WINNEMUCCA, Nev. — Take a good look at the picture you see with this brief post. What don’t you see?
Time’s up! You don’t see a cloud in the sky. Nothin’, man! Clear blue sky from horizon to horizon to horizon to horizon.
It took me a while on this westward journey Toby and the Puppy have taken, but we finally freed ourselves from the dreary rain that has inundated California and the Pacific Northwest. We were unable to lay eyes on the great peaks of the Cascades. Mount Hood, Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helens, Mount Adams, Mount Jefferson, the Three Sisters? All were hidden by clouds.
We had to travel past the Central Oregon Cascades to see what I fondly refer to as El Sol. I don’t know what the future of this journey holds for us, but I am going to remain hopeful that we can avoid much of the misery that has soaked by home state of Oregon, Washington and much of California.
The mountains in the photo, by the way, stand in northern Nevada and can be seen in the place where we’re spending the night before heading on to our next stop in southern Utah.
Let me be clear about another point: I had planned to drive along U.S. Highway 50, billed as the “Loneliest Highway in America.” I will offer a differing point of view. Highway 50 will have to go some to beat U.S. Highway 20 east from Bend to Burns.
I didn’t count them, but my best guess is that we saw maybe a dozen other vehicles on the highway between those two cities. No fuel stations. No public restrooms. No eateries.
Not a single thing out there but a few vehicles … plus Toby the Puppy and me.
Oh, but I do love the open road.