Hello to you all - again thanks for your comments and keep them coming.
We are coming at you today from a little old silver and gold mining town in NW Nevada called Tonopah (pronounced with the Cletus slackjaw as "Tone a paw")....it's a scene straight out of the Westerns...the dodgy saloon bar, historic old buildings and big mounds of dirt with hillbilly huts perched up on them. It has a great mexican restaurant and bar where we enjoyed a great dinner...plus several margarita!...this place has a good feel about it (could be the margaritas or the radioactive fallout from when it was used as a test site for N Bombs), however we are only here for the night as a stopover to Yosemite national Park where we set up camp for a couple of nights. We are in a quirky little motel where the owner has taken particular care to give lots of local historical information, for example did you know that Tonapah's streets are lined with silver? (apparently a couple of miners left a stockpile of silver in a mound when the mine closed and came back years later to claim their fortune only to find that the local RTA equivalent had used their mound for building roads - how much would that suck to be them!) and also Tonapah was home to secret US airforce base where the original stealth bombers were made and tested - the things we learn and pass onto you hey!!
We have covered over 1000 miles since we last posted back in kayenta. Saturday started early and we headed off to monument valley - a Navajo Reservation with stunning natural features...we will post photos soon....as a separate posting - now we have an adaptor for the SD card and a new computer to boot...this place was amazing and we were there so early we gained free admission!! The car just survived the 12 mile round loop of dirt road..but like Council Cars, apparently rental cars go anywhere!!
Monument Valley was our last official sightseeing stop in the last 48 hours, with the majority of that time being taken up by the aforementioned 1000 miles. However, we cannot describe just how big, diverse and picturesque this little adventure across Utah and Nevada has been. From driving across a large salt lake (not the one near the city of same name) in utah, that resembled a moonscape to hills full of uranium and others with snow caps still on them, to green forests and rapids and recent (in geological terms) volcanic lava flows...by the way Stacey pocketed a lava stone - nt sure what we are going to do with it!! Seriously, one moment you are in the middle of the desert and 5 mins later climbing into an alpine area...unbelievable...a great drive and wish we had time to detour a few more times off the US hwy 6! Might have to get more leave and come back again!
Apart from tonapah we have also stayed in a place called Richfield- where we had our first joyous encounter with the fabled Walmart chain (jeff is in love btw - we bought this netbook we are using now and will hopefully get a laptop before we head home) and travelled via a few little places, Ely, Delta. It was great to be off the usual tourist trail - was even asked ""where's your english from?" and we enjoyed the communal experience of the local navajo cinema where we watched Dumbledick and Harry pothead amongst lots of chatter and people constantly going in and out to get gerkins.
Looking forward to the next few days camping ina national park with the bears (apparently the bears now have a need for wifi so with any luck we can still stay in touch)
Will talk soon if we ar not eaten by a bear,
luv Stace and Jeff
