Winnamucca to St. George

My turn to drive this morning, east on I-80 and 75 mph in a windstorm! Yahoo! It took miles to get past a trucker who kept driving down the middle of both lanes. Sleepy? The scenery across Northern Nevada is breathtaking.

We stopped for gas in Carlin, then took Hwy 278 south to US-50 and kept on heading east. One gorgeous valley after another, separated by ridges and snow-topped mountains. Up and over a pass, drop down twisty roads to an open range with creek or river, farmstead, then up the next ridge. We stopped often to pick up caches. The sagebrush is bright green; no lack of water at this time of year.

Ground squirrels abound here, on all of the roads, along the roads, in the fields. Honk and they scatter—we learned quickly that this is better than swerving around the little moving pylons! Old telegraph poles pinpoint a narrow gauge railroad line, long gone.

We stopped at Pancake Pass for a geocache. Found a pile of narrow-gauge railroad spikes and other hardware. Sorted through and picked up 4-5 to bring home. Still lots of snow at the higher ridges; the pass is 8000+ feet, cold at any time of the year.

I drove from here to St. George, and the wind never let up. Added to the awful Utah highways, with tar-filled bone jarring cracks, and it was a wrist-jarring 70 mph drive, fighting to keep the MX-5 on the road. I was so glad to turn off onto Hwy 18 and head NE through the last mountain range before we reach Utah. There's money here, you can tell by the perfect surface of this highway. Great roads with grassy shoulders, big cattle and horse ranches.

Just before St. George, we passed a spectacular red rock canyon, and didn't have time to explore. Bummer. There are a bunch of earth caches in there. But it was was getting late, and we still needed to find a hotel and something for dinner. Finally settled on a hotel, a small place that was $40 with taxes, but very clean and nice. Plus it was in town, so we could just walk next door for a restaurant. The Mexican restaurant was closed, but the Thai place was booming, so we ended up there. Great food, good atmosphere, even a sushi bar. Dave had curry, I had something with chicken and veggies. We saved our leftovers for tomorrow's breakfast.