New Year's Day 2015, I went with Randy to north of Reno, Nevada, to see Fly Geyser. We'd heard it was pretty cool, and I've wanted to see this part of Nevada ever since I discovered there's a huge lake called Pyramid Lake in the northwest corner of this dry, hot state. But whenever I've passed this way I've been traveling between Salt Lake and the Bay Area and never had time to take a 250-mile detour.
This is what we found this weekend.
Our first stop was at a ghost town called Metropolis. This house isn't actually part of Metropolis, but it's on the road from Wells, Nevada, to Metropolis.
This is pretty much all that's left of Metropolis, a farming community started by a Massachusetts investor in 1909. He built a dam on the Humbolt River for irrigation but neglected to secure permission to build the dam. So the city of Lovelock sued the city of Metropolis, and without sufficient water the mostly Mormon Metropolis itself eventually dried up. You can read this history elsewhere. This photo is of the school, which functioned until the early 1940s.
The basement and foundation of the hotel are also still here.
And part of a washing machine.
And some bed springs.
And a chimney.
On the Metropolis road.
This is on the road to Pyramid Lake from Reno.
This is also on the Pyramid Lake road. Notice the house built in to the rock in the bottom right.
Pyramid Lake. I assume this rock has something to do with the name. The Truckee River drains from Lake Tahoe to Pyramid Lake, where the water evaporates. The lake has no other outlet, like the Great Salt Lake, but this one is deeper and much less salty, about 1/6 the salinity of the ocean. I assume it sustains fish, because we saw boats on the lake with what we assumed were fishermen. Who else is stupid enough to go out on a freezing cold lake in a freezing cold wind?
The road from Pyramid Lake to Gerlach, Nevada, has some interesting rock formations that appear to be left from volcanic activity.
Gerlach doesn't have a store, but Empire, five miles before Gerlach does. This is next to the store.
So is this.
This is the store. The restrooms weren't usable, because the water pump was frozen.
Do I need to say this is Gerlach?
Gerlach housing.
Gerlach has a really nice hot spring with a picnic table and steps into the spring.
The water is clear and just the right temperature for a soak. The air temperature was in the 20s, so there was a lot of steam.
The steam froze on everything nearby. We stopped for some pictures on the way to Fly Geyser. We then stopped for a soak on the way back, but in the mean time the big gate had been closed and padlocked.
This is the playa where Burning Man is held for one week every year, making it the third largest city in Nevada for that week. It's held late in August just to make sure it's as hot, dusty and miserable as possible. This is as close to the Burning Man festival as I will ever get.
Finally we arrived at Fly Geyser. This is actually the first Fly Geyser, which was a geyser that someone made accidentally when drilling for water in the early 1900s. They didn't want hot water, so they abandoned the well. In the mid-1960s a geothermal company drilled another well nearby, but for them the water wasn't hot enough (it's about 200 degrees). The second well cut off water to the first geyser and created a new one.
Unfortunately, Fly Geyser is on the private Fly Ranch and is behind a fence, locked gate and "No Trespassing" signs. It's probably a quarter mile from the highway. On a cold steamy day, there isn't much too see. We watched a guy from a Mustang (the car, not a wild horse, some of which we also saw on the way here) leave his girlfriend in the car, climb the fence and walk to the geyser. The "24/7 guard" didn't get him, but I don't think he saw much more than we did. Maybe he saw the pools that supposedly surround the geyser.
Even when the wind blows the steam away, there isn't much to see. The water spouts a couple feet, maybe. Worth a 1,289.4-mile, three-day road trip? Any road trip is worthwhile, but I can check this one off my list. Th- th- th- that's all folks.
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