“Totin’ Our Pack Along the Dusty Winnemucca Road”

Johnny Cash said it, “I’ve been everywhere, man,” and wandering across the western deserts, I knew what he meant by “a road with so much dust and sand.” After leaving Capitol Reef National Park, we only made it as far as Delta, Utah, about 50 miles from the Nevada border, where we stopped for the evening at the Antelope RV Park. It was quiet and shady, but we waited 45 minutes for the manager to make an appearance after we called the number on the office door. Finally she called back and registered us over the phone. She was in an apartment upstairs from the office, but for some reason never came down. We had a nice dinner of stovetop chicken enchiladas, which have become a Scamp specialty, and caught up on our sleep again.

I was amused that the folks in Delta know their
Greek letters and made their sign a giant delta

Delta is one of the few towns in Utah that was not founded by Mormons. It is hard to tell any more; every little town in Utah, at least around all the national parks, has coffee shops. That is a new development as far as I can see. My uncle used to tell me that when he went to park conferences in Park City, Utah, you could not get a cup of coffee anywhere. Orange juice or water, those were your choices. Nothing stimulating!

When you cross the border from Utah to Nevada, there is a roadside casino immediately. Fortunately there is a gas station, too, because those are few and far between on US 50, the “Loneliest Road in America.” It’s not too far from Great Basin National Park, too, but we had visited there a few years ago in November, when the road up to Mt. Wheeler was closed. Well, it’s closed in May, too; it’s only open from June to October. So we didn’t make another stop, instead we drove on, through Nevada’s actual Great Basin, studded with disjoint mountains here and there, planning to go to Eureka, a nice little town where we had stayed once before.

US 50 in Nevada, the road goes on and on and on,
and you rarely see another car on the road

Curses! As luck would have it, this was the weekend of the Nevada State Old-Time Fiddlers Festival at the Opera House in Eureka. There aren’t many places to stay in Eureka, indoors or outdoors, and they were all booked by fiddlers and their entourages. And it’s over 70 miles to anywhere else with accommodations. So we changed our route and went north to I-80 and the little crossroads of Wells, where we booked a motel room because it had gotten cold and was going to get even colder.

We walked across the street to have dinner at a restaurant in a truck stop casino. (There are casinos everywhere in Nevada.) It wasn’t quite as good as the stovetop enchiladas, but it was fine. Although snow flurries were predicted overnight and in the morning, we didn’t hold much with that; after all, it had been in the 80s less than 48 hours earlier.

A snowy vista in Wells, Nevada

Well, the Nevada weather forecasters are pretty good, and in fact maybe they even undersold it. The next morning we woke up to a dusting of snow, but it just kept coming down. Fortunately not much was sticking, but it was cold and the visibility was poor at best. At breakfast, we talked to a couple from Washington state who were headed to Las Vegas. The weather took them completely by surprise; they were dressed in shorts, t-shirts and sandals, and had no winter clothes with them. They were impressed that we had clothes for the sudden return of winter.

We drove through crazy snow (but again, it was warm enough that it didn’t cause us any trouble driving). And there was enough traffic on the interstate that it never had a chance to build up on the road. But the visibility continued to be dreadful; I think in some cases we were at a high enough elevation that we were inside the clouds full of snow.

Driving through snow clouds on I-80 in north Nevada

We stopped in Elko, Nevada, for coffee and Skyline chili. Bet you weren’t expecting that—and we didn’t actually eat the chili there, but when we got off in search of a bakery that served meat pies (it was closed on Sunday), I saw a Smith’s Grocery. I know the names of almost all Kroger subsidiaries, mostly to avoid them, but one thing I learned from a friend of Cy’s was that at any grocery store owned by Kroger, you will find Skyline chili in cans. He’s not wrong; we were hankering for some Skyline, and there it was on the Smith’s shelf. We’ll make four ways in the camper one of these evenings when it warms up a little.

A nice coffee shop in Elko, Nevada

On across I-80, mountains, snow, clouds, almost no towns or gas stations, but we made it to Winnemucca by late afternoon. Winnemucca is a cool little town; we had been there a few years ago at Thanksgiving, when we shared a motel with a lot of travelers driving home to Idaho from California. That’s when I learned that the Donner Pass is still used today, and it’s still a rough passage in the winter time.

That hotel didn’t have parking for our Scamp, though, and since it was in the 30s by the time the sun started to set, Mike found us a room at a rather elderly casino with attached hotel. It was a very small room, but big enough. So, we had another casino restaurant dinner at the Winners Inn, right on the main street in town. The hallways of the hotel are lined with photographs of the place in its heyday, the 1950s and 1960s, when Nevada governors and other celebrities stopped by, they had rockabilly music and Basque dances, and it looks like it was a very happening place, known then as the Sonoma Inn.

The Winners Inn in Winnemucca, and our very small room therein

Since it was Sunday, the nice Winnemucca Public Library and the Mad Hatter Quilt Store (which I had visited the first time we’d been here) were both closed, but not long after we arrived, there was a small hailstorm, followed after awhile by the reappearance of blue skies. Now, the temperatures could rise a bit, too, and all would be well.

There are mountains surrounding Winnemucca
on three sides of the town

Another day across northern Nevada, and by early afternoon we’d crossed into Oregon, in a desolate high desert part of the state known apparently as the Oregon Outback. The road was flat and straight for a long, long time from Winnemucca through a crossroads called Denio Junction (where the gas cost $7 because you have no other options), but then, crossing into Oregon, it got windy and mountainous. I was driving when there was a six-mile winding cliff-hanging part that almost gave me a heart attack. I downshifted and held on for dear life; I really wanted to close my eyes, but since there were no guard rails, that was not a good idea. We made it down the mountain, and on another hundred or so miles to Lakeview, Oregon, known as “the most boring town in Oregon,” according to our son. He also warned us not to eat at the Subway. That was not a problem; we had Skyline chili in a can, and after setting up at the High Desert Hideaway campground right in town, we enjoyed four ways many miles from their place of origin.

Mmmm, Skyline (though we ate ours on paper plates)

Lakeview wasn’t quite as bad as Cyrus made it out to be. There was a grocery store and a hardware store, and even better, a gas station. Mike headed out of town in the morning, and about ten miles on realized that might be the only gas station we encountered before we got to Crater Lake, so we turned around and went back to fill up. So we got to see the Welcome to Lakeview* signs coming and going. The town seems to use this cowboy as their logo, it turns up on signs all over the area.

*Lakeview does not have a view of a lake. It did at one
time, but Goose Lake has pretty much dried up now.