Our time in Washington had come to an end. We loaded up the poor little Sonata to the gills and left Shannon & Cam’s house in Spokane Valley. Unfortunately, we had to head backwards over 300 miles to Western Washington for a rescheduled appointment rather than just heading south. After our extended stay in St. Lucia due to hurricane Maria, our plans for our drive home were all discomboobilated. We had appointments that had to be rescheduled, and hotel reservations that had to be cancelled. We had planned to drive south to California and spend some time at Yosemite National Park. Then to Death Valley National Park, over to Las Vegas, then to Bryce Canyon, Moab, and Mesa Verde. Early Fall is high season for Moab, and we didn’t want to lose our reservations there, so we just cut out the first week of our trip, and drove fast to get back on schedule.
So we stayed a couple of nights with our super host friends Jeff & Kennedy, did our appointments, then bid farewell to our friends and family and hit the road. We took I5 south to Portland Oregon, then turned east to cross the Cascades at Mount Hood.
It was a beautiful September day, and Mount Hood was spectacular.
We then turned south and headed to Bend Oregon for our first night on this road trip. On such a clear day, the mountains in the Cascade range were all visible. This is Mount Jefferson to the west, as we cruised south through eastern Oregon. We will miss the beautiful mountains of the Pacific Northwest!
We got up early the next day for a REALLY long day of driving – over 600 miles. We made it to Nevada by noon, but that was only about 4.5 hours into the day. We were driving on state highways, which we like the best. Much more scenic and interesting than the interstate! I was surprised that Nevada had a ‘Welcome’ sign out here in timbuktoo.
The scenery changed from farmland, to barren brown, to hot sagebrushy hilly terrain. Not much different than eastern Washington!
As we got farther south in Nevada, the topography got really different. We would cross through mountains, drop into a valley for 10 or 20 miles, then up, over, through more hills, and back down into another valley. Over and over again. To look at it from Google Earth, it looks like waves. We were headed to Ely.
We saw lots of valleys like this in between the waves of mountains. One thing about being out here – very little traffic and high speed limits! … Well, maybe the speed limit wasn’t as high as our speedometer was going, but these long stretches of lonely road just begged for us to make good time (- or so said the captain).
Ely, Nevada is a tiny little OLD mining town. The only reason for this destination choice is that it is on the way to Bryce Canyon, which is really where we wanted to go. This seemed like a good place to discover along the way, and it put a whole pile of miles behind us. As we neared Ely, we saw these huge open mines along the road. I mean HUGE!
Look at it on Google Earth! It is an active “Pit Mine” for extracting copper, gold, and other minerals.
We arrived at our old time fancy hotel in Ely. The Hotel Nevada. Of course, it is an old western mining town in Nevada, so every hotel is also a casino. I chose this hotel because it is historic and had character. It makes travelling more fun if we can find something interesting about where we are!
Sure enough…. the structure is brick. So the electrical in our tiny little room was run on the outside of the walls.
And we had this warning in the bathroom. It was true. Taking a shower was an adventure – like in a house with a small water heater and somebody turns on the dish washer to take all the hot water, and then flushes a toilet which takes the cold water. YEOW-BURRR-BABY!
We walked around the block to the fun looking Jailhouse Restaurant. It was fairly small, and complete with your own jail cell for dining. And check out the lamp – a Jack Daniels bottle! This is the old west, after all!
We didn’t have far to drive to get to Bryce Canyon (That was the idea of driving so far yesterday). Along the way was Great Basin National Park – so we took a couple of hours to check it out. Who knew there would be a mountain over 13,000 feet in Nevada!?
We drove up, and up, and UP! We went past signs restricting any towed vehicles due to switchbacks. This picture shows us passing Elevation 10,000 feet. And we kept going up. Our poor little car!
It was beautiful. The fall colors were just starting to turn, and it was a beautiful sunny day. This park would be great for hiking, biking, and I imagine all kinds of winter snow activities.
Mount Wheeler actually still has a glacier. In Nevada! Who knew?!
When we came back down, there was a tiny little settlement of a few houses, and low & behold… a coffee station! We caught her just as she was closing for the day, and got ourselves a couple of nice tasty lattes for the road.
We continued on our way across the countryside. I like looking for old dwellings and barns, and made Kenny back up and stop so I could snap this old typical homestead.
We found Utah. It looked a lot like Nevada right here, but that wouldn’t last long!
Before you know it, we started to see the fabulous red rock that we were looking for. Utah’s geology is spectacular, and we were soooo looking forward to enjoying it again this year.
