Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

Secrets and surreality

April 3rd - Tonopah, NV

Nevada, the land of open spaces, seems to have its fair share of the kind of things you find away from everything else. There are numerous military installations signposted from the highways (and I bet there are a good few that aren't signposted, for that matter) including the old Nevada nuclear test range, part of Nellis AFB which covers a huge area (over 5,000 square miles) between here and Las Vegas. As a result, it's also a conspiracy theorist's mecca as the home of the famous Area 51 where, if you believe some people, crashed alien spacecraft are kept. Sounds like a load of old dingo's kidneys to me, but there you go.

There are also various places signed from the road as 'Conservation camps' which the first couple of times I read as 'Concentration camp' as they're run by the Department of Corrections. I presume these are work camps out in the desert. There are regularly signs by the road declaring that it's a prison area and hitch-hiking is therefore forbidden.

The surreality index certainly starts to increase towards the south end of Nevada. Not only are there those huge test ranges out there in the desert, but nestled at the southern end of the state there's what I understand to be one of the most surreal places on the planet - Las Vegas. I'm going there tomorrow (hey, I feel I just have to see the place) so will report more on that as it happens. After that it's a quick look at the Hoover Dam (not far from Vegas on the Arizona border), then I turn round and start heading back towards San Francisco.

Another thing that I stopped off to take a look at on the way down from Eureka (only about 150 miles via US-50 and Nevada Route 376) was the fine collection of petroglyphs (rock carvings) about 25 miles east of Austin. They're very, very old and well worth stopping at if you're passing by.

Apart from that, the drive down was uneventful on a road mostly shared with pickups, trucks and the kind of RV that's the size of a small town. European motor-caravans occasionally have a moped mounted on the back for getting around. American ones generally tow a full-sized car, a four-by-four or even one of those famously environmentally unfriendly SUV things. I guess the ultimate RV would probably tow another RV, just in case the first one broke down.

Internet access from the hotel here is shaky - it often takes the modem two or three redials to negotiate a connection, and even then it's at 26400bps. Still, I'm using the toll-free number (extra charge from the ISP) this time after using what was listed as the local number for Eureka which turned out not to be a local call at all and landed me with a hefty surcharge for the phone calls when I checked out. Ho hum.

Posted by mpk at April 4, 2004 2:09 AM | TrackBack