I arrived back in Hudson, WY wreaking of stale tobacco smoke and alcohol, four casino chips from two different casinos the only money I had in my pocket. What a long and strange journey it had been…did I mention it was long?
It had started out inncoent enough; Taylor and his cousin Angel were going to see his mom for her birthday, I was going to tag along for the hell of it. As Taylor was working in South West Wyoming, we dropped camp in Rock springs and although he and I split a six pack of Heinekan before the trip, we promptly found a few more bars to go to before hunkering down in a hotel. Our original plans were to get out of Rock Springs around 4:30 - 5:00am, however we missed that mark by 7 hours, a mere handful but nonetheless it was a tactical defeat by a combination of alcohol, Taylor’s hick-uping, my snoring and Angel’s failure to sleep.
(One of the last signs you’ll see in Wyoming before crossing over into Utah. God, I love this state)
We got through to Utah easily enough, and it was there that the small problems would begin to add up. A blizzard was blowing through from the Wyo border all the way through Salt Lake. This makes for interesting driving, for you have to dodge drivers who seem to have all acquired their road skills from NYC taxi drivers on slick roads with snow dropping all around you. To your right is a drop off which will put you on the bottom level of a two level Union Pacific line with the train keeping pace with traffic. To your rigth are deer. They see the storm and are desperately seeking to forage as much as possible, even if it means a suicide run across a 4-lane highway in thick traffic.
(driving in Utah)
Salt Lake City mellows the weather a little bit, but not the traffic. The further away from the city center you get though, the more you tend to notice a lot of sunshine and less traffic and snow. I snap off a quick bunch of pictures of the Great Salt Lake from the back seat as we drive by it.
(The Great Salt Lake)
Then we make a quick stop at a Flying J in Tooele City for cheap food, and I grab a Utah coffee mug. Angel asks me why I grabbed the mug and not the shot glass? It’s simple, really: It seems a bit out of place to have a shot glass in the land of 3.2 beer. It’d be as if AA started giving out approved bottles of wine for every 3rd month you went dry. No, no coffee was definitely the way to go.
(the truck stop at Tooele City)
The Salt Flats take you straight out of Utah and straight into the clean filtered air of the Casino - er - I mean Nevada. If you’re ever on the Salt Flats, be sure to check out the tree. You’ll know you’re looking in the right place for a couple of reasons: 1) it’s the only thing around for miles besides flat and dirt; and 2) its branches bear an odd sort of fruit, they come in the shape of sports balls and you can see the broken shells of those who had fallen the previous years. It was on the Flats that one of the funniest moments of the trip occurred. Taylor was at the wheel of our doomed maroon Tahoe and was slowly gaining on a blue Tahoe with Utah plates. We ran neck and neck as I looked over to see a man in shirt and tie eye glasses and short hair. He had one hand on the wheel and a smile from ear to ear; he looked back at us often. Sitting next to him long blond hair, her head in her hands and her hands in her lap, was his wife - crying. This was a race; we had been thrown into it by devine whimsey, and it was on. I pointed it out to Angel and Taylor as I laughed my ass off and they joined in the hillarities as well. We passed them soon after, but they never caught up.
From the moment you enter Nevada you notice two things: 1) the entire state is one gigantic casino with some roads to connect it to the rest of the world - even the dollar store have slot machines 2) You’ll find that North Eastern Nevada looks exactly like Wyoming. Strange, because of the bordering states I’ve been to (South Dakota, Colorado, Utah) none look like an exact match to Wyoming. Of course the towns are different, but on the rural roads such as HWY 50, you notice the distinct ressemblance of I-25, I-80, HWY789, etc. It would be on HWY 50 that the first of our bad luck would touch down. In Wendover, we stopped at a light when the trailer end of a semi comes inches from re-alaigning the front end of our Tahoe,prehaps re-alaigning it all the way back to Utah. Actually, the Utah border was only about 5 feet away, painted in the street. Fourty miles outside of Wendover, NV, a border town divided in half by Utah and Nevada, lies absolutely nothing but acres of unused land and a house. Insidently, 40 miles outside of Wendover is about 80 miles outside of Ely, which we learned was our destination upon crossing the border. Taylor, still in racing mode passed another vehicle when smoke began rising quickly from under the hood. What we had was a leak. Unfortunately, we didn’t realize it at the time. The owner of the house I mentioned earlier drove over to offer us help and possible water…from a pond. Taylor turned it down. He did, oddly enough, accept the bad information that we were 40 miles outside of Ely.
(What a great place to break down)
Highway 50 was dubbed the lonliest highway in America in the early 1980s, which in turn sparked the “I survived Highway 50″ mock campaign which is still in full swing throughout Nevada today. It’s your typical frick and frack war between the yuppy and the redneck, however, I will offer up one pieceof advise be you redneck or yuppy: DO NOT break down on HWY50. It’s a lonly road especially with hardly any cell phone service and the sun setting fast.
(This Photo Shopped post card illustrates some of the joys we went through while we were waiting for signs of life that didn’t walk around on all fours. )
For two hours we attempted to reach Taylor’s parents, most of the time the call was dropped after only 2 rings. We did manage a couple time to get a “Help! We’re somewhere where we don’t know where we are!” and “The man said we were only 40 miles away”. Mostly though, we just played cribbage. That’s right! While lesser groups might have paniced or tried to get the man to let them use his phone, we turned on the mini-mag light and shuffled the cards. The sun was gone, the temperature was dropping fast and down some dirt road we saw headlights - “DAMN! The one time I didn’t bring a gun…” Taylor voiced what I thought. Perhaps it was the sight of a lone truck, parked in the desert, with fogged windows that dissuaded them from bothering to stop. Whatever it was,they didn’t hang around long once they reached us. It’s a good thing too, the best we had to defend ourselves with was my 6″ lock blade; it was razor sharp, though. I was ahead at cribbage when the bastards decided to stop playing. 30 minutes later, Taylor’s parent came. We loaded up the necessities into their pick up, then waited again for the tow truck.
The road to Ely was designed so that you can see the lights of both the town and the prison but that you never quite reach it. It’s a wonder anyone ever to prison in Nevada the the roads they have. In Ely, at last.
(Ely, NV)
We went to a hotel run by a nice Indian (not Native) family. There’s nothing like a warm room and the hint of a copper mine. Taylor called the tow man at 6am the next day to find out where the truck was. Apparently 6am was a bad time for the tow man. So was 10am; he was awake at least, but eating breakfast. 2pm was good though, he dropped it off at the repair shop, but now the mechanic was at lunch. The mechanic not being around or at lunch would go on for the next 3 days.
In the mean time I took a ride on the Nevada Northern Railway, played some blackjack (actually won $18) and switched hotels. Then on day 4 we went back to Wendover (or as it appears on the map, West Wendover). The trip on the NNRY (Nevada Northern Railway) takes through an original tunnel, then one that was made in 2003. Yougetto look at some descent landscape and see a lot of abandoned mines, towns and even coal cars that derailed (and I managed to miss as we passed bythen twice). Anyhow this next section of pictures are mostly for the rail fan friends and family I have, so if you’re not interested feel free to just skip ahead.
(NNRY train yard and museum)
(Sights and scenes on the NNRY tour to Ruth, NV)
I didn’t have much money to play around with at what the big casinos there. I had invested most of my cash in hotel rooms (including the one we were at in Wendover) and food for myself. Alcohol is not a problem; if you gamble you drink free. We stayed at the Nugget Casino; the first night a talked Taylor and myself into a couple of cigars before we hit the tables. The week days are a good time to go to the casino. There are so few people around, the people running the tables don’t mind showing you the games. I learned the easiest way to both piss off the girl running the roulette table and not lose (or make) much money. Trade secrect, sorry. Taylor stayed one night then went back with his parents, Angel and I kept our rooms. The next night we went across the sky walk to the Montego Bay.
The Montego Bay is an electrical bill from Hell that would seem to fit in better in Miami, FL rather then Nevada. Bright contrasting neon lights everywhere; legions of one armed bandits and, most impressive of all, a live rock tank over 100 gallons build into one of the support columns by their front desk. In all of this, not one burned out or flickering light, not one slot machine down, not one dead fish…not even a little bit of dirt in the tank. Rooms under $40. I played craps and made $7.
Later that day, Angel ran off to the black jack table and I collected our things. Sitting in the lobby Taylor finally called. The Tahoe was fixed we were home free. 40 minutes later he called back, they found an air pocket. More time to wait. Angel materialized having poured one too many screw drivers into herself and having gotten lucky at the black jack table. Taylor called back - Tahoe’s running but the heater core got blown out with the air pocket. Going inot Utah up to the Flying J from a few days before was cold and rainy, but the worst was yet to come. Somewhere between Salt Lake and the border the rain turned into a white-out blizzard. We drove slow, watching the semi in fornt of us start to spin-out, we reluctantly took the point man position of a long line of vehicles leaving the state.
In Wyoming, we stopped in Evanston and bought a secondary heater. I hugged it all the way back to Taylor’s rented house in Fahrson. We reached his humble aboud around 5:30am, just in time for himto go to work. His boss’ wife suggested he bone up onhis sleeping, which we all did. We decided that perhaps a celebration was in order as it seemed we had survived a rather harrowing ordeal, and went to Rock Springs tohit a few bars. In the first bar a girl asked if the stool next to me was taken, and for once I had a smooth reply for her. Unfortunately, someone had screwed with the volume controls and failed to file a proper report of this to maintenance in time to save me from a horrendous embarassment. I enlisted with Captain Morgan quickly and with out hesitation. Bar #2 didn’t offer much to the eye, but it did havea pool table and we stayed there for a while, I continued my tour of the Cola Sea with the right and just Captain Morgan. For our final bar destination we decided to go to the tiity bar. Club Millenium became our destination because it was the only one I knew how to get to. I went to dry land, bid Captain Morgan farwell and started politicing with Sam Adams. We went home when the bar closed and the girls stopped dancing and promptly passed out.
On a trip that seemed so eager to kick us squarely in the pervervial nut sack, one might think the worst was behind us. Not so. The Universeis like the writers of “Scary Movie”: when it finds something it sees as funny, it works it like a horse until something keels over. Thus was the case as Angel and I headed home over South Pass with a miserable storm nipping at our heels. There were already snow banks several feet high, snow plows were running up and down both sides of the 2-lane highway. The road had transformed into a 2″ thick solid block of ice where we spun out. It appeared that Angel forgot to push the 4-HI button and our pleasant cruise of 40 mph turned into a 70 mph slow spin into a 4-foot snow bank. One might think that my life passed before my eyes considering we were spinning a cookie on a road that is surrounded mostly by steep cliffs, but oddly enough the only thing that went through my head was that commercial with the man spinning in circles up and down the road. Three vehicles passed before a snow plow came by, sanded both sides of the road and towed us out. The rest of the journey home was fine, although by now we were both a might edgy. When we got in I headed straight for the shower. Why not? After all, the bags could be unloaded at anytime. Besides I was at least confident of one thing: there were NO electrical appliances near the shower.
I had at least the Riverton charriot races to look forward to.
Back in May of 2005 those in the know might remember hearing something from me about going to Indianapolis. I promised pictures, then found myself short of a scanner. Almost a year later, Iver got the scanner and the ambition, but I’ll skip the long drawn out version of the story and let the pictures tell it for me.
