Off to Beatty, Nevada

What a hellacious night we had last night!  We knew that Hawthorne was expecting a thunderstorm after midnight, but what the weather service did not tell us - gusts of wind over 60 miles an hour!  The RV shook, teetered, moaned, rattled, I swore a lot, Grace hid for most of of it, until about 10pm.  We never got the thunderstorm, did get rain and hail, the wind died about midnight with enough time to get a couple of hours sleep.  When the sun rose this morning, low and behold, there was snow on the Mt. Grant just to the north of us.  Our temperature at 6am was 50 degrees but it was a COLD 50.

Snow on Mt. Grant

Dave looked over the slide toppers (roll out canvas over the slides of the RV) to make sure those had not come loose (last night sounded like they were going to rip off and drop through into the windows!), and we were able to get on the road by 8:45am.  As we drove out of Hawthorne, we noticed bunkers - this town has an Army arsenal facility and Naval undersea arsenal storage facility.  As far as you could see there were bunkers.  Weird to see.  Probably each bunker went down underground 2 or 3 stories deep.

Bunkers

Some Real Big Bunkers!

Drove down Route 95 all the way.  The road is beautiful road to drive, one lane each way, but wide open sections where people could pass us without any problem.  Some sad little towns, some were abandoned, the landscape was desolate.  Just outside of Tonopah we started to see Joshua Trees, a form of cactus.  Did I tell you there are no people in Nevada?  Amazing.  And this is a huge state.  For our 4 1/2 hours of driving today we still have not gotten to Las Vegas.  However, we did see mountain ranges that were snow capped - probably from last night's storm.  

White Mountains

We drove past the White Mountains that houses Boundary Peak, the highest mountain in Nevada and those babies had a lot of snow too.  Hopefully Yosemite National Park was able to get some of the snow/rain from last night and put out those fires which lies right on the western side of those mountains.

Tonopah - active mining town

Lonely road - wonder how far we see?

We are snug settled in Beatty (Bay-dee) RV Park in Beatty, the entranceway to Death Valley National Park.  You just don't come here in the summer.  This time of year starts their big tourist season - temps are in the 70s now where in the summer 120s is normal.