north to central Nevada

Prince's Plume

We left Boulder City fairly early this morning, heading through Las Vegas then north on hwy. 95 through Goldfield. As we climbed in elevation the flat desert began to green up a bit and soon we were in the midst of a Joshua tree forest. Things look healthy here. Nevada apparently hasn't suffered the killing freeze and severe drought like Arizona. Though the desert here receives only about  6 inches of rainfall a year, the plants are well adapted. There are even a few wildflowers blooming! Prince's Plume isn't one of the most common here, but we found this clump growing beside the road.

I've always been fascinated by Joshua trees. They take on such fascinating shapes and are just gorgeous when covered with their big white blossoms. This is the thickest I've seen them grow in all our recent travels. They're pretty picky about climate and elevations and things must be just perfect in this area.

All along the route we saw convoys of contract and agency fire fighters - some heading north for a well deserved rest after 2 or 3 weeks on the fires in Arizona and New Mexico, others heading south, probably to the fire in southern Arizona (Sierra Vista).

We passed through Goldfield, which hasn't changed much since my folks explored in the mine dumps for old bottles 50 years ago. In the early 1900's Goldfield was the largest town in the state, but now it's considered a ghost town. It still has a lot of permanent residents, so perhaps "living ghost town" would be more accurate.

A little further north we stopped for lunch, groceries and fuel in the little old mining town Tonapah.

The town is looking fairly prosperous considering their population is only around 3300. It's the only place to buy essentials for many miles in either direction, so they have a bit of a captive audience.

Both Goldfield and Tonapah are good places to visit if you want a bit of the flavor of the old mining towns without having to venture off the highway. There are several buildings that are pretty much "original" and illustrate the creativity of residents trying to make life comfortable when they had very little to work with. This house in Tonapah is sided with flattened metal cans. They make pretty good shingles!

For some people this part of Nevada "just desert" but for us it's not only colorful landscapes, but it's just oozing history. At every turn there's another historic mine (silver, gold, copper, and others), an historic railroad,or another abandoned brothel. Just south of Mina we passed the "Wildkat Ranch" - a classy assembly of tall Roman columns enclosing a small squat plaster building, and surrounded by several mobile homes (entertainment rooms). Closed for lack of traffic one would suppose, as the brothels are still legal here.

Mine tailings and headframes near Goldfield

In the realm of civilization and services, we're just a little bit north of  nowhere, but we've had spotty cell service all the way. 30 miles from the park we still have full 1x service. Amazing! So what do people do for work out her "in the middle of nowhere"? Well, mining is big. In fact. we just passed a large magnesium mine, and it turns out they are hiring........ need a job?

Our final destination today is the Berlin-Ichthyosar State Park, where we'll spend a few days exploring.