Lincoln Highway
Day 7
Today can be summed up in one word. Disappointing.
We left one of the nicer motels we’ve stayed at and made a 20 minute drive to Grantsville, NV.
The Lincoln Highway book pointed out a couple of interesting stops. One was the Donner-Reed Museum. I’ve read a few books on that ill-fated party and would have loved to have gone to see the museum, but it was too early in the morning for it to be open.
The next stop in Grantsville was somewhere in the town. It was a tall unique wooden sign with a hand pointing the way to towns along the Lincoln Highway. On top of that sign was the Lincoln Highway sign. Steve didn’t drive into the historic town, so we missed it and he wasn’t willing to go back to look for it.
The Lincoln Highway again merged with I-80 and we traveled that for miles. This stretch of monotonous highway felt like a never-ending airport runway. Eventually, we began seeing the salt flats. I was reading the LH book to find out more about the them and when I looked up I saw people walking on the salt flats. Just as I said let’s stop, Steve passed the exit. There was no way to make a U turn on the freeway and the next exit was miles away, so I missed another opportunity to do a once in a lifetime thing.
Just before we got to the Bonneville Salt Flats, UT we saw a huge steel sculpture on the side of I-80. The book told me it was built in the ‘80’s by Karl Momen and is called Metaphor: The Tree of Life. I don’t know why it’s there, but at least it was a diversion to look at.
When we stopped for gas at Bonneville Flatsand and filled up, a man drove up to us and was really interested in our car. He owned an Austin 7, an antique British car. We talked for a while and found out his name was John. John is on Instagram and has pictures of his car etc. and he wanted to know if we did any social media that he could follow us on. I told him about my emails of our journey and now he will ride along with us, too. While talking, John told Steve about The Loneliest Road in America and that it was worth the drive. So we decided to take it, but before we did we made a stop at McGill, NV.
If you blink you might drive right through McGill, but we kept our eyes open and stopped at the Rexall Drug store museum. McGill was founded in the 1900’s and was one of the busiest copper smelters in the nation. The drug store had been a popular rendezvous spot for the townspeople, but once the mines shut down in 1983 the people began to leave. Within a few years this drug store closed its door literally and never removed anything from the store. Now it’s run as a free museum. It used to have a soda fountain and people are encouraged to go behind the counter put on the hat and pretend you’re serving up an ice cream float. So we did just that and, of course, took a picture.
We had waited past our lunchtime to eat Elk Burgers.at the Silver State Restaurant in Ely, NV, just to find out that the restaurant no longer existed! We couldn’t find another restaurant so we ate at Subway. Another disappointment.
We drove another 80 miles on the Lincoln Highway to our destination for the night. Eureka, NV This town boasts of being the Friendliest Town on the Loneliest Road in America. This place looked like it had a lot of fun things to see and do, until we couldn’t find a place to stay. They had 3 motels and all of them were booked! I don’t know where all the people came from considering the road always seemed pretty empty, but we were in a bad situation. Our only choice was to leave the Lincoln Highway and go back to I-80 where you can always find a motel.
This was the first time we were ever caught without having a place to stay. The problem was I-80 was 2 ½ hour’s away. On the bright side yesterday was the longest day of the year, so we had plenty of daylight left!
We finally got a room in Elko, NV, but we are no longer on the Lincoln Highway or The Loneliest Road in America. This too, is a disappointment because there were so many other unique things I’ll never see.
It was a long day and we drove over 400 miles! The good thing is, somewhere today we entered the Pacific Time Zone and gained another hour.
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