Today we started our trip under clear skies and a little frosty morning. Even though so much of where we traveled is desert, we are also surrounded by interesting and magnificent mountains. This was the theme of our day “Desert and Mountains”.
Again we decided to travel as the crow-flies to Las Vegas and therefore we took the lesser traveled highways. We had a late start to our trip as I was blogging while Mark caught up on some sleep. It was around 10:45 am when we started our drive and the temperatures began to rise nicely as we traveled down Highway 305 from Battle Mountain to Austin.
Austin, Nevada
As much as we were enjoying the warmth of the sun, the air conditioning wasn’t working so it became a little unbearable at times. The temperature of the wind was definitely cooler so we constantly opened the windows to get the cooler air but driving between 100 and 120 kilometers an hour made it really noisy. We promised ourselves to get the air fixed in Vegas.
Along the Pony Express
There weren’t many towns along this route but a couple of places stood out. The first being Austin, Nevada. This town is famed for being along the original Pony Express and it certainly looked to date back to the late 1800’s, with quaint antique shops, churches and artifacts.
The House Boat Car
Then there was Goldfield, which looked to be under some restoration and was famous for the gold rush there in the early 1900’s when the population was 20,000. Now I would say that it may only have a couple of thousand residents if that. But what really caught our attention Goldfield was the “Art Car Park”. A couple of Art Car owners used to put these cars together and drive them around Reno, Nevada. The authorities in Reno didn’t like the cars and they were run out of town and they ended up in Goldfield. They are now just a heap of interesting junk and tourist attractions. Both of the original designers are now dead, and one of their daughters still drives one of her Dad’s truck to work but all the others are not in driving order.
The Santa Bug
So the rest of the trip was all about the incredible mountains and the desert. Las Vegas here we come !
Mountains near Las Vegas