Visit to Ely…

Had a great time and accomplished much during my stay in Pahrump, but by the 2nd week of June it was becoming unbearably hot! Even with the shade from the trees I had at my new site in row D much of the day, being cooped up in the RV was getting old fast. The heat pump A/C dual compressors did well but the front of the RV was difficult to keep cool, even with the window shades in place.

If I wanted to enjoy halfway decent working conditions, had to complete by noon everything needed that required leaving the RV. Did get my cardboard box of wires, cords, adapter cables, and clip leads all untangled, the wire holders mounted inside my bedroom closet and all those wires stored. Took from 8 am to 11 am over two days to get that all done. It only took me 15 years to get ’round2it. Not bad. Also did several other small jobs that I haven’t found time for over the last few years of having fun on the road. Like straightening out the living room slide basement compartments. Even hand washed all my shop rags.

Well, anyway, it was time to head north to avoid the heat and my destination was to be Hagerman, Idaho because I wanted to be close to the auto shop where I wanted to have my A/C filled so I could get that working again. Remember that a few weeks ago the RV’s A/C compressor on the engine seized up the idler pulley and broke the serpentine belt. Here’s the story: Engine Work… 

The travel plan was to head east over to Las Vegas, turn north and take US 93 north to Ely. Stick around Ely for a week or so and then continue on up to Twin Falls, turning west to continue on to Hagerman.

In the hills southeast of Pahrump, before reaching Las Vegas…they’ve been working on this road blocking traffic for several years now.

Over there is Las Vegas…

Here’s that new stadium being built for the NFL Raiders team… Didn’t take long to get out of LV. Here’s where I turned off the freeway, you can see the green road sign showing US 93 in the below picture. I’d be heading off to the left into those hills after leaving the freeway. It was already 90F at 10:30 am.

Just a mile or two off the freeway I passed this solar power station. I see these all over the west, especially in the desert southwest. Some are several times larger than this one.

Hundred miles or so later…and a couple thousand feet higher. The outside temp was already much more comfortable, down to the low 80’s. Nice day for a drive in the hills.

Getting higher and cooler, and this green valley suggests more rainwater on average during the year.
And in the late afternoon, arrived at Valley View RV Park, 775-289-3303, in the northern area of Ely, Nevada. They don’t have a web page, I’d found them by doing a google search for RV parks in Ely before I left Pahrump, called and made a reservation. Paid for 3 nights to start, and later another 4 nights. They were iffy about the Wifi where my space was but it turned out to be very fast. Fast enough for steaming. But…no sewer connection at my spot, if I needed to do that, I’d have to move over to an unoccupied space nearby as they don’t have a dump station either. I did jockey the RV back a bit to take advantage of extra shade later on in the week. Wasn’t totally necessary but did help. Electric and water was fine, and I had a straight shot to satellite. I recommend the park though if you pass by this way.
And here’s why I came. Snow still on the hilltops and 70’s weather most of the day down here in the valley. Elevation here is 6,500 feet (1.981 meters).
Across the street from the RV park is this valley. Pretty cool. To the left in this shot is a nice golf course.
During my weeks stay, decided to take another ride on the Nevada Northern Railroad. I’d taken this trip the last time I was in Ely and wanted to do it again.

And off we go…

See the deer? Wetlands that were allowed to reclaim themselves by first cleaning them up by removing old rusted piles of abandoned machinery, cleaning the stream that supplies the area, demanding that the mine stop dumping chemicals into it, and then leaving it alone…while forbidding development. And here we start climbing into the canyon that runs alongside the creek. The same creek that keeps the wetlands wet.
The large brick building is the middle school.

And here’s one of the largest copper mines in the world.

This is a shot of the undercarriage workings of the train car as we rolled along.

There was a boot hill in the area at one time, but I’m not sure if this was the actual site or if those were the actual grave markers.

These buildings are reproductions of old buildings.
My last trip on this train several years ago, they were attempting to make this shanty town a short stop to buy drinks, ice cream, and souvenirs. That didn’t happen I guess. This is on the turn around spur.

The mine owners must be shy because you won’t find any overhead shots of the mine anywhere in town in the places I visited. Many places; museum, bars, casinos, restaurants have lots of photos of the area, didn’t see a one of the mine. There was a Liberty Mine shot from decades ago on a city installed info sign in an empty lot in downtown though. Guess the mine owners are still a bit sensitive about letting the huge environmental damage they’re doing become general knowledge.

But I’m not…so here’s a picture from space of the Kennicott Copper Mine, Ely is on the right. The train travels up that valley from Ely, turns east and continues up to the mine’s northern area (before Ruth), turns around, and returns to Ely:

So that was the train trip. I jumped the gun a little when I bought tickets as I would rather have taken the steam train instead of the diesel later in the day. But, whatever. After we got back I took the shop tour. I’ll post some pictures of that next time.

Turned out that although I was comfortable at Valley View, I looked around for a better place to stay. Reason was that this park is too far out of town to ride my bike anywhere other than up and down along side the 4-lane highway. Didn’t care for that. Also, no sewer connection at my site.

But on my next to last day at Valley View, I was wandering around downtown in my car and happened to notice right at the edge of town another RV park. Well within bike riding distance from the downtown core. Judging from the highway sign, you’d think it wasn’t a very nice park. But it is surprisingly nice. Only 9 spaces, and they had two empties. And each site was newly re-leveled with gravel, had grass, a newer picnic table, recently trimmed trees, sewer, water, and 50/30/20 amp outlets. Plus I could tell the shade at one empty site would cover my entire RV most of the day. Especially liked that afternoon shade. Excellent.

As I only had two more days left up at the other park, talked to the owner, reserved a spot, found that he has Wifi and connected my phone so I was all set to arrive the day after he left for a week long vacation out of town. Worked out great. Very happy I stumbled on this park.

So that’s it’s from Ely for this article. I’ll have more to say about it next time as I decided to stay a month here.

Thanks for visiting!