From Goldfield it's just a (26-mile) skip up the road to Tonopah, the county seat of Nye. (Are there any two other county seats so close together?) We saw signs for the "Tonopah Station" Ramada along the way, advertising a chance to roll the dice and win a free room for the night. ("Rats," we thought. "We've already paid for ours.")
I'll break this Tonopah section into three parts: 1. arrival and stargazing, 2. review of the hotel, 3. the rest of the town.
When we first rolled in, it looks like the emphasis was going to be on function and open space. Already we were missing the cozy history of Goldfield. But no sooner did we turn the corner and it was nothing but "look at that! look at that!"
Tonopah Station is at the start of town, but we kept driving so we could get a view of the whole place before throwing ourselves into the arms of sleep. (We were walking on fumes at this point.) Also, food needed to be sorted out, lest we go to the room, flop out, then wake up an inefficient four hours later with grouchy stomachs. Mike had spied a Burger King ad when we left Goldfield, but I was hoping for something better.
We drove through downtown ("wow!") until we reached the famous Clown Motel.
Cute. Scary. Fn. Then it was a U-turn (or "youie," as Mike says) to the Mexican restaurant we'd spotted along the way.
I'd seen the menu for this place on one of the Tonopah websites, and I wasn't optimistic at the time. But that was back in jaded Las Vegas; now we were tired, ravenous, and ready for something a little nicer than food in a sack with some ketchup packets squished at the bottom.
Here's part of the menu (on top). I wish we'd taken photos of the food, but - honestly - we were too busy chewing and saying "mmm" "MMMm!" Mm!" and so forth to spare a hand for the camera bag latch. I got cheese enchiladas with side orders of sour cream and onions. Mike had the nachos with chicken. MMMm! Mm! mmm.
Across from us was a large group with a young boy and a British-accented Indian making most of the conversation. Later they were replaced by a BMW convertible-driving guy and his widescreen laptop. It's not your typical small town. We'd gone in, expecting Velveeta/Tostito concoctions, but everything was nicely seasoned and tasty. I could go another plate right now. Shame on those wary assumptions.
Here is Mike outside the restaurant, very pleased with the meal:
This shack (shown below) next to the restaurant's parking lot simply stood (perhaps "wavered") there without comment. That was another incredible thing about Tonopah - the number of mining-era ruins that simply sit there amongst the working city, unbothered and unpromoted. (Unlike Goldfield, no one would call Tonopah a ghost town. The population is only about 2600, but the thru-traffic of tourism and mining-related business is high.)
Downtown, the famous (if you've ever clicked on a website about Tonopah) Mizpah Hotel stands at left, and at right is a surprisingly modern "Welcome to Tonopah" electronic sign.
But no looking at downtown now - we'd do it properly later. (Get out of the car, even.) It was back to the hotel to check in, conk out, and wake up just in time for some middle-of-the-night stargazing.
And that's exactly how it worked out. (I'll talk about the hotel in the next post, but the short review is this: Tonopah Station/Ramada is terrific! Ignore those bad reviews online - it's completely cute, clean, comfortable, and congenial. Oh, and we <i>did</i> get to roll for a free room, just like the walk-ins, even though we'd already made a reservation. That's impressive hospitality.)
We woke around 11-something p.m. and got "star ready." This pretty much entailed taking the telescope back down to the car (we'd brought it up because of the heat) and me putting on a bra, just in case we were stuck in the wilderness and needed a slingshot, or perhaps if we went to jail for some reason. (Once you leave Las Vegas, Nevada is a rather conservative state.) See, I'm always prepared like that. True, I forgot to bring the flashlight, but there <i>were</i> star charts in the car, printed out from the Sky & Telescope website I mentioned a week or two ago. (Yep, some secret trip plotting was happening even back then.)
As you'll see in a later picture, there were enthusiastic "Tonopah Star Trails" ads all around town, including just outside our hotel. They said to go inside and ask for more information. I did, expecting a map of prime viewing locations, but it turns out the "information" is just for a guy who does tours and sometimes leaves brochures (which he hadn't done lately.)
The woman at the desk was helpful, though. She said we could just drive two miles south, pull off on any dirt road, and see thousands of stars, or we could go north about 11 miles to a rest area and gaze in comfort.
We chose the rest area, because it was on the way to the intersection of Hwy 95/6 and Hwy 265, and I knew from other research that many local astronomers like to go up a dirt road around there to the site of an upcoming state park.
Outside in the hotel's parking lot, we were both skeptical. It was pretty dark, and we could only see a handful of stars. Sure, we were still in town, but shouldn't there be more?
Fifteenish minutes later, we pulled into the rather nice rest area. We stopped short, in the gravel RV zone, to avoid as much of the light as possible.
It was dark. It was full of stars. More stars than I'd seen since I was a child. And... the Milky Way.
But before I would let myself be amazed, I grabbed the camera, mini-tripod, and shutter release cable from the trunk, so we would have less exposure to the interior car lights later, once our eyes had adjusted.
Mike is no stranger to star-glutted skies, but he looked up appreciatively while I...
"What's that noise?"
Lights came on from the other side of the rest stop, and a car peeled out and away. At the time, we didn't know there was a little residence on the other side. (Hmm, it's not on that Google map. Oh, and if the Google map doesn't show up, I apologize. It's never worked well for me.)
Then a car pulled into the rest stop.
"What do you think?"
"What do you think?"
"Into the car!"
That was me, sure that some guy wearing a beanie made of human skin was pulling in to kill us and bury assorted Mike and Shari parts out in the forsaken desert, which of course was only a few steps away.
I'd only just gotten the camera screwed onto the tripod. We sat in the car, Mike still enjoying the stars, me waiting for the hook to knock on the window.
"Oh, look, it's an elderly couple."
So then I felt better, but we both agreed that we should try for a darker spot down the road. This was plenty dark, the rest stop's few lights aside, but it was <i>so</i> dark that when a truck came down the highway, their lights were bright enough to give you a headache. Trucks from three or four miles away were lighting up Mike's shirt like a fluttering disco ball. That can't be ideal.
Hey, we're in it to win it, right? Let's go find the darkest spot possible!
But first, I took a couple of 30-second exposures from the car window. I held the tripod in my fist and used the cable for the shutter, but it still came out pretty shaky. Furthermore, it didn't seem to capture more than a bright dot or two - certainly not even a hint of the celestial milk-glaze above.
And, um, this is the part where I forgot about the "bulb" setting on the camera, something I'd only read about, and how it will let you make the exposure as long as you want. Oops?
At home, though, the shot wasn't that bad of a souvenir. Here's a small part of it, with quite a few of the stars lost because I resized the image, which causes small pixels to be smoothed out:
Okay, I know it just looks like a few lame white spots, but multiply it by 100 and add the Milky Way and - pow! - then you'll have it. Plus, when I look at the original, I can see hundreds of tiny blue, red, and white dots, and shades in between. I'm impressed that the camera could pick up the different star colours. I started matching them to Starry Night Pro and labeling, but you can see how that petered out. :)
Suffice to say, the camera picked up some 7th magnitude stars, and the camera only picked up a tiny, tiny fraction of what our eyes saw. We could've seen Uranus and Neptune without the telescope! (They weren't on the star chart, so I assume they weren't out.)
So it was back in the car and about thirty miles up and around to Blair Junction, which is nothing but a T-intersection and a flashing red light. We turned down Highway 265 and drove until we were well out of view of the red light and the semi-regular traffic on 95/6.
Stop. Turn off ignition. Step out.
Whoa.
This was dark.
Really dark.
And really beautiful.
I hate admitting this, but we didn't take out the telescope. We didn't even take out the binoculars. Yes, it would've been awesome. (My telescope isn't much to brag about compared to what the serious stargazers have, but it's never failed to amaze me, even in places where you can only see 50 stars shaking in the wavy heat.)
But using the telescope would've meant opening the car trunk, which would've meant a rush of artificial light, and I think I would've chewed the throat out of anyone who'd even suggest violating the sparkling velvet around us.
Mike was cool with that.
For an hour, we walked in circles on the highway. No car ever came by. We had chairs in the trunk, but again, each drop of darkness was precious. Creatures rustled nearby, and we'd softly call out, "hey bunnies." (Because the world was too perfect right now for it to be snakes.)
We watched planes. We saw meteorites fall. (We made wishes.) I gasped at the depth of the heavens - the sky was no longer a matte dome of little lights, but something you could stretch through forever.
The Milky Way was spectacular, but I'll admit, it wasn't as vivid as what I've seen in some people's photos. Maybe that's the lie of long exposures, setting the bar too high? I don't know. (Mike admitted that he has seen the MW in more vibrant form while in Mandurah, but this was still better than what he'd usually get at home around Perth.)
Last night I started reading this excellent New Yorker article on light pollution, which leads with a pic of the Milky Way looking like what I'd expected to see. One of the astronomers interviewed for the article says this:
“People will sometimes come up from the city and call me and say, ‘John, I’ve found this fabulous dark site, it’s totally black, you can’t imagine how good it is.’ So I’ll go and have a look, but it’s always poor. They have no comparison to work against."
It continues:
"In Galileo’s time, nighttime skies all over the world would have merited the darkest Bortle ranking, Class 1. Today, the sky above New York City is Class 9, at the other extreme of the scale, and American suburban skies are typically Class 5, 6, or 7. The very darkest places in the continental United States today are almost never darker than Class 2, and are increasingly threatened. For someone standing on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon on a moonless night, the brightest feature of the sky is not the Milky Way but the glow of Las Vegas, a hundred and seventy-five miles away. To see skies truly comparable to those which Galileo knew, you would have to travel to such places as the Australian outback and the mountains of Peru."
You do not stand, turning in circles, for an hour on a desert highway if you are disappointed. I was speechless and reborn a hundred times.
But, I'm sad to realize what scraps we settle for. That can't be good for the soul. Here at home, I see one planet and Orion's Belt, and I'm standing stupid in the driveway for a moment, smiling. Outside of Tonopah, it was like I could plunge my hands into the sky, and they'd fall back covered in glitter.
Looking at those stars was like gulping for air, and now I'm holding my breath until I can see them again.
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