Road Trip October 2007
The Road Trip.
We covered a lot of miles and saw a lot of things! We drove north from Vegas through a lot of nothing for a few hundred miles, although we ran into a few of the young gay boys at a Burger King in one of the very small towns, which Pebs renamed Topopo! As we got closer to Reno, the scenery went from skanky desert to more delightful scenery.
Lovely Reno. We loved Reno!
But first, we went to Virginia City, an old mining town and part of the Comstock Lode. It was very touristy, but pleasant and interesting enough. I saw this hooker dress in a shop doorway and thought how nice Pebs would look in it...
The Virginia City Cemetery is a beautiful place. It sits on a small hill across from the town and there's an incredible amount of history to be read from the tombstones.
From Virginia City, we went to Carson City, the State Capital.
It's a beautiful building and because Nevada is such a small state in terms of population and actual land, (after the federal land is subtracted from the total), it's kind of a casual sort of place. We saw one guard and not a single security scanner. Remarkable in this day and age; it feels like 100 years ago.
Then we headed to Reno and checked into our hotel; we stayed downtown at the Silver Legacy, gambled a bit, walked about some, had dinner and then went to two gay bars, which were interesting enough. The next morning, we had breakfast in the hotel and then...
...went to the Reno Art Museum. The picture is of a large brass rabbit that was on the roof exhibit area. The rest of the museum was interesting enough. They do not have a very deep collection of anything, but there are some nice things for a town of this size and for what is a rather young
institution.
Then we drove to the top of Lake Tahoe and continued down the Cali side of the lake. I have to tell you at this point, that between the three of us, we took about a thousand pictures during this trip, and I am just pulling just a few from my collection so far. I'll be working on getting some albums up with all of my full size pics soon and perhaps some of luca's and peb's pics as well.
Above is an island in a bay off of Lake Tahoe's southern end. Some enormously rich woman had an enormous house on the shore, but built some guest houses on this island and a tea house; you know that money can't buy everything, but this woman took a shot at it. We traveled on through to Calaveras County, of the Jumping Frog fame and spent the night in Sonora.
The next day, we headed for Yosemite and it did not disappoint! You start to realize what a big deal your destination will be when you realize how long it takes to actually get to one of these national parks. You wind around switchbacks and climb and climb through amazing and breathtaking scenery for the longest time and you are not even there yet! But we finally got through the main entrance for that side of the park and found out that the signs that said that the pass we needed to go through were wrong; the Tioga Pass was open and we didn't have to back track for 200 miles or so.
Our first stop inside the park was Merced Grove.
And above are our two favorite tree huggers, luca and pebs! This little grove of Sequoias numbered only five, but they were astonishing! Most of these huge trees were wiped out during the ice age when the glaciers moved through the area, so there are only a few isolated groves left. It was a mile and a half walk down to the grove and the same back up; a bit of a strain for me, but it was worth it and I felt immediately better after having a cigarette when we got back to the car.
(When we reached the grove, there were three guys there who we think were doing some nude photography shots until we interrupted them. A web search may turn up the goods.)
As we continued into the park, we got our first overlook of Half Dome, one of the major features in the Yosemite Valley. And further on, a stunning view of El Capitan!
There were lots of rock climbers everywhere and there were two guys soooo high up on the face of the rock! People actually get half way up and then spend the night in a hammock a thousand feet up and then resume the climb the next morning. (I have a close up pic that you will see later).
We walked through Yosemite Village, had a sandwich, looked at the Adams shop and the gift shop and then went back to the car where luca noticed this wonderful spot for a picture.
We stopped to look at the Awahnee Hotel, an amazing old place to stay in the valley and then headed out of the valley and up to the Tioga Pass on a road that crosses the northern part of Yosmite Park. There were many more astonishing views!
Luca standing tall.
Luca and Pebs on the horizon...
Just beautiful and amazing!
We spent the night in Mammoth Lake a town that will soon be packed full of skiers, but we had the place to ourselves for the night.
In the morning, after trying to beat the church goers to breakfast, we finally entered Death Valley.
Now, like all of these huge national parks, (like Yosemite), you drive a hundred miles just to get to the entrance and the drive is mostly full of astonishing views, but it's still a long way to get there and Death Valley is no exception. You think you are almost there and then you see a sign that says "Death Valley National Park Visitor Center 87 Miles" and you go over a rise and the road stretches over a huge open space towards the horizon and it looks like forever. All of the interest points in the valley are at least 50 miles from each other and the distances look vast because you can see almost that far.
We drove to a place called "Scotty's Castle" a huge estate that was built in the late twenties by an eccentric man with a great deal of money and no little intelligence.
The place is amazing! It takes forever to get there now, in the thirties, who knows? There's a spring there that pumps 200 gallons a minute, which is enough to make this area an oasis and was used to power a generator in the old days. It's quite beautiful.
Above is the stairway inside of the clock tower. (We have lots more pics of this place).
Another point of interest is the one of the borax mines; this one only lasted about five years, but the remnants remain.
I was shocked and dismayed to find out that the "twenty mule teams" sometimes had maybe 18 or 19 or 21 mules! Another...old...west...myth... destroyed! Arrgh!
We then drove off over a dirt road for what looked like 20 miles, but wasn't, to a place called "The Devil's Golf Course". It's just an enormous salt flat where some ball shaped salt things were formed over the eons. Unfortunately, people had stepped on most of them trying to take pictures...
After another 50 miles of driving across a gigunda plain, we got to Badwater. It got it's name because some guys mule would not drink the water, so he thought it was bad or perhaps poisonous. In fact it was just very salty; five times saltier than seawater! Mules are smarter than most people think.
And this is where I reached a new low...
This is the lowest point in Northern America! There are very few places on earth that are farther below sea level, the Dead Sea being one of the majors. Luca was very upset that the altimeter on his luxury vehicle did not register any depth lower than zero and has sworn to sell the car within the week!
Above is a long view of the salt flats.
Honestly, so much of what we saw was a long view; I often thought that my camera was not even slightly big enough to capture the view. Once again on one of these road trips with luca, I see how huge and empty and amazing is so much of this country. It took us a couple of hours of driving to get out of Death Valley and anywhere near a tiny two bit town, let alone to the outskirts of Las Vegas.
What a fabulous trip! I am so lucky to have a friend like luca, who refuses to let anyone else drive, and plans these journeys out ahead of time and makes all of the reservations and then rants and raves, crossing various towns and states off of his list of places to ever visit again... and pebs, who is a plucky traveling companion, up for everything and witty in the extreme. Five days, 1400 miles; these are some very smart and very funny men and I love traveling with them!
All the pictures will be up somewhere on the net as soon as I figure out how and where to put them.
durlx10/22/2007
We covered a lot of miles and saw a lot of things! We drove north from Vegas through a lot of nothing for a few hundred miles, although we ran into a few of the young gay boys at a Burger King in one of the very small towns, which Pebs renamed Topopo! As we got closer to Reno, the scenery went from skanky desert to more delightful scenery.
Lovely Reno. We loved Reno!
But first, we went to Virginia City, an old mining town and part of the Comstock Lode. It was very touristy, but pleasant and interesting enough. I saw this hooker dress in a shop doorway and thought how nice Pebs would look in it...
The Virginia City Cemetery is a beautiful place. It sits on a small hill across from the town and there's an incredible amount of history to be read from the tombstones.
From Virginia City, we went to Carson City, the State Capital.
It's a beautiful building and because Nevada is such a small state in terms of population and actual land, (after the federal land is subtracted from the total), it's kind of a casual sort of place. We saw one guard and not a single security scanner. Remarkable in this day and age; it feels like 100 years ago.
Then we headed to Reno and checked into our hotel; we stayed downtown at the Silver Legacy, gambled a bit, walked about some, had dinner and then went to two gay bars, which were interesting enough. The next morning, we had breakfast in the hotel and then...
...went to the Reno Art Museum. The picture is of a large brass rabbit that was on the roof exhibit area. The rest of the museum was interesting enough. They do not have a very deep collection of anything, but there are some nice things for a town of this size and for what is a rather young
institution.
Then we drove to the top of Lake Tahoe and continued down the Cali side of the lake. I have to tell you at this point, that between the three of us, we took about a thousand pictures during this trip, and I am just pulling just a few from my collection so far. I'll be working on getting some albums up with all of my full size pics soon and perhaps some of luca's and peb's pics as well.
Above is an island in a bay off of Lake Tahoe's southern end. Some enormously rich woman had an enormous house on the shore, but built some guest houses on this island and a tea house; you know that money can't buy everything, but this woman took a shot at it. We traveled on through to Calaveras County, of the Jumping Frog fame and spent the night in Sonora.
The next day, we headed for Yosemite and it did not disappoint! You start to realize what a big deal your destination will be when you realize how long it takes to actually get to one of these national parks. You wind around switchbacks and climb and climb through amazing and breathtaking scenery for the longest time and you are not even there yet! But we finally got through the main entrance for that side of the park and found out that the signs that said that the pass we needed to go through were wrong; the Tioga Pass was open and we didn't have to back track for 200 miles or so.
Our first stop inside the park was Merced Grove.
And above are our two favorite tree huggers, luca and pebs! This little grove of Sequoias numbered only five, but they were astonishing! Most of these huge trees were wiped out during the ice age when the glaciers moved through the area, so there are only a few isolated groves left. It was a mile and a half walk down to the grove and the same back up; a bit of a strain for me, but it was worth it and I felt immediately better after having a cigarette when we got back to the car.
(When we reached the grove, there were three guys there who we think were doing some nude photography shots until we interrupted them. A web search may turn up the goods.)
As we continued into the park, we got our first overlook of Half Dome, one of the major features in the Yosemite Valley. And further on, a stunning view of El Capitan!
There were lots of rock climbers everywhere and there were two guys soooo high up on the face of the rock! People actually get half way up and then spend the night in a hammock a thousand feet up and then resume the climb the next morning. (I have a close up pic that you will see later).
We walked through Yosemite Village, had a sandwich, looked at the Adams shop and the gift shop and then went back to the car where luca noticed this wonderful spot for a picture.
We stopped to look at the Awahnee Hotel, an amazing old place to stay in the valley and then headed out of the valley and up to the Tioga Pass on a road that crosses the northern part of Yosmite Park. There were many more astonishing views!
Luca standing tall.
Luca and Pebs on the horizon...
Just beautiful and amazing!
We spent the night in Mammoth Lake a town that will soon be packed full of skiers, but we had the place to ourselves for the night.
In the morning, after trying to beat the church goers to breakfast, we finally entered Death Valley.
Now, like all of these huge national parks, (like Yosemite), you drive a hundred miles just to get to the entrance and the drive is mostly full of astonishing views, but it's still a long way to get there and Death Valley is no exception. You think you are almost there and then you see a sign that says "Death Valley National Park Visitor Center 87 Miles" and you go over a rise and the road stretches over a huge open space towards the horizon and it looks like forever. All of the interest points in the valley are at least 50 miles from each other and the distances look vast because you can see almost that far.
We drove to a place called "Scotty's Castle" a huge estate that was built in the late twenties by an eccentric man with a great deal of money and no little intelligence.
The place is amazing! It takes forever to get there now, in the thirties, who knows? There's a spring there that pumps 200 gallons a minute, which is enough to make this area an oasis and was used to power a generator in the old days. It's quite beautiful.
Above is the stairway inside of the clock tower. (We have lots more pics of this place).
Another point of interest is the one of the borax mines; this one only lasted about five years, but the remnants remain.
I was shocked and dismayed to find out that the "twenty mule teams" sometimes had maybe 18 or 19 or 21 mules! Another...old...west...myth... destroyed! Arrgh!
We then drove off over a dirt road for what looked like 20 miles, but wasn't, to a place called "The Devil's Golf Course". It's just an enormous salt flat where some ball shaped salt things were formed over the eons. Unfortunately, people had stepped on most of them trying to take pictures...
After another 50 miles of driving across a gigunda plain, we got to Badwater. It got it's name because some guys mule would not drink the water, so he thought it was bad or perhaps poisonous. In fact it was just very salty; five times saltier than seawater! Mules are smarter than most people think.
And this is where I reached a new low...
This is the lowest point in Northern America! There are very few places on earth that are farther below sea level, the Dead Sea being one of the majors. Luca was very upset that the altimeter on his luxury vehicle did not register any depth lower than zero and has sworn to sell the car within the week!
Above is a long view of the salt flats.
Honestly, so much of what we saw was a long view; I often thought that my camera was not even slightly big enough to capture the view. Once again on one of these road trips with luca, I see how huge and empty and amazing is so much of this country. It took us a couple of hours of driving to get out of Death Valley and anywhere near a tiny two bit town, let alone to the outskirts of Las Vegas.
What a fabulous trip! I am so lucky to have a friend like luca, who refuses to let anyone else drive, and plans these journeys out ahead of time and makes all of the reservations and then rants and raves, crossing various towns and states off of his list of places to ever visit again... and pebs, who is a plucky traveling companion, up for everything and witty in the extreme. Five days, 1400 miles; these are some very smart and very funny men and I love traveling with them!
All the pictures will be up somewhere on the net as soon as I figure out how and where to put them.
durlx10/22/2007
Labels: road trip
posted by durlx at 10/22/2007 02:33:00 AM
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