' refers to an early pony express route and station.  Maybe the Pony Express could be more stable than cellular service!  Although, this station and neighboring spots were subject to the hazards of trying to take over land that belonged to the long-time residents, i.e., Native Americans.  There is not much around there, but they do have a bar/cafe on the property, and we enjoyed eating out tonight!

Cold Springs Station RV Park in Nevada.