Winnemucca, Nevada

Good morning, my friends. We're spending our last hours in Nevada, as I'm writing this. It was a nice drive from Hawthorne yesterday. Although we've driven the same road before, I'd forgotten how scenic it is between Hawthorne and Fallon. Also, this is a portion of the Pony Express route, and so we were seeing what the Pony Express riders might have seen. Of course, they rode the route without modern conveniences. As you look at these pictures, consider what it must have been like riding a horse, alone, across this landscape.

On the far side of the road from the Hawthorne RV park, there was a shallow lake. My understanding is that it is dry for much of the year, but there is water just now.

There were signs warning us of wild horses, and within a minute or so, a herd came into view, drinking water near the lake.

I tried unsuccessfully to zoom in on some individual horses, but I was too far away to get anything meaningful.

We were barely out of Hawthorne when the landscape began to grow more colorful. The lake is known as Walker Lake, and it is one of the last remnants of ancient Lake Lahontan. Also, it is the ancestral home of the Walker River Paiute Tribe. Although the Walker River flows into the lake, Walker Lake is known as a terminal lake, meaning that the lake elevation is low and there are no natural outflows other than evaporation. Walker Lake is a lasting remnant of glacial Lake Lahontan, an ancient sea that covered most of northwestern Nevada. Today, Walker Lake and Lake Lahontan State Recreation Area are some of the only lasting portions of what was once a massive, prehistoric ocean.

In the image below, you can see tufa formations, similar to what can be seen in California's Mono Lake. Tufa is a variety of limestone formed when carbonate minerals precipitate out of ambient temperature water. 

It wasn't long before the colors in the landscape made an appearance. Nevada owes its history and its mining industry to minerals, and those same minerals account for these beautiful color changes in its hills.

So, it was a pretty drive, and a relatively short one. We arrived in Winnemucca early in the afternoon. I'd already scoped out a quilt shop in Winnemucca, and so we had some lunch, and then I stitched the last of the year's Stitched Inchies while Mike napped for a bit.

Now I'm officially out of anything to stitch. I was hoping to find something at the quilt shop, but they did not have any embroidery supplies at all. The quilt shop was nice though, and I found some fabric there that I couldn't live without. I'll tell you about the quilt shop in a separate post.

The kitties were happy with this new place. We're in a brand new RV park tonight, and there were only a few other campers with us. It was well off the road, and so there were no woofies or strange Mans to bother us. Sadie settled in for a nap on her hammock.

Smitty enjoyed the warm weather on his catio.

A pretty sunset helped us put the day to rest, and we slept well in this quiet park.

Today, we'll be heading off to Idaho, and stopping in Boise for the night. I'm still owing one more time traveling post, which I'll do next. Then, I'll owe you a post about the quilt shop. So much writing...too much driving. It'll be good to be home on Saturday.