Nevada pictures

A cute little bordello, or possibly just a strip club.

The Hoover dam.

In Nevada garden gnomes are out...

Extraterrestrial Highway, museum, shop or what ever. It is closed. Aliens are out as well.

But in Rachel they are still the shit.

Tonopah cemetery, and a black cat. 

Lost civilizations. Coledale, US Highway 6, abandoned dwelling, read the post here.

Flat and dusty.

Used to be a play land and water park outside of Vegas...

Used to be a water slide...

Now in ruins.

All these piles of ruble could be yours David E!

The Cowboy VI

The Cowboy still eludes us. When developing the pictures from the trip this is the only picture I took and as you can see the Cowboy is not really recognizable in it. What you see is my brother trying one of the Cowboys horses, really fine animals in the middle of the valley that was the Cowboys ranch.

Bye Bye West Coast

Leaving the West Coast I feel like I should try and sum the sites and places up:
I visited and stayed in the large cities:

Seattle, WA
Portland, OR
San Francisco, CA
Fresno, CA
Las Vegas, NV
Los Angeles, CA
San Diego, CA
Yuma, Az

as well as in some smaller places:

Tonopah, NV
Fort Bragg, CA
South Lake Tahoe, CA/NV
Ridgecrest, CA
Grand Canyon, Az

Only once did we sleep in the car between Redding & Mineral, CA.

The place I liked the most might have been Rachel in Nevada because of the fantastic experiences we had there. Otherwise noteworthy location where the great national parks; Death Valley, Red Wood, Yosemite and Grand Canyon as well as, in lack of a better word the "ski-resort" Lake Tahoe. The windmill park at Monolith was also a sight to behold.
Salvation Mountain was something, more like a good road trip with an old friend than fantastic in it self.
Legoland was not as memorable, especially because of the price.

Seattle, San Francisco and San Diego are cities to visit for sure. Las Vegas is something else, rather than a city we could probably call it an attraction or thrill-ride. Worth seeing but not much more. Plan your trip wisely and do not over stay.
Fresno and Yuma gave to little impression on me to talk about while Portland was a nice long stay for me. But this one was with friends so it got very different finding oneself in a context and hanging out in peoples homes and at parties. Los Angeles was as I have already mentioned a big let down, for several reasons already written about.

I regret that I did not make it to Canada or Mexico but time is running out, the USA immigration rules does not help at all and having a rental car made us uncomfortable to cross.
My gold this trip was hanging out with my own Cowboy, go driving ATV in the sand dunes and probably best of all: to just let go of reality and make this trip.

last swim

On our way into Nevada we found an abandoned Water-park. Strange place. It was hard to tell how long it had been in the desert; nothing really rots or rusts here everything inanimate just is. It sometimes feels like time does not exist here and that at any point some cowboy from 2 centuries past could ride out of the haze.

The planted trees had died and fallen to the ground, but the palm-trees where still alive. The stone houses, although painted in joyful colours that befit a Water-park stood sombre and silent. Their doors thorn from their hinges and their insides ravished by previous guest: Coke-paper cups, red plastic straws and black fast-food trays littered the inside of the hollow ruins now doomed to never cheer again. Everything covered by a beige dust.


Someone had been using the place as an Air-soft battle ground. White plastic bullets littered the area and inside the house we found used flash-bangs. Pretty cool place to stage a Air-soft fight. Also very inaccessible.

So inaccessible that it did not seem like a wonder that the Water-park had failed. The wonder was rather what made someone put it here? Off the Highway 15, but not exactly at the exit of the Free-way and not really close to anything. Now dead and forgotten. But someone must have paid for all the losses...

Coledale, US Highway 6, abandoned dwelling

On our way west along US Highway 6 we came upon some ruins and abandoned houses. We did a shallow exploration of them. It seemed to have been a gas station, a bar a motel or some kind of lodging with several long houses as well as some other buildings and homes. Part had been burnt to the ground. Scattered in the area was naturally black rock. And further away on the plain we could see something white, possibly a dried out lake of salt. The mountain in the background is Boundary Peak, Nevadas highest point at 13143 ft where we are headed.

Tonopah, NV

We spent the night in the somewhat scary "Clown Motel" in Tonopah with a "life-size" pre-Ronald McDonald Clown and a "without a doubt haunted" cemetery from 1911 right next to it . At least that was the information given to us by the woman who gave us the key.
My brother decided to defrost the fridge in the hotel room. During the small hours. He is funny that way. You never know what is going to happen. I might also mention the scary ghost finger that opened the shower curtain when I was in there… "haunted, proven beyond doubt" exactly how this is measured I did not have the energy to ask.

As the sun came up we looked around the main street, fittingly called "Erie Street" about four times looking for the place where the breakfast was served: the Sidewinders.
We got ourselves some bacon and eggs and what not but we got something else that we had not bargained for: the kitchen girl came out to tell me that she never made eggs sunny side up before. I then shortly explained what to look for in one sentence and then she said: "I will not be able to remember that."
Perfect.

We ate and decided to climb a mountain so when we were about to pay the kitchen girl came back and asked about the eggs again!? And then she asked us a few more questions and could not care less for the answer. A fantastic way to signal: I DO NOT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT YOU (but I do mind the tip).