ET Highway Day 1

Our wake up call went off at 5 a.m. and I didn’t sleep very well.  My face was plugged up and my throat felt weird.  I had most of my stuff packed up so I would just have to wash my face and put clean clothes on.  We grabbed our stuff and took it to the SUV in the parking garage.  I made a comment about how we have Colorado license plates when we rented it in Nevada.  Brenda and Ray thought it was weird too.  We went inside the casino of the Monte Carlo and ate breakfast at the dining area.  I had bacon and hashbrowns and Brenda and Ray got Belgian waffles with fruit on top of it.  We finished and walked back to the parking garage and got in our vehicle we would be spending a lot of time in. The elevation of Las Vegas is roughly 2000 feet and we were to gain almost 4000 feet by the time we got to Tonopah, which is 6031 feet.

Side note:  I had 4847 caches before we started the ET Highway.

We got off the strip and merged onto I-15 North towards Mesquite and got onto US 93 to Alamo.  Alamo was the last gas station until we got to Toponah, which was about 160 miles.  We filled up at the Sinclair Gas Station and got some light groceries to keep us at bay while in the car, bread, peanut butter, jelly, snacks, water, etc.  We took pictures in front of the famous green dinosaur…just because we could.

We continued up on US 93 until we got to the ET Highway Junction 375 but first we had to stop and get a cache for our Jasmer Challenge (caches placed by date since caching started) and this one filled up one of the squares, that was at 9:37 a.m.  It was behind a building that prided itself on alien jerky.  We just had to go in.  We sampled the alien jerky, which was really turkey jerky.  We looked at all of the posters and pictures on the wall and then we were ambushed by a guy who knew his Area 51 stuff.  Apparently there is a gate in a nearby small town called Mercury, in which the public can access for a tour of certain parts of Area 51.  He gabbered and gabbered on about it and it was hard to just walk away from him and be rude.  Eventually, after about ten minutes, we made our way to the door and thanked him for the information. 

We got onto the ET Highway and took a picture of one of the famous road signs (the only sign in the area without bullet holes in it) before starting at the first one which was a letterbox.  We took pictures and each grabbed a trackable from the ammo can.  One down and 1999 more to go, we gotta keep moving! 

I jumped out of the car first and grabbed about a hundred caches.  We saw the landscape change slowly as we made our way down.  I have never been that close to a Joshua Tree before so it was kinda cool considering I’m from the PNW and all I see are Evergreens day after day.   

About 50 into our first leg we got worried about our gas.  For some reason the gas gauge was weirding out on us but we never got less than a half a tank.  We made it to a cache called Area 51 Black Mail Box.  We had fun finding this one and signing the crap out of it.(http://www.dreamlandresort.com/area51/mailbox.html). 

Brenda did about 50 or so until Ray wanted in on the caching action.  He did a couple of lean down from the car to grab caches. 

Around noon we had 82 caches.

At 1:51 we hit our 200th cache of the day.

We started getting hungry so we pulled over around 3:30, we had 295 caches, to make sandwiches and to use the bathroom…down the hill.  A local drove by in a truck.  He turned around and asked if we were okay.  We told him we were okay and he drove off.  We sat on the side of the road and ate our food.  We should have sat in the car because the wind made our bread dry way too fast.  We all took turns peeing on the other side of the hill and we were on our way for the next section of caches. 

The entire length of the ET Highway was covered in cow crossing signs.  This area was open range and the cows could roam where ever they wanted.  Every now and then a car would hit the cow and both would be destroyed.  I saw a sign in the Inn about cows and cars don’t mix.  If you did hit a cow in the middle of the ET Highway, you would be there for a while waiting for help and you would be broke from the damages to the car and pay damages for the cows.  This road would be scary at night.

There were sooo many cans scattered along the highway.  If I were to have picked all of them up, we probably would have come home with at least $150.00 in scrap aluminum.

We got closer and closer to Rachel.  Miles out there seemed longer than miles with scenery and miles in town.  The long stretches of roads you could literally see for miles and miles.  We would try and guess how far the road was from where we were to where we couldn’t see it continue anymore.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel,_Nevada

When we came down the hill we could see Rachel in the distance but we were no where close to it.  Cache by cache, mile by mile we got closer and closer.  Then we saw the Welcome to Rachel sign and another ET Highway sign, this one had all the stickers on it. 

We reached Rachel and we saw two men in the distance.  They had to be doing what we were doing because what else is there really to do on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere in Rachel?  Sure enough they were.  They introduced themselves as Nigel and Bob (Perfunctory Butcher's) and they were from England and had a very pronounced accent.  We visited for a few minutes and they went on their way because they had a very short amount of time left on their vacation.  We found one more for an even 300 and went to check in at the hotel we were staying at.  We went into the Inn and got our keys and admired all the alien stuff inside.  That place, near the bar, had a ton of money bills hanging from the ceiling.  I wondered how much money was actually there.  

We kinda got lost while finding our room for the night.  We finally found our dwelling for the night, unloaded our luggage and chose the beds we were going to sleep in for the night. We took a bunch of pictures outside because we didn’t know if we would be back in time before all of our daylight was gone. 

The clerk at the Inn told us to be back before eight if we wanted dinner.  Okay now we had a time constraint and we had about 200 more left to do to hit our quota for the day.

I was the runner for the last leg of the day.  I tried to power them out as fast as I could.  I was exhausted and ready for the day to be over.  Plus, I did not want to miss a warm dinner.  We hit 400 at 6:00 and just after 7:00 that evening we hit 500.  I could not wait for that food and shower.

We finished our goal for the day and headed back into Rachel, which was about 30 miles from where we stopped.  We had a little more than a half a tank left.  We got there around 7:35, parked the car in front of the Inn, went inside and ordered food.  There was a guy and his son sitting at the table next to us.  We engaged in a short conversation.  They were cachers from Bellingham.  How random is that?  Two sets of Washington cachers at the same Inn doing the ET Highway...crazy.  They said they got about 800 that day.  They stayed in the other side of our mobile home in 5-1.  We shared a bathroom.

There were even coins on the wall to discover.  I even knew some of the people.

http://www.etgeocaching.com

We ate our alien burgers and looked at the souvenirs.   I brought one of these home with me.

We were only going to stay at the Inn for one night.  The other three nights were going to be in Toponah so we didn’t have to backtrack every day.  I paid for my food and souvenirs and we went to our room.  I was so ready for a shower.  I tried to get in there first before our neighbors.  I jumped in and quickly realized the shower head was a piece of crap.  I continued on with my shower and the back of my thigh burned from getting in and out of the car and having it rub on the seat.  I was not happy with my burning leg or the shower head.  I just unscrewed the darn thing and took the rest of my shower that way.  Water pressure problem solved.  I dried off, got my sleeping clothes on and tried using the internet.  Remember, we were literally in the middle of nowhere.  There was no cell phone service and very little internet connection.  Ray and I did manage to use our computers a little bit before we got frustrated and gave up.  We packed up our stuff before we went to bed so there wasn’t a lot of packing to do the next day.

We found out the office and restaurant didn’t open until 8.

I passed out and didn’t wake up until the alarm went off at 7 the next morning.  I don't even remember having a dream.  Was I abducted?  We'll never know.

Next Adventure:  ET Highway and the next 500 caches.