We were up bright and early at 5:20 am to catch the sunrise on the Alvord Desert. It lived up to its billing and was worth the early wakeup call. I also got up at about 2:30 to use the facilities and on a whim stuck my head out to look at the sky. It was absolutely fabulous. The Alvord is located over 150 miles from the nearest city, and the nearest town is over 100 miles away so the night sky is truly dark. There were thousands of stars out and the milky way was clearly visible it was spectacular, in fact it was so good that Ton did not complain when I woke her and dragged her out of bed to look at it. Unfortunately we did not bring a camera so you will have to take our word for how beautiful it was.
Since we were up, we decided to get an early start on a long days driving. Today we drove about 400 miles thru the Great Basin of Nevada. The desert here is huge and while the topography is very similar for the whole drive, large valleys at about 4000 feet elevation ranging from 15 to 20 miles across with mountains on either side of the valley around 6000 feet. It is extremely dry and the plant life is similar the whole way. Some people find it quite tedious, but Ton and I really enjoy it. There are no oh wow beautiful sites, but the shear size and distance to us is awe inspiring.
It is an extremely inhospitable place with little water and extreme temperatures so towns are very few and far between, typically around 100 miles between towns with any service such as fuel or food. All you see of people are ranches every few miles and an occasional mine. Due to the lack of population the armed forces use the area for low altitude flight training. Today we were buzzed twice by a F-35 fighter flying at 200 feet. Both time we did not see the plane until it flew straight over us. It is quite startling to be cruising along without a car in site only to have a fighter jet go straight over head at high speed. The pilot was nice enough to give us a little waggle of their wings to acknowledge scaring the heck out of us before disappearing out of site. Again no pictures as it is hard to get a shot of a jet pulling away from you at 450 knots or so.
Tonight we have moved to the much less exotic RV park behind the casino in Tonopah Nevada which is one of the mining towns I talked about above. It seems to be having some kind of a boom as there were a lot of workers staying in town with their pick up and work trucks, a couple of the hotels that have been abandoned for years have been remodeled and reopened, the RV park behind the hotel is completely full tonight as people are starting to feel more comfortable venturing out on vacations. It does look like things are starting to move towards normal, though no one seems certain where or when they are supposed to be wearing masks.
As we were driving thru town we saw the sign for the Tonopah Brewery so our evening was planned! The Kolsch beer was really good, and the barbecue was also excellent. If you are ever in town I highly recommend them.
