12 DAYS: DAY THREE, ELY, NV TO JEROME, ID

So many times when travellers get together someone starts talking about this road or that one.

The road from Ely, NV to Twin Falls, ID is one of those roads I would mention.

Not for the twisties, or the hairpin turns or the majestic views of mountain tops, but for the land.

The incredible amount of land that you see.

Most of it untouched. There are very few roads leading off into random parts. There are even fewer on the sides of the mountains that surround the valley where the road is planted neatly.

Straight as an arrow. As few corrections as possible.

Now the reality is that this kind of road is boring to a lot of us motorcyclists.

We want curves, we want hairpins, we want to lean the bike and create perfect lines through impossiible curves.

This road offers none of that. At all.

It is a ribbon of road through an almost alien landscape.

No people.
No towns.
No houses.
No restaurants,
No gas.

Mad Max would feel right at home.

The last time I came through here on my bike I hardly had enough gas to make Ely after filling in Wells. I couldn’t explain it but that put me at about 24 MPG and that didn’t make sense.

My mechanic took the injecter system apart and cleaned it and recalibrated the exhause mixture.

This time there was no problem at all and I got about 40 MPG which is great for a cruiser this size.

Woohoo.

Every once in a while there would be a road – two tracks in the desert actually – leading off to places like Duck Creek, and Spruce Mountain. Most of them had gates you could open but this one was closed shut.

“The way is shut…: I thought to myself.

Because I am a geek. Don’t judge.

I wonder what was out there.

I wonder if I will ever know?

I spent some time shooting fun “light and shadow” stuff in a little town called McGill. It is just north of Ely.

There were some great newspaper clippings in the windows.

Apparently it was a big deal back in the 50’s. Mining, railroading, land development.

Then something happened. I don’t know what it was, but I could probably look it up.

Something that led to the town being nearly abandoned – at least the downtown part.

Cute storefronts closed. 

Newspaper closed.

Restaurants, bakery, shoe store… closed.

This place should be a gold mine.

I don’t know exactly how to do that, but with gambling and it being the only town between Ely and Wells, it should be a destination in and of itself.

Towns give up though, don’t they.

“We’ve always done this and we don’t know how to do that.”

So very sad.

There will be a marker on the spot in a few more decades I imagine.

I simply marvel at the beauty all around us.

I wonder if the people living in this remarkable place find it to be remarkable at all?

Maybe they get out of bed and begin the day bitching about all the mountains and wishing for some “goddam rush hour traffic”!

Perhaps familiarty breeds a sort of blase relationship between what someone like me sees once every five years and what they see every stinking morning they put their boots on.

I like to think not.

But you get a chance to think of a lot of stuff when you are going perfectly straight on a motorcycle for about 3 hours – stop for gas, and do it again for 3 more hours.

Thinking and getting out of the way of giant trucks who want to go 100 MPH or so.

We have a good relationship, me and them truckers.

If they start to get too close, I will slow down and give them an easy shot to pass me.

I love this landscape.

I am not in a hurry to get through it.

Below are two more shots from McGill this morning.