WALKER LAKE, NEVADA - Can you believe this is in the middle of the desert?
So since we left Vegas, we’ve been driving thru miles and miles of Nevada desert on our way northwest. Hot as hell and not a lot of interesting places to stop on the way so we’ve done a few hotel overnighters.
First night we stopped at a small hotel in Hawthorne, Nevada....about a 7 hour drive from Vegas. Nothing fancy but the next day we drove by the most amazing lake in the middle of the desert, Walker Lake. It’s big and if we’d had time and been self sufficient ie. our own source of power, we could have easily camped by the lake and done some amazing canoeing and swimming. The water was as blue as the sky and like glass. Tom, Michelle and kids, you guys would have loved it for water skiing! It’s been there for millions of years, check out it’s history here.
The only bad thing about it was that when we stopped at a lookout to take pictures and look around, Dave lost his trailer keys...he left them on the back of the truck while doing something and forgot about them when we took off. You would think that wouldn’t be a bad thing, you know, I’m sure they have spares...you’re right, we did...but I lost them sometime after coming back from Costa Rica. I’m sure I didn’t take them with me and that I put them somewhere “safe” but to date, haven’t found them. We had managed to replace them all EXCEPT the one that gets us in the trailer .....@##$%! We even stopped at a hardware store in Hawthorne that morning to replace it but they didn’t have the right blank. Figures!
Luckily we noticed the lack of keys in Fallon, NV a relatively big town (considering the tiny ones we’ve been thru), when we went to put some ice in the cooler. So we had to hook up with a locksmith to get us into the trailer and make us duplicates. But he was out on calls for over an hour so we drove back to the Walker lake lookout to see if they were still there...no luck! At least we don’t have to wonder what if.....
So $56 worth of keys later, we each have a set of various keys and an additional spare set. We shouldn’t get locked out of anything, ever again...LESSON LEARNED THE HARD WAY...GET SPARE KEYS MADE RIGHT AWAY IF YOU LOOSE THEM!
Eventually made it to the Winnemucca (love that name!), Nevada RV park after about 6-7 hours, only 3 if we didn’t have to make all the key detours! Decent place, nice mountain views. Today we drove almost 7 hours from there to Bend, Oregon. This looks like a great place to spend a lot of time, we’ll absolutely be back in the future.
Hoteling it again tonight and then tomorrow, should only be about a 4 hour drive to White Salmon, Washington on the Hood River where we hope to hook up with Ian and Chris for a week. It’ll be nice to stay put some where for that long and relax.
After that, on to BC and back into Canada!
Here’s some pictures of the drive.