Tuesday, June 03, 2008

We left Las Vegas at 11:00 am (GA Time). A little bit of traffic getting out of town... got on I 15 then CR 215 W to US 95 N to Tonopah NV. The drive was a bit monotanous. Mountains and desert were our view... a little bit of change when we got to the Cactus Mountain Range. Cactus joined the scrub brush in the desert and on the hills.

Along the drive Frank saw a chipmunk and I might have seen one... it could have been a rat. It scurried so fast under a brush that I couldn't tell for sure. We kept looking for burros crossing the road, but didn't see any. There were road signs indicating burro crossings. We saw a few cows. Our only stop was for gas in Lathrop Wells at $4.79 a gallon.


We arrived at Joy Land Campground at 3:30 pm (GA Time). So far a quiet park. We have the pull thru section to ourselves except for a 5th wheel that seems to be a permanent resident. The park attendant lives across the road from the campground. He said he used to be the park manager and his mother worked here. He said he had to fire her. Then she bought the campground and now she fires him at least twice a week :-)


Tonopah is small town. The park is just off highway 6. A few houses... probably built in the 1950s and 1960s or maybe earlier... with a couple of house trailers are the housing on this road. There is a meat processing place (deer, elk, etc.) on the other side of the road to the park and a junk yard. There are also horses, goats and sheep... hey, they ain't in the campground :-D There are two to four dogs at most houses... BIG dogs mostly. We met most of them on the walk we took this afternoon. All this probably makes this sound like a bad campground, but so far it is nice one.


We are pleased that we are out of the heat. It may have gotten to 80 degrees here today. A good breeze blowing and most of the time not from the direction of livestock :-) The birds seem to be mostly doves. Some house sparrows are about and we saw some type of flycatcher... looked a lot like the one at Capitol Reef.


We traveled 221 miles today.