Ahhh, the sun is shining and the temperature is twice what it was when we left home this morning. As you may have heard on the news, there were several earthquakes in the Hawthorne, NV area earlier in the day. Because we weren't sure exactly what the road conditions would be through Hawthorne, we decided to take a different route. We had to stop at Fallon NAS and take care of some errands, so we continued further east on US 50 to Middlegate.
US 50 is billed as the "Loneliest Highway in the United States, but it's a major thoroughfare when compared to NV 361 which we took south off US 50. We went 100 miles and didn't see another car the entire route. There was a shortcut off NV 361 which I thought we might try; however, when we got to that turn-off, we found that the Gabbs Poleline Road was not a paved road and was totally muddy and snow-covered. Discretion was the better part of valor - didn't want to subject the Red Baron to 60 some odd miles of mud and snow. Can just see the headlines now! We didn't want to be the next story like the couple from Indiana which got stuck going to the north rim of the Grand Canyon.
Went through Gabbs, NV which is a thriving metropolis - must be all of a hundred souls living there. It's the site of the oldest active mine in Nevada, so the magnesium and silver business must be doing well. When we went through Tonopah, there was quite a bit of snow on the ground, but it was melting pretty fast. The elevation at Tonopah is around 6000' and when you head south out of there, it gets lower and warmer. We ended up here in Pahrump at around 2900' with temperatures near 60 degrees. Absolutely balmy - so tomorrow we play golf before heading to Las Vegas.
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