Tuesday, November 17, 2020

Off to Ely.  Ely, Nevada.  Halfway destination between Boise, Idaho and Death Valley, California. The altitude of Ely turns out to be 6437 - higher than Lake Tahoe at lake level.  It gets about the same amount of rain as San Diego of 10 inches, but will get an average of 50 inches of snow.  Rather surprised to not see snow on the ground when we got there as we saw a lot of snow elsewhere.  Especially in the mountains.  After we passed through Twin Falls, Idaho we turned due south to  head for Ely.  The passage on that highway reminded me a great deal of traveling on HWY 395 in the Eastern Sierras.  The snow covered mountains made that impression even more vivid.  It was a beautiful high desert landscape surrounded by snow tinged mountains.

All you other travelers that go on HWY 395 - doesn't this corridor (above pictures)  remind you of the Sierras?

High winds was a big part of this journey.  Bob was struggling with a head on wind pretty much the whole part of this section.  And this can be seen in the following pictures which show low dust storms  being blown across the valley floors.  Interestingly some of the dust was very white and others more sandy - reflecting the different soils within the valleys.  Luckily the car didn't get a sand blasting although it might have gotten off all the road dirt that has accumulated over the trip - especially in the snow regions of the country.

Ely is a mini Las Vegas wannabe and had casinos and some bright lighting in the downtown area reminiscent of Las Vegas glitz.  We did go to a specialty restaurant downtown billed as the old Jail House now restaurant.  It was fun, but we discovered that the old jail house had long since burned down.

Fun pose of the night....model hopeful Bob.