Tuesday May 2nd 2017

I got on the road from the rest area west of Tonopah NV shortly after 8am. Stopping at the rest area was the right decision. I got a good nights rest and the next fifty or sixty miles after the rest area were open territory with no campsites in sight. It would have been white knuckle driving for a long way with yesterday’s wind. This morning there was no wind for the first couple of hours.

My RV Home in the Rest Area west of Tonopah NV. There were rigs on each side of me a few minutes before this picture was taken.

The basic pattern of travel is cross a relatively flat wide valley then climb out at the far side. You then descend into the next valley and repeat the pattern. The highest passes out of the valleys have been a little over 6000 feet. Yesterday’s valleys and the first few today were very much desert. They had little more than ground cover plants with a few Joshua trees thrown in, in some areas. The road signs warned of wild burros and I even saw a couple of groups near the highway. Today started out with open cattle range warnings. As I got further north the valleys started to be cultivated and there was a lot more green and even a few trees.

Site E117 at the Boontown Reno KOA.

View to the west from the door of my RV home. The mountains are in California.

I finally reached Interstate 80 in Fernley NV and turned west. I passed through the population centers of Sparks and Reno heading for a wall of white capped mountains to the west. My destination was the Boontown KOA in Verdi NV. It is about ten miles west of Reno and four miles short of California. I’ll be here for a week while I checkout the area. The RV park is essentially a paved parking lot with hookups and a few patches of grass. It’s not too bad and it will serve my purpose.

Trukee River below the campground filled with spring runoff.

Somehow I envisioned this area as flat land before the mountains. I was wrong. The entire area is carved out of the foot hills before the bigger mountains. This campground is at about five thousand feet. I passed over higher terrain to get here. The Trukee River winds through the whole area. It goes by the campground about 50 feet down the cliff. It is full with the spring runoff from the mountains. The campground may be a parking lot in a developed area but nature is not far away.