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Nevada Road Trip: Ely Excursions (Day 5)

November 3, 2025tuplesandattributesLeave a comment

This was the only day of my trip that the weather wasn’t perfect. Fortunately, none of my planned activities were outdoors.

I woke up to the health app on my phone telling me I had some outlier readings during the night. My respiratory rate had gone up to 15 something instead of its usual 13 and my blood oxygen level had dropped to 92. The app then proceeded to inform me that this sometimes occurs when you are at higher altitudes. Ely is at around 6400 feet, so the app was correct about the reason for the changes (I was back to normal by the 2nd night).

Many people don’t realize just how high in elevation most of Nevada is. Its average elevation is the 5th highest among the states at 5500 feet. It is also the 2nd most mountainous state after Alaska. Basically, the whole state is in the Basin and Range Province (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basin_and_Range_Province) and most of it is also part of The Great Basin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Basin).

I pulled this map off https://geology.com/topographic-physical-map/nevada.shtml. It gives a nice sense of just how mountainous Nevada is.

The train ride I went on in the morning was just up the Steptoe Valley a bit. This valley is one of the many “basins” to be found in basin and range country. At about 100 miles long, it’s not setting any records, but it’s no little thing either. We went about 12 or 13 miles up the valley and then the locomotive decoupled and came around to the other end of the train and we went back to Ely.

It was an enjoyable trip and if you’re ever in Ely, you should check out what kind of excursions are available. Although this trip was not stunningly scenic (in part due to the rain), a guide provided plenty of history about the area. You can check out some of the other trips they make here: https://nnry.com/

At the end of the train ride, we were offered a tour of the locomotive shed. There were a dozen or so of us on the train, but only three of us went on the tour. Wow, did those other people miss out!

An original sign on the outside of the shed:

“Book agents, insurance agents, peddlers, ticket sellers, solicitors, politicians positively prohibited from visiting the offices or shops of this Company”

The first thing our guide did was to warn us to step over not on the rails as they were slippery, especially in the rain. Once inside, she cautioned, do not touch anything, be careful not to step on anything, and don’t fall into anything. I think you can see from these pictures why the warnings were necessary.

Here’s a series of pictures showing our locomotive coming back into the shed:

During the whole tour, out guide kept us entertained with lots of stories about the various engines and also about the shop cats. Make sure you take this tour if you can.

I spent the afternoon roaming through the White Pine Public Museum (White Pine is the county that Ely is in). It was refreshing to be in a museum small enough that I could take a good look at everything and just enjoy the cornucopia of items from local history.

Learn all about the area’s first inhabitants with a seriously impressive American Indian display comprised of baskets, arrowheads, intricate beadwork, and more. The Pony Express route ran through northern Nevada, and the White Pine Public Museum does a masterful job at showcasing those stories alongside ranching and buckaroo history. The museum is also home to an impressive mineral collection with more than 300 samples from the region, including gold, silver, and copper ore mined from the hills surrounding Ely. Outdoor exhibits feature mining equipment, a caboose, a historic jail cell, and a complete historic pioneer cabin. https://travelnevada.com/museums/white-pine-public-museum/

And let’s not forget the cave bear:

One of the main attractions at the White Pine Public Museum is the storied Cave Bear. This prehistoric giant bear roamed North America during the Pleistocene era and was the most common bear in this region of Nevada. Sometimes called the Short-Faced Bear, these ancient creatures had a disproportionately short snout compared to other bears. In 1982, Cave Bear bones were discovered in White Pine County, and a replica model is always on display.

Next stop Caliente and surrounds.

Nevada Road Trip: Beatty to Tonopah (Day 3)

November 1, 2025tuplesandattributesLeave a comment

I hit the road with a handful of trail mix as I was sure I would be in Tonopah by lunch time. It’s under a hundred miles between the two towns, but I had a few stops planned along the way in the little town of Goldfield.

Goldfield is the county seat of Esmeralda County in spite of the fact that the town qualifies in some respects as a ghost town. In its heyday, it had around 20,000 residents, it now has about 400, with another 300 or so in the rest of the county. Unlike most ghost towns, though, the buildings are not abandoned. just largely unoccupied. In fact, here’s a piece of history, the Goldfield Hotel, that you could own:

The county courthouse (which also houses the county clerk, assessor, sheriff, jail, etc.):

Some other buildings:

Before the famous “art car” parades that occur at Burning Man each year began, “Rocket Bob” was creating art cars and they can be found on display right on the main street (https://travelnevada.com/arts-culture/rocket-bobs-art-cars/):

I couldn’t resist copying out part of the information on the sign in front of these beauties:

The Goldfield Art Car Park was the idea of Goldfield Resident and Art Car Owner Slim Sirnes, after the City of Reno impounded the moving art of Art Car Artist Robert “Rockette Bob” Van Keuren III in 2001. As the story goes, Rockette Bob had a number of licensed, registered, operating vehicles that he had to move every few days due to a Reno ordnance about vehicles sitting around on the street. Rockette Bob had a heart attack and was hospitalized for several weeks. The City of Reno pounced on the chance to remove his vehicles and quickly impounded them and towed them to the City Lot. When Rockette Bob was finally discharged from the hospital, he was unable to pay the impound fees. He figured that he would see what he could do when they came up at the next vehicle auction. In the meantime, Slim and Bob went to an Art Car Event in Houston, Texas. On the way back, Slim’s Art Truck developed mechanical problems and they were stranded, unable to make it back in time for the auction. Enter Slim’s daughter Nadiah in Reno. She went to the auction and although a couple of the vehicles had been sold before she got there, she was able to explain to the other bidders what had happened, and no one would bid against her for the remaining vehicles which she bought. Slim and Bob got back from Texas and brought them to Goldfield, NV where they have been displayed in several Goldfield locations creating interest in all who pass by.

These are not the most famous cars to be found in Goldfield, however. That distinction must go to the vehicles to be found in the “International Car Forest of the Last Church”.

Part of the Goldfield scene for years, the International Car Forest was created by longtime resident Mark Rippie, whose vision was to break the Guinness World Record for the world’s biggest car forest. Joined by artists Chad Sort and Zak Sargent, the three set to work, burying the noses of more than 40 cars, vans, trucks, and buses. Outdoor car exhibits are found in other states (like Texas’ Cadillac Ranch or Nebraska’s Carhenge, for example), but Goldfield’s International Car Forest of the Last Church is, in fact, the largest in the country. (https://travelnevada.com/arts-culture/international-car-forest-of-the-last-church/)

The “International Car Forest” part of the name was a spoof on “National Forest”. “The Last Church” portion was as a representation of the Last Church being inside each of us.

I did make it to Tonopah by lunch and in the afternoon checked into the historic Mizvah Hotel.

It’s reputed to be haunted, but I wasn’t visited by any spirits. The lobby was delightful, though.

My only other activity for the day was to visit the historic Tonopah Mining Park: nice exhibits and views of some of the biggest mines around town (all of which shut down long ago).

Day four is the drive up to Ely, NV.

Nevada Road Trip: Excursions from Beatty (Day 2)

October 31, 2025November 1, 2025tuplesandattributesLeave a comment

I started the morning with a pancake from Mel’s Diner. The only other customers were five locals in their jeans and hats spending the morning solving the problems of the world.

Rhyolite is a ghost town just a few miles from Beatty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhyolite,_Nevada). The town began its life in 1905, and, by 1907, Rhyolite had electric lights, water mains, telephones, newspapers, a hospital, a school, an opera house, three railroads, and a stock exchange. Its peak population ranged between 3,500 and 5,000 in 1907–08.

The town died almost as quickly as it had arisen. By 1910 the boom was over, and businesses began to close. In 1916, the power company turned off the electricity and even removed the poles. There is very little left of the town as most of the buildings were moved elsewhere or the materials were repurposed.

As I was taking pictures of one of the buildings, I heard this buzzing noise: not like a snake, more like a hive of angry hornets. Just as I was beginning to worry, I realized that of the two other people who were there, one of them was flying a drone. I walked down to meet him and found that he and his wife were from Australia, on a four-week visit to the West Coast. They were on their way to Yosemite. I thought Rhyolite was a rather esoteric choice of stops, but apparently they were fascinated by ghost towns.

One building in town that is still fairly well preserved is Tom Kelly’s Bottle House:

Though the lights went out in 1914, they turned back on a decade later when Paramount Pictures used Rhyolite as a setting for the 1926 film The Air Mail. Some of Rhyolite’s remaining structures were restored for their film debut, including the Tom Kelly bottle house. This residence—built completely out of 50,000 medicine, whiskey, and beer bottles—demonstrates that glass in the American West was sometimes a cheaper construction material than wood or stone. The house still stands today and is the oldest and largest known bottle house in the United States. https://travelnevada.com/ghost-town/rhyolite-ghost-town/

Right next door to Rhyolite is the Goldwell Open Air Museum. This outdoor sculpture park “was created in 1984 by a group of well-known Belgian artists (led by the late Albert Szukalski) who were drawn to the remote upper portion of the vast Mojave Desert to pursue artistic vision free from convention. Each piece was designed within the context of the landscape and should be interpreted as such.” (https://travelnevada.com/museums/goldwell-open-air-museum/) Since then, more sculptures have been added.

The first sculpture was a ghostly life-size version of Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Last Supper:

Later sculptures included a 25-foot woman constructed from pink cinder blocks and a 24-foot steel prospector and his penguin companion:

Beatty is famous for the number of wild burros that are in the area and that wander through town. I didn’t see any while in town (although they left plenty of evidence of their presence), but a few did show up as I was leaving Rhyolite: