Tonopah To Winnemucca

Our friend Les, aka The Mexico Kid, has been following us one day behind for a while. He emailed last night from Beattie, NV saying if he knew we were only 90 miles ahead of him he would have kept driving so he could watch the Canucks – Blackhawks on Starchoice with me. We agreed to stay put for a couple of hours in the morning so he could catch up with us and have coffee and a chat. He must have had a very early start (actually he set his alarm!) and pulled into the casino parking lot at about 9:30 this morning.

It is always nice to visit with Les! He spent his winter in Mexico and despite being robbed once, he had a great time! We heard all, or at least most, of each others stories and he started to leave. We were checking out his RV and he pointed out that his motor scooter mount on the back was sagging. He said he would have it looked at when he got home. We crawled underneath and to me at least, it did not look safe. The motor scooter ramp sticks out almost three feet and is secured by a heavy piece of channel inserted into the trailer receiver. This puts a lot of downward, twisting pressure on the mount and the continuous bouncing as he drives had bent the frame member the receiver is attached to. He agreed to have it looked at and modified by a frame shop or a good welding shop ASAP. He had some welding done in Mexico but it only reinforced what was there, it did not address the underlying problem. I hope it holds until you get it looked at Les, it would be a disaster to lose your beloved “Bonita”!

We left at just after 11:00 and headed north on NV 376, a great secondary highway. We drove through beautiful desert to Austin where we switched to NV 305, an equally nice secondary highway. This route has become my favorite route north. Even though we reached 7,500 feet altitude at one point, we did not go through nearly as much gas as I feared we might.

We pulled into Battle Mountain, NV and had a look at the casino parking lot. I had phoned them last night and was told there was lots of room to park and there was, but backed up right to the railway tracks! The casino was very small and not too inviting looking so we decided to drive the extra 55 miles to Winnemucca where we are parked in a Walmart Superstore. We were on the road for over five hours, a little more than we like to drive in a day but it was nice to get all those miles behind us.

We needed to shop and now Norma is in getting her nails done. It is warmer here than it has been so it will be a peaceful night. The only big problem is my Virgin Broadband has no signal and even with my Hawking dish, I cannot find a stray WIFI signal so I am mute! On the positive side, we are getting all the networks on the TV antenna. Life is good!

This is what we watched for five hours today. There were very few other vehicles on the road.