Ely, Nevada - Lots to see & do around here

Ely is a lovely town with about 4,500 residents, it’s nice to visit but it’s a long way from anywhere and I don’t think either of us would actually like to live there.

We stayed at Ely KOA which is a very nice RV Park, with fabulous views across the valley to the mountains.   Inside the office there’s a list of distances to various locations and the last one says Walmart (back in Elko) 190 miles one way!

We visited the Ward Charcoal Ovens in the Ward Mining District, when the mines were operational over $1,000,000 worth of silver was produced.   There are six ovens; it took 6 acres of trees to fill one oven, so the trees were stripped from the mountains in no time.

After looking round the Northern Nevada Rail Road we took a ride on an old steam train where we heard about ghost towns and gold mines. 

Steam train ready to depart.

We drove to Great Basin National Park and Baker Archaeological Site through wide open country, we thought we’d been out in the middle of nowhere in other places, but Great Basin NP really is in the middle of nowhere.  The tiny town of Baker is so small it really isn’t really even a village.

Our plan had been to drive up Mount Wheeler and take a short walk to a couple of alpine lakes, but once again the road was still snowed in so that put paid to that, although we did drive up as far as we could.   I have to say when we got out of the truck it was absolutely freezing!

Even though we hadn’t booked in advance we’d hoped to be able to take a tour of Lehman Caves, but as we’d forgotten it was a holiday weekend all the cave tours were booked.   So, after a coffee in the Lehman Caves visitor centre cafe we drove over to the Baker Archaeological Site.

Sitting on the windswept plains at the base of the mountains, the site was once home to the Fremont People and there  really is absolutely nothing for miles.

Back in Ely we visited the White Pine County Museum; Northern Nevada is full of amazing museums.   One very interesting exhibit is about a prehistoric short faced bear, the remains of which were discovered nearby.

The bear stood about 12 - 14 ft high and had such incredibly strong teeth it crushed its victims to death.   However, it had one big disadvantage it had very thin leg bones for its weight, so while running in a straight line was no problem, if it swerved it could easily break a leg and become the hunted instead of the hunter.

The skeleton of the short faced bear, you really wouldn’t want to argue with that now would you?

Another day we drove high up into the Schell Creek Mountain Range along the 33 mile Success Loop Drive.   The drive takes you past numerous camp sites, through aspen groves and continues on until it reaches highway 93.    Where an informational sign told us that, once again we’d also been following the route of the old Lincoln Highway.

Higher up the mountains I caught this deer as it bounded into the aspens, but it was only afterwards I saw what someone had carved into the bark of one of the trees on the left of the deer!   

Have fun, we are!