A Walk through Caliente

There was nothing on yesterday's agenda. We were lazy for a good part of the day. We made a trip to a very small grocery store in the late morning. Not much on our list could be found there, but we were able to pick up a couple of limes and tomatoes...and ice cream because we were completely out of frozen treats. As we were backing out of the parking lot, I looked across to see this:

Holy Patchwork!!! Could it be? Well, no...it wasn't. To my great disappointment, it turned out to be someone's longarm business. No fabric for sale here. Bummer. But the woman working there was very friendly. 

After I'd recovered from my fabric store disappointment, we got out for a walk in the late afternoon.

As we walked away from the RV park, I turned around to show you where we've been all week. Yes, we've pretty much had the place to ourselves. There was a group on the other side of the park when we first arrived, but they moved on after our first night, and this has been our neighborhood. It's been nice and quiet, especially at night.

Adjacent to the east boundary of the RV park is a nice little river walk. We crossed over the river, which actually has water flowing.

 And, yes, our shadow selves came with us for this walk. It's hard to know for sure how long this has been here, but it was very nice...with bright white and wide concrete sidewalks and bridges that crossed back and forth over the water.

Here's a little map of the park system of Caliente. Keep in mind this is a community of about 1,200 people. When we reached "Dixon Park" (near the middle of the image below), we crossed from the river side and walked through town to the "Historic Depot," in the lower right portion of the map.

There's the depot. I showed you a picture of the depot in an earlier post, but I took this one to show you the area left open by the ten railroad lines that used to cross through here. There was also a roundhouse (no longer there) where 18 trains could be serviced. Later, the roundhouse expanded to 34 train service stations. There's a pretty good history of the railroad in Caliente at this Nevada Tourism site.

Our shadow selves felt like being daredevils yesterday, and so they stood on the track daring the train to come by and squash them like bugs. Their courage was bolstered by the fact that they could see for miles in both directions. Besides...shadows are invincible to most risks they might take...except cloudy days. They hate cloudy days.

Walking inside the depot, we found this area where folks might have waited for their train. To the left of this room was City Hall, and to the right was the public library. Through that gated entry way was some sort of artists' guild meeting room.

The mural was interesting. The darkest line extending from left to right is where the railroad ran during Caliente's heyday.

It was interesting to look at. It's painted in the shape of the southern part of Nevada. It depicted the communities as they existed in the early 1900's. Remember my post about Rhyolite? There it is, pictured on the left side of the map. Just to the right and a little above, "Beatty Farm," which is now the city of Beatty, Nevada.

Here's Las Vegas in 1900. Nothing to see here folks. It didn't really start growing into the city it is today until after World War II. You can read about its history right here.

Here's something we missed during our visit, but apparently there is quite a bit of rock art in the area. I wish we'd known, and we might have visited some of these petroglyph sites.

Maybe on another trip.

In the image below, you can see Cathedral Gorge at the top of the image, and then just below that is the town of Caliente and the communities south of it.

And this was interesting...I tried to find out more information about it, but came up dry. Still, they hung people for all sorts of things back then...cattle rustling and horse-thieving could see you swinging from the end of a rope.

Here's the little town of Pioche.

Remember my image from a few days ago? There's the same mining operation depicted in the mural.

And there's our old friend Pahrump.

Back outside, we found these old wagons. Not sure what their purpose was.

Walking on, we passed by the Boxcar Museum. It's closed for the season.

My shadow self took one more audacious dare of the train. Actually, she was showing you all that remains of the railroad here in Caliente. I knew we'd crossed over three tracks in the road, but you can see that the third track (on the left) doesn't end well.

It's Nevada, so there must be a casino, right? And a "knotty" one at that. "Loose slots," indeed. And if you're like me, then take your mind out of the gutter right now. Shame on you.

To the east, is this mountain. I've loved the mountains here. They aren't tall, but they are rugged.

From there, we headed back to the RV where we dispensed a generous helping of Treat and Greets.

The only other thing I did yesterday was to stitch the day's inchy.

Today we're moving south to Boulder City, Nevada, and that will be our last stop in Nevada. In our future travels, we'll stop in Sedona, Arizona; Parker, Arizona (because everything in Lake Havasu was booked); Oatman, Arizona, then on to White Water, California; Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, weather permitting. Sometimes it's very cold there, and the roads could be closed. From here, we'll head north to Sonora, Columbia, and Jamestown, California, ghost towns. We'll be heading for home by then. We're also hoping to get to the Point Bonita Lighthouse this trip, up through Fort Bragg and Crescent City, and then home.

So you can see there is still much on the travel agenda. Keep your seatbelts buckled.