After a late night to bed, it was an early rise with the sun in the Nevada desert. There is something eerie about watching the sun rise over the bow of a flying saucer but I guess that is normal here in Rachel, Nevada.
After sorting out what we were leaving behind and what we could fit in Bobs car it was time to hit the road for a big day on the ET Highway. It started out with clear skies and a gentle breeze but this was soon to change.
By the time we had hit around ET #450 or so, the wind started to reach gale force and was whipping up the dust and sand. It was soon relegated to me to head out of the car mainly because you needed some strength to open and shut the door without getting it ripped off the hinges.
I kept grabbing the Geocaches for the next 300 with the support crew in the car doing the driving, logging and signing. By the time we hit ET #700, I was ready for a rest and took over the logging role.
We eventually got a reprieve from the conditions when we drove into a gorge, so took the time to have a bite to eat as well as grab a couple of the non ET highway caches including an earthcache.
Back on the trail and the wind picked up as we exited the gorge and so did the dust. Not long after we arrived at Warm Springs or what is left of it. It was supposed to have been some sort of resort in its time with hot springs flowing water out of the hills, however it now all boarded up and abandoned. We continued until dusk then headed towards Tonopah, making sure to find enough Geocaches along the way to take us to 601 finds for the day. This bettered our last year daily find of 524.
We were all pretty beat and Bob dropped us off at all our hotels. There were a number of conventions in town so couldn’t all get into the same hotel. We were to find out in the morning there wasn’t a lot of choice in town so we were lucky to get rooms at all.
After logging a few of today’s finds it was off to bed to rest the weary body.
