When you arrive at the western end of the Great Salt Lake, you’re in Wendover, Utah, and then almost immediately, you’re in West Wendover, Nevada, and it’s an hour earlier. Yes, the time change! Such a sweet sensation for us travelers heading westward.
All these travel days are so full of new sights with sounds and smells, gas stations and weird rock formations, mountains in the distance, atmospheric shenanigans, salty deserts and roadside art — not to mention the regular searching for food and lodging — that one can get exhausted, primed for insanity. Your mind spins from the sensory overload, but still it’s gratifying to have another hour of time to gather and process more of what’s all around you. These days should last forever.
At West Wendover, we ignore all the casinos, just looking for the signs to Alt Route 93 that will take us south to Ely, Nevada, where we’ll re-connect with the path of the original Lincoln Highway.
When we turn onto Alt 93, a comfy two-lane, there’s an 18-wheeler in front of us. We’re used to having the road to ourselves. I’m driving, and I have to wait for the right moment to pass him, but finally the other lane is empty for a long and straight section, and we zoom around the truck, regaining total control and unblocked vision once again on a beautiful and stark section of later-era Lincoln.
Actually the Nevada Commission on Tourism and the City of West Wendover financed a brochure touting this section of 93 as NEVADA’S FINAL ROUTE: LINCOLN HIGHWAY THE FINAL SECTION because it was the last piece necessary to complete the roadway coast to coast. (“Final Route” sounds a bit bleak and Chandleresque however.)
Route 93 wasn’t finished from West Wendover to Ely until 1930, by which time the original Lincoln Highway Association had disbanded. Now you can get the snazzy brochure in most tourist info centers and motel lobbies in Nevada. It includes some vintage advice about early automobile travel around here: “Always have plenty of food and water. If you break down, it can be a while before help comes. Five gallon cream cans tied to the running boards are recommended for both drinking and radiator water. Don’t drink the alkali water as it will create cramps. Don’t drive across any water without first walking across it. Carrying extra gas is not recommended because of the danger, but topping off the gas tank every chance is.”
As always, today we have Bob’s green-top Coleman cooler between the front two seats, full of bottled water, oranges, and usually a couple of those little Starbucks bottled Double Espresso’s that Jarrett likes.
And as we continue south on 93, Bob in the passenger seat asks me, “How about some music?” (We always give the driver first right of refusal on music, but we haven’t played much if any since the first day back in Ohio.) “Sure,” I say, “your choice.” And Bob opens the Clarke’s shoe box full of CDs that’s usually in front of the cooler between the seats, and he pulls out Gnarls Barkely’s “St. Elsewhere” album and slides it into the player.
Loud and unexpected, the music is magic. It’s an inspired choice. The beats. The vocals. The rhythmic wildness. The familiar “Crazy” and the lesser known album tracks, all seem custom-made for driving Route 93 to Ely. And it makes me think of the late great Hunter S. Thompson and how he might embellish our sunset ride across the Nevada nothingness.
Oh, and did I mention that the sky has darkened overhead? That there is still a slim rim of clearness near the horizon to the south and west, but the edges of the sky have caught fire? There are these bizarre wispy clouds like fiery red demon hair hanging down, as if she-devils were cavorting and collapsing in some celestial styling salon, and their ultra-fine orange tresses had fallen over the edges of the cloud floor, the hairs reaching down almost to the earth.
And then lightning bolts start jumping from the clouds to the ground all along the horizon. Bob and Jarrett have their cameras out and rolling. “I got lightning!” says Bob. Jarrett checks his safety belt and shoots gonzo-style out the big open window. We’re surrounded by the weird and the amazing. The sky is now our nightly show. We applaud Mother Nature and her wacky showbiz excesses.
Darkness falls fast. At a bleak desert pull-over-and-rest stop, Jarrett jumps in the driver’s seat, and we fly on toward Ely. Its lights are drawing us.