Road Trip to Ely, Nevada

I hope you had a safe and enjoyable holiday weekend. We are always grateful for canines and humans who gave their lives for our freedoms. Every breath we take is because of their sacrifice. How did you spend Memorial-Day weekend? We hit the road, Jack, and we drove for miles and miles!

Mom warned me we would be in the car for a long time, and she wasn’t kidding! Yowsa. Dad’s back is still bothersome, and sitting in the big truck is one of the only comfortable positions for him. We chose Northeast Nevada, and our first stop was Ely, about 524 miles from North Phoenix.

Basically, you get on the 93 and stay on that about four hours. Just south of Las Vegas is Boulder City, and the road turns to the 11. This is a brand-new freeway that bypasses the city and brings you to the interchange where you connect with I-15 North toward Moapa. Once in Moapa, you get back on 93 north, and it becomes the Great Basin Highway, a scenic byway. Close to Ely, the 93 connects with the 50 north and takes you to the 6, right into the town of Ely. We just programmed in the Holiday Inn Express in Ely and followed our GPS to: 1505 East Aultman Street, Ely NV. It is literally straight forward as the road doesn’t bend much!

Ely is a geographically oddity as it is about five hours from Las Vegas, five hours from Reno and five hours from St. George. AKA – it is in the middle of nowhere, and we passed Nothing to get to it. Ha!

I’m not good at math, but I could tell dad wasn’t happy with gas prices. He advised against getting anything in Wickiup as they overcharge and take advantage of people. Wait until Kingman to fuel up. We got some Popeye’s chicken for lunch and found a nice park to have a quick picnic and stretch our legs.

Firefighter’s Memorial Park is close to the freeway and is located at 2001 Detroit Avenue. It has picnic tables in the shade, lots of grass and trees. We watched people play frisbee golf and met some other dogs there. They do have a beautiful little memorial on site, and it was dog friendly. For some reason, a lot of parks in Kingman did not allow does. Say what?

Back on the road we went until we finally arrived at Ely, some nine hours later. Ely sits at 6,437 feet and has about 4,000 residents. It was a stagecoach stop back in day off the route used by many settling the west, which is now state route 50. Similar to Route 66, the 50 is a very lonely, isolated road because freeways took people away from the town. Copper was discovered and is still mined there today.

What a long haul, but the mountain views from Ely are breathtaking! I felt like I was right at home. I was born in Colorado and still consider myself a mountain dog at heart. We checked into the hotel but didn’t stay. We got back in the car to check out the local park and the steam train.

At 1100 Avenue A in Ely sits the Nevada Northern Railroad Museum. Because of all the gold and copper coming out of the area, trains were used to transport it and supplies. The museum has a quaint gift shop, and they offer 90-minute train rides up into the hills and back. Apparently, dogs are welcome, but we didn’t have time…and we were hungry. We had to at least see it since we were in Ely. Go to their website for details and tickets: https://www.nnry.com/

We got Chinese food to go from Twin Wok Restaurant in town, and headed over to Steptoe Park. The town is small enough that it doesn’t have an address, but look up parks and choose one. They are all very nice with gorgeous mountain views.

Apparently, we should have picked the Happy Garden as Twin Wok was awful. Everything was just boiled to death with zero flavor. Mom got me some beef on a stick, and it made me sick. Blech. At least the park was nice, and we laughed at little kids playing T-ball.

We were all pretty beat, though, and headed to our room. The hotel was newly remodeled and offered free breakfast in the morning. For now, I curled up in my doggy bed and zonked out. I anticipated the adventures awaiting me tomorrow when we would visit the Great Basin National Park, the reason we drove all this way. I’ll share about that next week! Stay cool my Phoenix friends – the heat has arrived.

My mom, Lorraine Bossé-Smith, is kind enough to help me share my Great Adventures, big and small. My mom is a motivational speaker, corporate trainer, executive recruiter, business consultant, coach, fitness expert, and author of nine published books. More importantly, she’s the best doggy mom ever!