Out of California and into Nevada

Time to leave Death Valley, and indeed to leave California for Nevada, finishing our trip with a couple of nights in Las Vegas. We had breakfast again at the coffee shop, then checked out and drove north and east out of the national park.

Rhyolite

Soon after crossing the state line we stopped at Rhyolite, a very different ghost town from Bodie which we had visited earlier in the trip. Here there are far fewer buildings remaining and it is free to visit. Most are of concrete, dating from the town’s heyday in the early years of the twentieth century. The railroad depot is fairly intact, as is an unusual house built from glass bottles and adobe, while others are just shells.

The town was founded in early 1905 as one of several gold mining camps that sprang up after discoveries in this region. It was located near the region's biggest producer, the Montgomery Shoshone Mine. According to Wikipedia:
Industrialist Charles M. Schwab bought the Montgomery Shoshone Mine in 1906 and invested heavily in infrastructure, including piped water, electric lines and railroad transportation, that served the town as well as the mine. By 1907, Rhyolite had electric lights, water mains, telephones, newspapers, a hospital, a school, an opera house, and a stock exchange. Published estimates of the town's peak population vary widely, but scholarly sources generally place it in a range between 3,500 and 5,000 in 1907–08.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhyolite,_Nevada

But the town was very short-lived. The mine got into financial difficulties in 1910 and closed the following year. With no work in the area the population of Rhyolite declined rapidly, to below 1,000 immediately after the mine’s closure and close to zero by 1920. Today it is hard to imagine that there were once grand public buildings and homes here!

The Tom Kelly Bottle House lies on the outskirts of the town. A sign explains that it is one of the few remaining examples of bottle house architecture in the US. Wood was scarce and expensive in this area so miners often built their houses with whatever they could find. Glass bottles were plentiful and free. They would be used like bricks and mortared with adobe. These houses were great in this desert climate as according to the sign they stay cool in the summer (which surprised me with all that glass) and hold the heat in winter. This particular house was built in 1906 by Tom Kelly, an Australian-born stonemason turned miner. He used over 50,000 bottles, paying local children to collect them (10c per wheelbarrow).

It has been used several times as a location for filming, including Wanderers in the Wasteland (based on a Zane Grey novel) in 1924.

Goldwell Open Air Museum

Nearby is a bizarre collection of sculptures, the Goldwell Open Air Museum, also free to visit.

A group of Belgian artists have, as the website explains, ‘created a self-described art situation consisting of seven outdoor sculptures that are colossal not only in their scale but in their placement within the vast upper Mojave desert.’ Pieces include a representation of the Last Supper and a cut-out cowboy wielding a pickaxe, accompanied by a penguin!

From the website:
Using cinderblocks to represent in real 3-D sculpture the pixels he uses in his virtual 2-D computer work, Dr. Hugo has created a sculpture which at once refers back to classical Greek sculpture while maintaining a firm presence in the highly technological/pixilated world of the 21st century.

Again from the website:
Albert was attracted to the Mojave Desert for many reasons, not the least of which was the Mojave’s resemblance to the deserts of the Middle East. To construct a modern day representation of Christ’s Last Supper, especially so close to Death Valley (where he originally wanted it sited), is eerily appropriate. Working essentially from Leonardo Da Vinci’s fresco of the Last Supper within the desert environment, Szukalski succeeded in blending the two disparate elements into a unified whole.

The website again:
Among the artists that have contributed work to the museum, probably the one who felt most out of place in the desert was Belgian artist Fred Bervoets, appointed a Knight of the Order of Leopold II by the King in 1988. His “portrait” sculpture of Shorty Harris (an early miner in Death Valley and its environs) and a penguin has elicited countless questions. The miner makes sense, but why the Antarctic bird? Word has it that Bervoets wanted to include in his sculpture an indication of how “alien” he felt in the Nevada desert. The penguin was the most out of place entity the artist could think of to represent his own feelings of displacement under the Mojave sun, a self-portrait then as a penguin in the desert.

Beatty

From here we drove the few miles into Beatty where we stopped at the unusual welcome sign on the edge of town.

We had a cold drink in a local café then went for a little wander around, taking photos of a very unusual building just across the road from the café.

We then joined the main Highway 95 which would take us to Vegas. Some way along the road we stopped at what appeared to be a large gas station and small burger restaurant in Indan Springs, as we wanted to use the loos. We were slightly astounded to open the doors on to a busy room packed with slot machines and a gift shop obsessed with aliens! It turned out that we were driving parallel to SR375, nicknamed the Extraterrestrial Highway because of the large number of claimed sightings here near the infamous Area 51. Clearly the aliens had migrated a little west to join the faster Interstate!

We also stopped at the much calmer Desert National Wildlife Refuge just north of Vegas to enjoy our usual light picnic lunch.

It was just as well we'd had that peaceful break, as once we hit Vegas the driving and navigating became much, much harder! We'd planned to stop in the Downtown area but could see nowhere to park, so we kept going. We had to drive the full length of the Strip with multiple junctions, plus road works closing a lane at one point. We later discovered these works were actually preparations for the Las Vegas Formula One race. It was still a whole month off, but they were already building spectator stands along the Strip.

Eventually we made it to the turning for the New York New York parking garage, turned in and got parked. We walked through to the hotel registration area and were immediately surrounded by a cacophony of noise from slot machines, music and crowds of people. Such a contrast to the quiet of the desert!

We were too early to check in, so we wandered around trying to get our bearings and adjust to the somewhat overwhelming atmosphere. An ice cream at the Hagen Daz place helped to calm us, and we returned to the lobby where we mastered the self check-in and activated our room keys.

Our room

The room was a good one, on the 15th floor with views of the roller coaster and out towards the airport. We returned to the car park to fetch our bags, navigating the somewhat confusing lift arrangements and hotel layout. We then took some time to settle in, relax, and plan the next few days. After our driving experience today we decided not to use the car here as there was plenty we could enjoy without it!

Late afternoon / early evening we went out for a walk at our southern end of the Strip, soaking up all the bright lights and bizarre sights.

We then returned to New York New York and managed to get a table in the Italian restaurant, Il Fornaio, where we had an excellent meal. We shared a starter of smoked ricotta and sourdough bread, then Chris had a pizza and I had butternut squash ravioli.

After dinner we had a drink at a bar on the mezzanine, with a bit more people watching, then retired to the relative peace of our room.