Austin, NV to Eureka, NV Distance: 70 miles
Riding Time: 5:42 Bad head wind
Average Speed: 12.3 miles
Altitude Gain: 2676
The man that was camped next to us last night said that the switch backs just behind our campground would be a hard way to start the day. The man was right. The switchbacks climbed right up the mountain wall and were several miles long. The last stretch of the climb was the steepest. I was thrilled to finally reach the summit. The down hill on the backside of the mountain was fun.
About mid afternoon the wind started to pick up. It was the beginning of two days of hard work into a headwind. It was good that today was shorter than yesterday because the wind tried to make up for it. The landscape was the same as the previous day.
Today started several days of Mormon cricket invasion. It was rather fun swerving and darting to smash them with the bike tires. In some areas the road would be brown with the smashed crickets. Wherever there were smashed crickets, there were also live crickets eating them and at times there were piles of 4 to 6 eating what was left. Most of the time they were so busy eating they wouldn’t even see me coming. Ha, ha.
Eureka is a great improvement over the town of Austin. Both are old mining towns, but Eureka has some impressive architecture and most of it has been maintained and looks fun. Kathie thought the fire-station in town was one of the prettiest she had ever seen. We went to the new hardware store in town and bought some needed trailer supplies. The crickets were all over the walls of this store. The RV park was a great improvement over the night before.
The RV park owner told us about an old part of the city that was once part of the 10,000 people that used to live there. We drove a few miles up the canyon and walked through the ghost town of the past. It seemed to be a fad to use big blown-up pictures of the people that lived in these houses as wallpaper. Having these pictures look at us as we walked through the house was rather eerie.
ThruUSA2 