After breakfast at the hotel we headed to downtown Ely, Nevada to check out all the murals there. Donna had picked up a brochure about them the last time we were here. Several of them were very nice, but after seeing a half dozen or so we ran out of patience for trying to match the brochure to the murals. For such a small town there was a high density of Chevy Corvettes lurking around on the streets. There were also an awful lot of current American muscle cars as well. Somehow we had managed to arrive in Ely (pronounced eel • eee) for the opening of the Nevada Open Road Challenge weekend.
While bopping along east on US6/50, our planned route for the day, about 50 miles into it we came to a line of slow moving cars ahead of us. A 1/4 mile ahead we could see flashing lights of a highway patrol car that was behind a great big ol’ thing that was taking up the whole two lane road. There were additional highway patrol cars ahead getting oncoming cars to get off the pavement. The convoy was traveling about 30MPH on a road marked for 70, but in a way we definitely got lucky on when we caught up to this mess.
Because just a couple miles of creeping along, like magic, an alternate route presented itself, Nevada 487 which turned towards the Great Basin National Park and we took it. A quick check of Google Maps showed that if we continued along that road it would take us on a southern loop to I-15 that would get us back on track and only costing us 30 miles and 30 minutes. This was a route that Donna had mentioned possibly taking anyway, so it did work out real well. It even led us to an awesome taco place in Milford, UT called Brody’s. Donna had 2 pollo & I had 2 al pastor which was just the right size in quantity and price.
Somewhere along today’s route while dodging approximately thirty one thousands pounds of big ol’ piece of machinery the Mini’s odometer clicked past the 31,000 mile mark.
Along the way we managed to snag a couple more Roadside America oddities, an ranch entry arch made entirely of antelope antlers and some fuel tanks painted as soft drink cans.
