Roads and Deserts | Road-Trippin’ With My Folks

Note to self: Don’t try to write your journal in a car again. You know it makes you sick.

Note for you: This post is literally just roads. I love them, I love the long lonely roads, but I understand that some may find them rather boring. If this is the case, just go read some other post from our road trip! 🙂
(The Journey Begins, Like Children. Like Stunned Children, The Mists of Vernal Fall, “We’re Going Up There?!”, “What Is Half Dome?”, Cold as F… Fluffy Unicorns)
You can also just scroll down a little for a photo of very colourful mountains…

While traveling across the Nevada desert, one has a lot of time and miles to pass – unless driving. I have dared to put my life and the life of my beloved old Toyota in my father’s hands since we have 180 miles of going just straight through a mostly flat plain. He can manage. I hope so.

To be honest, at first, I didn’t even feel like I should do anything else than to just watch the road in case he messes up but after almost leaving the road at the speed of 75 miles per hour (three or four times), he’s more cautious now. And I can enjoy the views. Well, not that people would really find a couple hundred miles of desert interesting. But I swear, it’s a bit different with every mile.

The hills and cliffs and mountains show subtle differences in colour and structure, the bushes along the road are there, then they disappear, then they change, too. White, yellow-ish and grey rocks and sands take turns and here and there, there’s even a higher piece of dry tree or bush, and sometimes they’re even green! The road is interesting for two reasons; thanks to the beautiful (and very photogenic) yellow line in the middle and the fact that one can see a couple of tens of miles ahead when entering a new valley. We pass time by counting how many miles of the road we could see from the point of entering the valley to the end of the valley. Sometimes, it’s up to 20 miles, with 12-mile stretches of perfectly straight roads without any, even the slightest, curves.

It’s been something between 4 or 5 hours since we left the Oh Ridge Campground at June Lake. Getting up before the sunrise, I was able to witness the miracle of a new day being born. First, the snow-patched peaks everywhere but to the North-East of us got painted with a soft, shy, violet-pink light, then the deep steel-blue color of lake got a little less heavy. By the time the sun reached the camp, we were already on the road, leaving Inyo National Forest. In the next few hours, we drove through Benton, which looked like from a movie with its old, historical buildings and almost fallen-apart old cars. It was its own kind of beauty. Then, Toiyabe National Forest followed as we got some gas in Tonopah to be able to get over the next 165 gas-less miles.

As I write, we’re driving past some fields, circles of lush green, looking so out-of-the-world here. We pass through Humboldt National Forest, the landscape changing a bit as, suddenly, in the next valley, there are more higher and greener bushes/trees. Maybe, we’re slowly starting to leave the desert? We’ve got another 40 miles to go before making a right turn in the town of Ely. After what we’ve already driven, 40 miles sounds like nothing.


Thank you for choosing to spend your time joining us on the road. The previous post is right HERE. The following post from this road trip will be is HERE as soon as it gets got published!

You can connect with me on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

( And if you feel like it, you can follow this blog so you won’t miss the future posts from the road trip.)

And have a day full of beautiful vistas! 🙂

One thought on “Roads and Deserts | Road-Trippin’ With My Folks

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