Now that the car is all sorted out (a tale best tweeted in the sidebar), we can resume our story.
As previously discussed, all of the good photos of Rhyolite were overexposed due to an accident in unrefined camera sharing skills. (I seldom share, so I don't think to look to see if settings have changed.) I'm not just being dramatic; these photos were the ones taken before the heat got to me, when I was willing to do stuff like stand on wobbly old beams to frame things through derelict truck windows, for example. But, you have imagination and I have memories, so I guess we're all okay.
Most of the photos here were taken through car windows. Partially because of the heat, and partially because I have my whole "let's not stop the car in a remote area, because what if it didn't start again?" fear, a fear we've since seen to be totally founded, despite the car having a past of near-total reliability. Ha.
Rhyolite is one of the best preserved ghost towns in Nevada, although they've had to fence off most of the ruins because of ongoing vandalism, which makes it seem a little more touristy. It's hard to believe that, a hundred years ago, there were over 10,000 people living here.
What's more, the town that started in 1904 was over its gold rush peak by 1910. By 1919, it was abandoned. 10,000 people! Three newspapers! 400 streetlights! Post office! Electricity! Poof! Fascinating.
I think we'll go for a slideshow. Everyone loves looking at other people's vacation slides, right?
It was really fun to look around (even when we were in the car), and the restrooms were very clean, if latrine-style. Those kinds always make me sick with dread that I'll drop something into the hole, so boy is it fun to pee while clutching hard to the keys and wallet in my jeans pocket, with my left hand in a fist just in case my wedding band decides to fly off my finger in response to an unseen force. With a camera on my shoulder. Do not ask how I wiped.
Too much information. Anyway. At the edge of Rhyolite is the "Goldwell Open Air Museum." Except I didn't know it was called that at the time. Instead, I identified it as, "Hey, there are those odd statues from the Weird Las Vegas and Nevada book. I didn't know they were here!"
They're in the slideshow, but this is my favourite:
We followed the signs to the Bullfrog-Rhyolite Cemetery, which my copy of Roadside Nevada assured me was really worth visiting. I wonder if it was all fenced off with barbed wire in 2000 when the book was published, because there wasn't much to see from a distance. (And the gravel road there and back did nothing for my "I'm driving a hatchback, not a jeep" nerves.) Here is Mike near the fence, throwing away our Starbucks:
We went back through Beatty (you have two choices: four miles east to Beatty or five miles west to California) and gassed up. It's a busy station, with travelers heading between Vegas and Tonopah, but the prices in the little quickie-mart were surprisingly reasonable. Mike bought 50 tablets of ibuprofen for $3.50. I thought it'd be at least twice that much, considering we were in the middle of the desert at a mini-mart. Je suis impressed.
Knowing our brothel pics from outside Pahrump were toast, I was resolved to stop at the next whorehouse (a phrase you don't get to type everyday). Alas, people can be jackasses when you try to turn left on a highway, so we missed "Angel's Ladies," with the crashed plane next to it. The billboard for "Shady Lady Ranch" cheered me up for the next 20 miles, and I knew we were close when we saw this ruin:
(Mike took this as we zoomed past. If you view it large, there is tagging that reads, "Jerkey Me" with an arrow pointing left, and "Comming Soon?" And yes, if we ever drive back out that way, I'm bringing a can of spray paint and fixing the spelling. Hold on a sec while I rev up some fantasies of being a road-based proofreader and righter of wrongs. Or writer of rights. Ha!)
I don't know. If I were hard up, I think I'd rather get it for free in a local bar at closing time:
I hear these places have a strong trucker trade. (Or they did, until gas prices shot up and independent truckers had less disposable income.) I'd rather just make some really good mix CDs, but then, I'm not a man driving the big rigs. Maybe all those gears give you certain needs.
However, there weren't any trucks in the lot when we got there. Just four SUV/minivan/sedan-type vehicles. One is in the pic below, which I know is kind of poor, but Mike was quite insistent that we not get out of the car. I worry that he was considering my past history and had, perhaps legitimate, concerns that I'd ring the doorbell and ask for some scrapbookable literature.
You can't see it, but to the right there are roses and a little courtyard. And a little red light on top of one of the trellises. Aw!
It wasn't as "fun" here as it was in Crystal/Pahrump, though, where rubbernecking tourists seemed welcome. This place had a more straight-up business-like feel. So to speak.
The McDonald's truck didn't need no fancy wimmen:
Now we were less than an hour away from Tonopah - yay! This wasn't bad at all. In fact, I started remembering how nice it is to drive on highways with lots of little stopping places. Not like the interstates with their samey exits. I started seriously thinking that maybe we'd take Route 66 the next time we visited California.
Ha. After the past two days of calls to AAA (due to disconnects from being on hold too long, plus one really rude guy who swore AAA doesn't offer tow trucks with battery jumping capability, so I had to call back and talk to someone else), 45-minute walks to Wal-Mart and back in the heat (I found the jack but no tire iron, so we had to get that), and dealing with three different tow/battery guys, when all we needed was a new battery and a patch for the tire... finally, everyone talked to the right people, and the battery was replaced right there in our parking space. Mike changed the tire (because we were still dealing with a certain amount of insufferability with the people AAA was sending out), and Wal-Mart put a patch on it for under $10, so it's all good now. And I'm still so grateful it happened right here, and not out on the road - that's almost a miracle.
But let's just say that Route 66 has lost its shine again.
But that's all later. At this point we were still loving the road. Next time - Goldfield and Tonopah!
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