Day 11- Tonopah, NV

We’re still here, and we’re still locked out of our blog. We can read it, just can’t write in it. Wish I could tell you to wait for this situation to get corrected, but I can’t tell you poo-poo!

But let’s pretend that my bark can be heard across the internet, and tell you how my day went. Sometimes Don has to get a little bit inventive when we’re in a strange place and it’s time for our morning walk. This was one of those days; there are no parks in this town, hardly anyone even has a lawn. Don remembered the one public grassy spot during our cruising yesterday, a very small area surrounding a memorial gazebo near the intersections of Highways 95 and 6, but when we got there, the sprinklers were going. No deal. So, giving up on grass, he took me up to the old County Courthouse, which sits on a hill overlooking the town. It turned out to be a great place to explore, with all kinds of strange smells. We wandered around the parking lot and grounds, which were devoid of people, and we got in a little downhill/uphill walking, too. Turned out fine.

When we got back to the coach, Geri was ready to go touring with us, and we set off to cruise Tonopah. The place is really, what you might call, colorful. As you may know, Tonopah is a Silver Rush town, created by a guy who picked up a rock to throw at his deviant mule, felt it weighed more than it should, and found out it was nearly half silver. It wasn’t long before hundreds of mining claims covered the area, and a town was born, which grew to a population of many thousands. What’s left now are people who love the place’s colorful past, and hope to build a future on it. One thing I’ll say for them, they never throw anything away! The town is loaded with piles of abandoned autos, air conditioners, house siding, and anything else that doesn’t have any further use. Old mining shacks have disintegrated and the remains left to decorate the landscape. Mobile homes have decayed to the point of collapse. Major buildings on the highway through town have become shells, with no apparent future planned for them. But there are a few remnants of the town’s greatness, like the Hotel Mizpah, which has been renovated and reopened lately. The owners obviously have great hopes for it, and we wish them well. I didn’t get to go in, of course, but Geri and Don both said that it was very nicely done in the interior.

After a lunch stop back at the rig, we headed south on 95 down to the town of Goldfield, which has a similar history to Tonopah’s, except a few years later. And the precious metal involved was gold, not silver. But it was a strike of such major proportions that by the early 1900’s, Goldfield was the largest community in Nevada! We stopped at the office of the Yucca Mountain Oversight Administration, where a very nice lady gave us some literature on Goldfield’s history, and pointed out the collapsing brick house next door that was built by the man who went on to build New York’s Madison Square Garden, whatever that is. Our tour of Goldfield indicated that, comparatively, Tonopah was thriving. The decaying buildings were more magnificent than Tonopah’s, and there were many more of them, but the sense of abandonment was everywhere. Don noted that their economy was nonexistent, with nothing to promote a tourist base, which is all that they could possibly lay claim to. We all thought it was beautifully sad.

Back in Tonopah, I got my dinner and they took off to have theirs at the Mizpah. They returned with good reviews of the food, but a little critical of the service. Don took me out for a short walk up the road in back of the RV “Park”, where we found some old foundations of mining machinery. This place must be loaded with stuff like that. We watched American Idol, which is starting to get Don agitated, mostly about the girl that’s trying to imitate Janis Joplin (who he had met and liked many years ago). I don’t have a dog in this fight.

We’re on the road tomorrow, heading for Pahrump where I recall that the grass is great!

Hope that we can post from there! Sayonara!