Austin to Ely

Luckily next morning the snow had stopped so after brushing off the jeep and checking out we topped up the petrol tank and then stopped at the Toiyabe Café for breakfast.   This time I remembered to wear my jacket inside!

  

As we drove out of Austin it was overcast and cloudy and the mountains were covered in snow, further along the sun emerged from behind the clouds and the scenery was very impressive.

We had hoped to visit Hickison Petroglyphs, which we thought were by the side of the road, but it turned out that to reach them you needed to take a dirt road into the mountains and then follow a ½ mile trail.   Somehow with snow all around and ominous skies threatening more heading off along an unknown dirt road didn’t seem like such a good idea, so sadly we gave them a miss.

Further along we drove through both clouds and sunshine and at one point we seemed to drive out of the snow, but when we started climbing into Eureka we were back in the snow.

Silver was discovered in Eureka by miners from Austin in 1864; by 1878 Eureka’s population was over 9,000 people.   By 1900 the town was declining due to changing market conditions and only smaller mines remained operational until the 1920’s.   Mining has recently made a come-back with a technique called heap leaching, a method allowing more efficient and profitable processing of rock containing trace amounts of gold.

There is a walking tour of Eureka, but as we drove into town, it was grey, dismal, cold and starting to snow, so once again we decided against it, and didn’t even bother driving around as we’d done in Austin.   We parked by the Eureka Opera House, a lovely old building I went inside to get our passport stamped.   The lady inside wasn’t going to let me go without having a look around so after leaving a donation, off I went.

I was glad I did as it’s a lovely old building, as you walk down the stairs into the basement the walls are signed by all the acts that’ve performed there over the years.

The only ones I’d even vaguely heard of were the Inkspots and I think they were a Fifties group.   From what we saw Main Street in Eureka seemed to have more occupied buildings than Austin and they have at least one grocery store!

Eureka Court House.

As we left town the snow became heavier, although the road was clear it was really coming down and in places the snow was quite deep on each side of the road.  

At one point visibility was so bad that the only reason we knew where we were was because I suddenly saw a sign for Hamilton, the ghost town we explored earlier this year.   Needless to say we didn’t take a side trip up the dirt road to see how it looked in the snow!

The snow stopped as we drove down into Ely where, although the mountains were covered in snow, it was just very, very cold and cloudy.

As we’d bypassed the things we’d planned on seeing because it was so cold we were way too early to check into our hotel.   We got our passport stamped in the Chamber of Commerce, so now we had enough stamps to send it off for our certificate, after that we found a coffee shop for some much needed delicious hot chocolate.

Have fun, we are!