Beatty

We headed south a little later than usual this year…… so that we could come back up a little later… with the hopes of hitting a few places on the way home that we usually cannot get to because of the cold/snow. We usually go down through Nevada on our way down, when we go in November, but most years we are in a rush because some weather system or other is “encouraging” us to go south and fast…

So we usually come down I5, and over to Susanville California and enter Nevada near Reno/Carson city area. We go down through Hawthorne, then Tonopah and Beatty (essentially HWY95).

Nevada sits at a higher elevation, and so the nights can be cold, below freezing, which has always steered us to find a different way home. This year with our new battery…… etc… we are able to fully charge each day and discharge down to 70% (battery charge) during the night. SO we are able to camp in “dispersal” camping areas, which are areas designated for camping with no formal amenities such as electricity, water etc. Usually they are not far off the road, on BLM land, and also usually quite scenic.

THIS was from a dispersal site out side of Tonopah. We love Tonopah because of the amazing rocks we find near there. Miles of open area (BLM land) (kind of like Crown land in Canada) to wander all day long, looking for cool rocks. This year we have learned the many faces of petrified wood and so stuff we thought was nothing we now realize can be beautiful agatized or opalized petrified wood.

Well this picture is from Lake Mead, but you get the picture of what we do all day almost every day, wherever we happen to be.

I have not taken many pictures of rocks this trip, because they tend to be more “photogenic” once they are cut, or tumbled.

Beatty is a town in the south west of Nevada, that is at a lower elevation, so basically the last warm spot heading north. ( 🙃 OR the first warm spot heading south). It is the gateway to Death Valley heading west. There is not much there to interest us usually, but while searching for a store, I discovered an old historic casino that they are apparently remaking into perhaps a coffee roaster place??? Ken and I LOVE steampunk stuff, and this old casino has been completely refaced, resurfaced in Steam punk.

as you can see, the buildings around are totally PLAIN…

I guess what struck me is that this amazing building appears to be done up SOOO well in a town that …. we will just say is ….not so amazing…… Whatever this place will be, it is not there yet and the work is continuing. It must be quite a labour of love, as this town is far from anything. I know myself, I will be anxious to see what it looks like next year.

Tonopah ……..photos…

… and always the ever present Burros…. just sitting watching what we are doing…. so cute.

To go back to the map at the beginning, we drove a highway between Tonopah and Austin,( that does not show on that map), but is a great highway, along a long valley with snow topped mountains either side. I am not sure that they are snow topped in the summer time, so it seems early spring or late fall might be the most scenic times to travel this way.

We are currently just south of Mcdermitt, which is a border town between Oregon and Nevada. It seems that every border into Nevada has a number of casinos…. but this one only has one, it is called the SAY WHEN CASINO. 🫢I like that name. Today we are on the hunt for opalized petrified wood, which we have never really seen, but might have.

It IS getting down to 27-28 F (-2, -4C) at night and it is quite freeing to know that we can weather these temps with no hookups.

petrified wood from Tonopah

Although I have likely mentioned this in this blog before.. I lost the diamond from my engagement ring out in the desert while rockhounding… about…7 years ago. We always jested that perhaps some rock hound might find it in the desert and think he had discovered a new diamond mine

I have gone ringless for all those years and last year at the Tucson gem show, we searched for and found a beautiful sapphire. We went home and I found a jeweller to take my engagement ring and wedding ring, and salvage the gold, and the create a new ring with the sapphire and leftover diamonds

I was never really happy with the ring, I think because I had chosen not to have claws on the ring … this is “bezelled” which is a safer setting but allows less light under the gem.(better for rockhounds and gardeners….)……. soooooo

This year we decided to once again look for a sapphire at the Tucson Gem show and were drawn to the booth with the Montana sapphires which are not so much blue as more of a greenish colour. We spent quite a bit of time going over all of the choices there and found the gem we liked the most (we also got to know the guy quite well, he cuts all of his gems and had lots of stories to tell)

….oh and BTW. …. MORE STEAMPUNK…. Each year the Tucson Gem show has a competition for ART made from recycled stuff.

LOVE THIS STUFF….

Now THIS… stuck me a picture worthy…perhaps someone else might feel that an antitheft device on the steering wheel is an important accessory, but my thoughts were … why bother?

some early thoughts, but the wrong shape….

so in the end we bought the sapphire we liked the best, then went in search of a setting, not really expecting to find something I liked… but I did…. The setting was priced at 6000 but he sold it to me for….1500… (MUCH less than a transmission)…. and there was a jeweller at the Gem show to put the sapphire into the setting and so we went home with a new ring

I cannot honestly say I have ever had much of an interest in jewelry…. but for some reason I tend to stare at my new ring all the time…. I guess after 40 years of marriage it was time for a new one. Ken on the other hand lost his ring in our first 5 years, and so his is also a replacement.

So looking at the maps between here and home, there is STILL severe weather warnings, so shall hang out here for a few more days…

Bye for now, much love from Janet, Ken and Tucker.

Once again we are making a run for it through Nevada. Usually it is to avoid the low night temperatures, this year it is to avoid the low night temperatures AND the snow.

Joshua trees in the snow.

We have had a few days of doing jigsaw puzzles and listening to the impeachment hearings….. We did venture out yesterday in Fallon Nevada to hunt for rocks in strong winds and rain, but it was NOT FUN.

Green mountain on a very cold day

We are also being hounded by the CRA (Canada revenue agency) the equivalent to the IRS. Not really sure why if we file our taxes in March, they wait until November when we head south to start hassling us. They do this to us every year, and every year we show them that we did everything right, but yet they keep doing this every year. The GOOD thing is that I no longer take it very seriously, and don’t get all stressed out about it. The hard thing is that each time we have called this week it has been an hour on hold on the phone. The classical music playing during the hold, then gets totally STUCK in my head for the next few days. REALLY? I think they need a few more phone answerers.

Just before leaving Canada I received my new Almond Cow, a machine for making nut milks. It is saving us many trips to the grocery stores, AND trips to dump garbage. (very little recycling in campgrounds) We are using mostly cashews. Pictures here of walnuts. One cup into the container…. plus one date.

The metal jug gets filled with water, you push a button on top and it goes through 3 stages, which takes less than a minute. VOILA.. You take the top off which contains the pulp (more on that later)

You get a big jug of milk

Then I pour the pulp into storage containers, there are a huge series of recipes you can make from the pulp.

My first attempt was to make granola, which you mix the pulp with other granola stuff and then bake in oven.

Next time I think I will try to make Hummus with the pulp. (just google nut pulp recipes)

I should note that you do not need a machine to make the nut milks, you just need a food processor and a nut bag to squeeze out the nut pulp. This machine is a bit tidier for me.

So yesterday we drove from Fallon (4300 ft elevation), where it was stormy, but not snowy. We drove south on HWY 95, through Tonopah (6200 ft elevation) where it was snowing and extremely foggy. NO stops for pictures, no stops for anything. We have never had to negotiate this vehicle in snow, and do not want to. We were a bit sad because Tonopah is one of our favourite places to rock hunt.

We drove on to Beatty, where we are now, 3200 ft elevation and the lowest it got last night was 6 degrees celcius ( 42 F.) Very black sky, only light rain last night.

Some of the coolest rocks we have found recently are called Snake skin agates. They are extremely unique, and when cut

Or broken in this case….. quite pretty on the inside

This is called wonder stone, it is quite pretty, but we have decided we prefer Jasper which is more dense. So these are more “catch and release” or catch, take picture and release.

This one, I believe is a limb cast agate, formed inside a tube in rock. Note the snake skin appearance of the underlying rock.

WE are thinking that this is variscite but will need to cut it to make certain.

We are thinking of heading over to eastern Nevada/Utah today, but you never know.

Much love from Janet, Ken and Tucker.

mymostrecentobsession

Nevada travels 2024….

Snake skin agates…..