Ely, Nevada

We left the AVI Casino/RV Park on Wednesday, May 13. It was 7:10 in the morning and already 74 degrees! We took the Mojave Highway north to highway 163, then west where we connected with 95 going north to Searchlight, Nevada. At Searchlight, we cut west to I-15 and drove north towards Las Vegas. One thing about I-15 going through Vegas….it is NOT fun!! They were in the midst of road construction where the freeway goes behind ALL the casinos along “the strip.” We were forced from three lanes down to one all the way through town. After we got through town and on the north side, the lanes opened up to two, but the traffic was still very heavy until we got to the junction of I-15 and highway 93.

At the junction of 93 and I-15, Ken took a break from the driving and parked the coach in a “truck stop” spot where a Mexican “Taco” lunch wagon was set up serving some nice looking meals.A lot of trucks were pulling in and out of the area during the 15 minutes we parked there. I saw one trucker taking a huge burrito back to his truck for lunch. If we had been hungry, we would have gotten something. Alas, we were in a hurry and had to move on. By then, the temperature was 85 degrees.

We headed west on 93, then took highway 318 towards Ely, Nevada. As we headed north, we could see snow in the distant mountains, and the temperature was getting cooler (what a relief). We reached the KOA in Ely, Nevada at 3:30, and it was a blessed 64 degrees…..no air conditioner(s) needed that night (grin). After we were settled, we went into town and had a steak dinner at nice restaurant and did a couple local caches before going back to the coach where we headed to bed early (we both were tired).

Thursday, May 14 was a busy day! We went caching and Garnet mining. The caching was minimal, only found 12 caches, but we had a ball Garnet mining.


We have been to these Garnet fields before, but never really found anything nice. This time, we actually found a couple neat small stones (and a lot of tiny ones). The Garnet fields are overseen by the BLM and at various times of the year they blow up the fields to crumble the rock for locals and others to come up and “dig” for Garnets. It was a marvelous day and the temperature only reached 67 degrees……Oh so nice!

Like I said earlier, we did some caching while in Ely. We took a drive up in the hills to a place called Summit Hill for a cache and actually ran into snow. We didn't drive in any, but did drive through a lot of melting (muddy) runoff. This picture is where we stopped at the top (for a cache).

Yep, that's us way down there!

It was a fun day, but as all good things do, it had to come to an end, and we had to head back down the mountain and back to the coach. The next day (Friday) we were pulling out and heading for Twin Fall, Idaho.