Last Tahoe Trip

The Pony Express Trail seems like a fitting last-drive for the Tahoe. (I'm selling it as soon as I get it cleaned up so I can move into a Toyota Sequoia.) January 18 was Martin Luther King Jr Day, a holiday for some, so Randy and I took off on the evening of January 17 to go rabbit hunting. Well, not really rabbit hunting. More to drive the Pony Express Trail, starting from the Nevada side.

This is what the West Desert looks like in fog and snow.

This is what Randy looks like shooting poor, innocent bunnies in the West Desert fog and snow. Actually, other than the two rabbits I scared with a couple shots, we didn't do any harm.

We stayed at the Red Garter in Wendover. This casino has been there forever, but I never realized how cheap this place is. The room was $24, a very filling and good chicken-fried-steak dinner was about $8, and a large two-egg-and-large-slice-of-ham breakfast was $2.99. We both stuffed ourselves at breakfast and ended up with a bill under $9 for both of us, including tax and tip. Plastic eggs and felt pancakes at McDonalds cost more than that.

The Pony Express Trail starts about 57 miles south of Wendover. From Hwy 93, which goes from Wendover to Ely, NV, we turned southeast onto Ibapah Road after about 27 miles. This road heads back onto the Utah side of the border and then south. I think the Pony Express Trail turn-off is about 30 miles after turning onto Ibapah Road. If you're curious to see what's at Ibapah--I drove there once in the Astro Van just to see where the road went. When I turned around at the south end of town, the lone policeman stopped me to see why I was there. They don't get many sightseers, I guess.

In the five or six hours that Randy and I were on the Pony Express Trail on Martin Luther King Jr Day, we passed a power utility truck and a UPS truck. Those were the only signs of human life we saw all day. This road had had a vehicle or two since it snowed the night before, but we did travel on one road to Gold Hill where we made the first tracks.

There were some cows here and there, and they seemed to think they owned the desert.

The leftovers of a Pony Express stop. During the Pony Express days--1860-1861--there were stops about every 10 to 12 miles. The Pony Express was a financial disaster and was put out of business by the transcontinental telegraph, but it became an important icon of the Old West. White guys treated the native Americans along the route, from Missouri to Sacramento, poorly, and the Indians responded by killing a lot of the caretakers and others at the stops. The riders faired better, being on fast horses.

Gold Hill is an almost-ghost town. I think this is the last of the UFOs that landed here.

The Goodwin Mercantile in Gold Hill. A handful of families still live here with their bloodhounds and many other dogs.

These two dogs were so happy to see people that they wouldn't leave us alone.

If you take the Pony Express Trail from Vernon, which is south of Tooele, Fish Springs is about 60 miles into the trail. Fish Springs is a large group of fresh-water ponds that sits at the foot of some small mountains and attracts a lot of birds. Fall and spring are probably the best times to come, but there are birds here year 'round. Look it up on Google Maps. You'll be surprised how large these ponds are in the middle of a salt desert.

About three large hawks were hanging out in the large trees at the picnic area. Geese, ducks, and variety of other birds were also in or near the frozen ponds.

Some of the ponds are surrounded by tall reeds.

To the east of Fish Springs sits the town of Callao. It has a small school house, several log structures, some lived in and some abandoned, and a post office. It also has electric power.

Callao does not have a railroad. Don't know where this sign came from. Maybe it's wishful thinking by some who live here.

Despite electricity, a school, a post office, and even UPS delivery, Callao has to be one lonely, hard place to live.

Normally we'd head back through Simpson Springs (where the Powell guy supposedly took his two young boys camping in the freezing middle of the night his wife disappeared) to Vernon, but I'd never been to Topaz Mountain from this direction, and it appeared that if we turned south we'd hit a paved road sooner than continuing east, so we turned right here. The sky got pretty dark about the time we hit the paved part of the Brush Wellman Road, which took us past the Intermountain Power Project to Hwy 6 and then to Nephi. We made a stop at the Baker Hot Springs on the way so I could take a quick soak, and we got home about 11 p.m.

Sayonara, Tahoe.