NV desolation

The desolate, and i really MEAN that, nevada desert: its where we have been since leaving reno. the cotrast to the way of life rachel and i are used to is quite marked. rach is driving the rv now, for her fourth time. we are heading southeast on highway 95 toward tonapah nv. its a two lane road with a speed limit of 70. we usually go 55 or 60 at the most. we have cell service here (i have NO idea how), but data services arent available on it, so i am composing this on wordpad. after leaving reno, we spent the night at scotty's rv park, in hawthorne nv, and last night stayed at the el capitan casino parking lot (free) in the same town. this parking lot was the loudest overall place that we have yet stayed, far louder than the 5 (LOL) free nights in the sands reno parking lot. reno ended up being far better than i would have thought. it was my fourth time there. i lost track of the total reno gambling losses, but they were not above $100. i ended up losing $100 and $80 on two separate nights, while rachel was up $20 and $40 on those nights (i think) all playing blackjack. prior to that we were up a bit less than $50, and rachel also made a final $25 blackjack bet (due to a coupon) the morning we left that she won. maybe we are down around $45? anyway, doesnt matter at all, because we had a great time eating at all the cheap places, and walking around the town. also, poker (online) went quite well while in reno. people might be surpised to find that i didnt spend a single minute at a live poker table in reno. at this point im used to playing 8-12 tables of online at a time. the live game (except for home games with friends) makes me bored and i probably dont play well in that environment either. also, the thought of it just feels like a chore, and i dont think my time is used wisely there compared to just playing my normal online game.


we had a minor problem being parked for 5 days with no electricity: the batteries in the rv ended up going dead. we didnt bring either of the two juper cables we own, so we had to buy some. the ol' suzuki jumped the rv straight away, so no problem. we have a generator which is quite hard to start in the rv, and i think that was the main culprit that drained the batteries. i have decided from now on to start the rv engine before starting the generator (so the alternator will be working). also, it doesnt seem that the solar panels on the rv are charging the batteries at all.

on to hawthorne, and the nv wasteland. this place just feels sad. its not as bad as tulelake was, but there are so many stores that are vacant, and these places just have an overall bleak feel to them. it makes seattle look like such a prosperous place. there are little towns every 20 miles or so out in the middle of nowhere, with deserted and fallen-down buildings, and people living mostly in double-wide trailers on small lots. it definitely makes me keep in mind how good our lot in life is.

we took a day-trip to navada's "best ghost town", aurora, which is about 15 miles east of bodie (a well-preserved ghost town that is a california state park, which we saw last summer on our honeymoon). the roads to aurora were all unpaved. we just followed the gps, and it took us the shortest distance. we ended up on a 5 mile stretch of some of the roughest "road" i have ever seen. it was 5 miles an hour the entire way (yes, took one hour), and totally covered with rocks. the suzuki traveled like a champ, and we got to test out the four-wheel-drive-LO. this road ended up being the rear entrance to a working gold mine! there were two security guards who were very nice, and pointed us in the correct direction (saying that we werent the first nor last to make the mistake, but that we "probably shouldnt come back this way" either!!) aurora once had 10000 or more population, and all that is left is a cemetary and a buch of tin. we couldnt even find any foundations, so it wasnt too spectacular, but the journey was well worth it.

one of the things that has been on my mind a lot is the recycling situation. some of you may not know, but at home i was a militant recycler. over the past three years or so i had started walking often, and i began to clean the entire neighborhood around my house of the bottles and cans that were littered there. one of my friends jake, who didnt have recycling at his apartment even brought his recycling to my house. in the rv, it is impossible to recycle without a huge inconvenience to us. there isnt space to save up the stuff, nor are there recycling containers almost anywhere. also, hauling it around until we do find a place to recycle means more wieght and less gass mileage. so, though it pains me, we have reverted to just throwing away ALL our recyclables.

not having cable or satellite tv is quite a change, though i am glad at this point to not have signed up for it. everywhere we go, we get several tv stations, many in HD. thanks to my dad for helping me mount the 32" HD samsung lcd that we have been enjoying.

to the future: we will stay a night at least in tonopah, nv, which is probably the highest town either of us have been. it is over 6000 feet above sea level. we never know what we will find in any given place, so are ready to stay longer if there is something of interest. next, we will be heading down the extra-terrestrial highway to rachel, navada and past AREA 51! neither of us realized we were so close to it, and i think being close its a must-see. we will continue past las vegas to the grand canyon, as the weather is a concern, and we must hit that asap. then we will either head back to LV to stay for a bit, or south to other nat'l parks and finally san diego. we have a better plan at this point than we have since we started, though we still dont know the specific days for anything (i would argue that this is the perfect way to be!)