Our third honeymoon, ride report day 3

When we woke up Sunday morning, we founds ourselves in the quirky and friendly town of Eureka. As a matter of fact, they advertise themselves as the friendlies town in Nevada.  

There was a spiffy little junkyard, with all this fun art, I couldn't resist photographing all of it!

This town initial seems to be a Nevada thing.

Rather than head back to the only resturaunt in town, we decided to have breakfast at the gas station, and then explore the town.  There were many historic buildings.... This hotel is in the process of being restored.

We rode around town looking at the historical sites... It's a small town.  This would have been a better walking tour.  And you know how much I love to ride.

Had to stop by the fire department...

The opera house was restored in 1990, and is a meeting place for the town.

After riding so long for the last couple days, today was designated a play day.  Only 150 miles to ride, on highway 50, the loneliest highway in Nevada.  We had spotted some off roading the night before...

Those barriers were just an invitation to come and play...

As it turned out, pretty much all of Nevada is off road.... Once we got off of highway 50, everything was dirt.

We came back to town to fill up with Gas, and met this super interesting couple.  Tami sat on my bike and immediately wanted one.  Her husband worked in the mines, and told Nathan all about the geology of the area.

It was fun talking, but the road was calling...

We decided to play our way to Great Basin National Park.  I super love this photo of Nathan.  "Stop everything.  I've got this."  

We meandered down random dirt roads as we went...  We found this HUGE pit that Nathan rode around and I took pictures of.

This was an epic cloud day.

So many fun side roads.  I want to go back and explore them all!  

As we got closer to Elko, we spotted more mining operations.  We rode the bikes down by the train tracks.

Elko was full of beautiful murals.

There was also interesting information about the many  many rocks you see in Nevada, and why they look the way they look.  

There's a super cute train station, and we got to see the historic steam train twice!  Both times, hands were busy with handlbars, and I didn't get a photo.

The All Aboard Cafe and Inn is a fairly new business; it was a bed and breakfast before as well, but originally it was the town grocery store!  It turns out it was their year anniversary being open, and they had FREE CAKE after lunch.  This is my new favorite resturaunt.

After lunch, we explored the train station a bit.

We set out toward Baker, and I almost drove past this without turning around... That would have been a mistake.  

For many miles, it was hard to believe there was going to be a National Park coming up, but in the distance, I saw a mountain range... Must be getting close...

We spotted a sign that confirmed this hunch!  

  I don't want to spoil Great Basin for anyone, but in terms of National Parks, it seemed quite small and undramatic.  We did get to see a wild turkey.  The road was fun, though my bike was quite cranky with the sudden changes in altitude.

COLOR! Something about Nevada, at least the eastern part we were in.  Pretty much everything was teal green and grey.... Pretty and soothing colors, but not a ton of contrast.  So when you did spot bits of color...

It felt like THIS to your eyes.

We were getting hungry, but the Grey Cliffs sounded interesting...

And here, we found some really fun dual sporting!  There was a little trail, and we spotted animal dens, lots of rodents, and had our first deer crossing!  

We followed the trail to a dirt road, which led us to a closed but not locked gate (the road was on google) so we went through the private property and came back to our highway.  We headed to our motel for the night.  This was the only reservation I'd made, thinking we'd be ready after two nights of camping, but since we hadn't camped so far and the weather was finally warm, we were a little bummed to be heading to town.

We weren't disappointed when we got there.  Another small town, population 68.  We'd made a reservation Silver Jack Inn and Electrolux Cafe, but given the small nature of the town, things can change.  The owner of the "inn" was off in the big city recruiting help, so we were sent across the street to find out about our room.

We did get a peek at the Electrolux Cafe... Quirky as heck,

This is the inn.  It was perfect for us.  We were eating up the small towns.  I forgot to grab a photo at the resturaunt, but the food and the beer were delicious!  

I loved this sign.... Remember, you are in Baker, NV, not Paris.  So wonderfully true.

We went to sleep dreaming of Utah.  Tomorrow was the day... It was going to be magnificent...