Creek Running North

US 50 is one of the secret wonder routes of this continent.  I love that road.  Odd you went this way though: past the glare of Reno, and into the outback of US 50, which implies you went east of Reno to the Fernley junction, then south down to Silver Springs on the other great US Hwy 95, to then head East on 50 towards Fallon and beyond.  Fallow is such a hugely sucky place; US Navy and all if you don’t mind TopGun antics ruining that section of your drive.

You could of course, and it sounds like you might, take 50 the whole way, going up through the gold country, over into the Tahoe Basin, dropping down through Carson (not stopping at the KitCat Club) City, and out and beyond.  Ely, and those amazing mountains that seem as though no one knows they exist.  Damn it, now i wanna go..

And creosote! Don’t forget the creosote.

For me it was Hwy 395 along the Eastern Sierra. I still remember driving north on it, and my first view of Mammoth Mountain, its sleek bulk looming up out of the mountainous background, covered in late-fall snow.

That first look was just highway, and the facade of mountains. But as I lived there, the picture deepend and complexified. I got to know the migration routes of the mule deer, the hidden hot springs, the hiking routes, the old stagecoach road, the crooked streams, all the trails that my friends Ranger and Tito hiked and loved with me, all of that and more woven into and through that first simple picture.

I miss it.

If you see any bumper stickers that say

London, Paris, Rome, New York, Moab.

Let me know.

Gods, I miss those mountains.

It looks like the ass of nowhere. I’m utterly jealous.

I wanna go too, especially for the trilobites - though I’m not sure about a U-Dig fossil place - what do you think of that, Chris? Seems like you talked about this once before? (sorry to be late here - I’ve been busy)

I don’t have an intrinsic problem with u-dig places as long as they’re run ethically. This one’s on private land, and it seems anything good gets remanded to the state. The place I went to in Wyoming a few years back is similar.

One of the responsibilities of the head-end brakeman on a freight train--back when we still had real train crews--was to make what was called a “rolling inspection” of a train going the other way while your train sat in the clear on a siding. What you did, when your train had stopped and the opposing train was getting close, was to get off and walk to the far side of the main line, so you saw one side and your engineer saw the other. (You were looking for overheated wheel bearings--"hotboxes"--sticking brakes, shifting loads or anything else dangerous.) Early in 1966 my seniority wasn’t enough to keep me working in Northern California, so I “borrowed out” to Indio where the agro-industry of the Imperial Valley kept everybody busy all year ‘round. One night the dispatcher put us into a siding somewhere East of Niland. The engineer was engrossed in chat with the rear brakeman who’d stayed ahead to help with some switching later on; I waited until I saw a headlight in the distance, climbed down, crossed the track and waited. And waited, and waited. After about 20 minutes here he came, going like a sonofabitch. I rolled him by, then got back on the engine. “Did you get off to roll him by?” asked the hoghead. “Yes.” “Shit, we thought you got off to take a leak. He was 25 miles from here when you saw that headlight.”