Las Vegas to Hawthorne, NV

Tuesday March 20^th

Cathey did get hold of her friends in Las Vegas and she talked on the phone with them but we had already decided that we would rather have more time in CA than spend extra time here.

We didn’t do any cooking in the trailer so that made getting the trailer packed up easier. We were rolling by 9am but then stopped for breakfast and as luck would have it, had slow service so it was nearly 1030 by the time we were on US-95 and headed N. Tonopah is about half way to Reno but there are no RV Parks listed there so we are headed to Hawthorne, NV, which is about 240 miles from Las Vegas. That’s a pretty good day’s travel for the way we travel but the trip was uneventful and quite scenic. We are seeing more and more snow capped mountains to west, which I assume are the Sierra Nevada Mountains. For part of the trip we were close to the CA border and saw lots of signs pointing to Death Valley. Lots of Air Force installations in the area, Nellis Air Force Base, Creech Air Force Base and of course the infamous “Area 51.” No signs for that one, you just have to have watched enough of the History Channel programs to know where it is!

You see lots of mining activity, although I am not sure what they are mining or whether or not the tailing piles are recent. The oddest sight was a square concrete (?) tower about 100’ tall several miles from the road. It looked like a flight control tower but was out in the middle of range land with no other facilities around it. Most of the towns along US-95 are old mining towns that have seen better days. US-95 is without exception, the best road we have traveled on our entire trip. I am not sure how old the pavement is, but I would say less than 3 years and the Nevada DOT got their money’s worth – very few patches and the road surface is consistently smooth. It might be that there is very little frost damage to contend with or not much truck traffic, although we did see trucks so I don’t think that’s the answer.

Hawthorne, NV is the site of a major weapons depot. When you get in sight of the town you can see bunkers spread out over many square miles of rangeland and hundreds of buildings, which I concluded were storage warehouses.

I bought gas in Hawthorne for $4.19/gal and for the first time it would have cost more than $100 except that the pump shuts down at $99 so I left without having completely filled the tank. But when you are 80 miles from the next gas station the price is not the first priority.

The RV Park that I had called (and did not return my call) had no vacancy so we had to find another place in town, which probably saved us a few dollars and turned out to be fine.

Not enough energy left to go hunting for supper tonight so we feasted on the gourmet campers’ favorite – beans and wieners!