Sixty days from now I head off to my eighth trip to Nevada. By the numbers this will be my sixth drive into rural Nevada, my fourth trip solo, I have traveled with my wife Anna once and then another time with my co-worker Charles. I've gone to Nevada alone before three times - all at my own pace snapping pictures and making videos at various stops, see this link to past trips. This upcoming July trip my proposed adventure and hope for glory centers on climbing the second highest peak in Nevada,Wheeler Peak located in Great Basin National Park. My permission to go for me and then as stated to others is this is an acknowledge of my fiftieth year on the planet.
Exploring Nevada on and off since June of 2001, the first time was just after I attended the audio visual convention Infocomm in
Las Vegas, has been like slowly driving through a travel guide. A curiosity lies
beyond words on a page to go down roads, paved or not, to actually experience the places
and landscapes. Unlike my own state of Georgia the number of living towns in Nevada are
few. This trip I go to Elko which is the seventh largest town in Nevada and if Elko
were in California it would be the 216th largest. Outside of the cities of Las Vegas and Reno this is sparse land. Intriguingly at
least for me, there are hundreds of named places, mostly former mining towns,
which once had human life, but now these places are fading slowly back into the dust. The Paved
roads of Nevada take you where want to go, however pavement is far less common in rural
Nevada than it is most states east. Dirt roads stretch hundreds of miles to places most would label as nowhere. I have a small jeep lined up to take out of Salt Lake City, Utah to travel where I can go within reason. For awhile I’ll be on HWY US 50 which is officially dubbed “the Loneliest
Highway in America” due to the lack of traffic you’ll see per hour. There are
risks to all this wonderment; you pass signs that state “No Gas Next 80 miles”,
and often there is no cell phone coverage to connect out of trouble or explain
you whereabouts to family and friends. After describing my trip plans a
coworker jokes,” yeah, they’ll find your bleached bones…”
