Day 5 - Tonopah to San Francisco

Driving through the Nevada desert is intimidating and humbling. There is absolutely nothing for miles and then random little ghosty type towns that look abandoned but aren't. We just passed through one called Luning and let me attempt to describe this to you. You're driving for 50 miles or so through absolutely nothing - desert and mountains and flatness as far as the eye can see. All of a sudden in your path on the sides of the road you see broken down wooden buildings and old faded signs. A few trailer homes, an RV park. Everything looks abandoned until you see a shiny new truck parked outside one of the structures and three people in hats walking casually down the road. Literally 1 minute later the "town" is behind you and there is again nothing for miles and miles.

It's a good idea we're being pretty vigilant about filling up the gas tank.

We stopped by the side of the road in the middle of this nothing to take photos of each other, now I wish we'd stopped in Luning for a shot of those buildings. There will probably be another similar town, however, so maybe we'll stop when we see one. Just for a moment. It really gives you a sense of history in a sense to see these things. Who knows, years ago maybe these were thriving towns. Maybe they were founded when non- native-americans were still truly discovering the American West. And fell into disrepair once towns like Reno appeared. :D We're heading by Reno by the way. We have to to get to San Francisco.

Today has been a little slow going. Tonopah is everything we could ever wish of it, however we discovered today that we didn't even have to go to Tonopah because the road from there to Yosemite National Park is still closed for Winter. The only other way to the park from here is way too far away for us to take, which makes us a little sad since we won't get to see Yosemite now. But we've seen so many incredible things and still have a lot more to go that we're taking everything in stride as much as possible. We'll plan another trip out to see Yosemite or Yellowstone in the future, and remember to come after April. Either way we experienced Tonopah, which was kind of awesome in it's own way.

Left a little later than planned because we spent some time trying to see if we could still figure in Yosemite and then having to find an alternate route to San Francisco because the route Wilma had us taking was right through the park - on the closed road.

We're about to approach an Army Ammunition Depot and there are a lot of mounds in the desert that look like super secret Army things. We don't know what they actually are, but we like to think they're something super secret.

-- Okay must talk about what we just encountered. Driving straight towards the mountains after miles of nothing and ghost towns there is a oasis that is called Hawthorne. More than just a one street town it has actual street signs, a McDonalds, a small casino and a couple gas stations. This is home to the Army Ammunition Depot and it is the only gas for seriously like 100 miles. We filled up and it was too expensive but they can charge whatever the hell they want because there's nowhere else to get gas for 100 miles or whatever. We've decided that Hawthorne is actually Radiator Springs.

We're driving around this huge lake, Walker Lake, and it's very beautiful. There's a tiny community on the hills by the lake and I'm thinking that an awesome longer trip would be to do another cross country roadtrip and stay in the little places like this town by Walker Lake in the middle of nowhere and the tiny village we found in the Rocky Mountains. It would be an incredible experience to do that. Maybe someday we'll have the time and money. It would have to be longer than this trip, I think, in order to fully appreciate everything. But so worth it.

Middle of the desert and temperature is 61 degrees - the warmest we've had yet. Note for anyone thinking of travelling in this area - is extremely hard to judge distance on a straight road through the desert.

signing off for now - too much to look at.

-- later --

Crossed the border into California and promptly entered another mountain range, I think part of the Rocky's again. It's beautiful and this time we have blue skies. No clouds in sight. Driving curvy mountain roads once again is nice.

Later in California, the terrain started to look more like home. Except flatter with palm trees. And a lot of fruit trees and farms. But sort of like home. With 6 lane highways. We really are seeing every possible kind of landscape you could possibly imagine.

From San Francisco Hotel -

Arrived in San Francisco via this absolutely beautiful drive that for some reason made me think of Fiji. I've never been to Fiji, but I imagine huge green mountains by water and that is exactly what we saw coming in. We drove across the Golden Gate Bridge which was awesome as well but I loved loved the curvy roads through the green hills that we took to get there - even if we were stuck in some traffic getting to the bridge.

The city is beautiful and very different from New York or Chicago. Most of the building are only a few stories and the city is set on a hill so everything is kind of staggared. There is a massive hill on the street next to our hotel that .. just baffles the mind. I couldn't imagine driving up and down that every day. It's very very steep. We wandered around Fisherman's Wharf and then some streets nearby and Ghiradelli Square - but it was after 8 on Easter Sunday so almost everything was closed.

We'll wander more tomorrow - and I want to see Haight Ashbury and we were talking about a park that's near there too. Hopefully we'll have time. I feel like I could be here a week and still not see everything I'd like to. We'll definitely have to come back some time for a longer time period.

We're both taking hundreds of photos but haven't really had time to sit and figure out how best for you all to see them. We'll hopefully figure that out in the next day or two.