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(Red) The Loneliest Highway in America is a 567-mile stretch of bare pavement that cuts across the middle of Utah and Nevada. It pretty much parallels US80, which seems to be the preferred route of travel for quickly getting across these most vile of states. We decided to check out this lonesome piece of the past and picked up Hwy50 (TLHiA) in a town called Delta, some 125 miles south of Salt Lake and 69 miles west of where the highway begins on US70. In Delta we paused at a filling station for gas and essentials and were quickly accosted by a deranged man who had just come across the Loneliest Highway in America. He was pulling at his hair and sputtering something about water and walking sticks... Refusing to acknowledge his rant, I pushed him aside with one hand while topping off my tank with the other. Soon we were a mile or so out of town and truly into the void. We came to a stop at a fetid little stretch of water that the atlas said would be the last moisture we'd see until we got to Kalifornia and Lake Tahoe. As we stood gazing at the still, murky green trench, each of us lost to contemplation as we were about to head off into the unknown, our good friend and physicianado, Dr. Tequila n Mota stopped by to place a tiny blue pill on each of our outstretched tongues. Thanking him kindly, we climbed back into our rigs and headed on across the desert. Hwy50 is a far cry from the Loneliest Highway in America for I have been on much worse. Sure, towns (if you could call them that) are a good 100-150 miles apart and there isn't much 'civilization' in between; but Hwy50 traces some of the most beautiful stretches of untamed highway left in America. The road follows portions of the Pony Express Route, skirts Top Secret Military Installations, passes UFO landing pads, and drives a straight course over mountain ranges and across vast basins. It is a long roller coaster ride through places with names like the Black Rock Desert, Wah Wah Mountains, Confusion Range (I still can't figure it out), Humboldt National Forest, Pancake Range, and Toiyabe Range. The views are spectacular and the road is straight and true. You can hum along without a worry for Truckers, Traffic or Troopers. Forgo US80 and take Hwy50! Catch a sunset and a sunrise on the Loneliest Highway in America and you will not be disappointed. After floating along in a liquid blue haze for the better part of the day, we decided that we should hole up for the evening next opportunity we got. Sleeping out on the plains in our condition would be psychologically inadvisable so we found the next best thing, Bob Scott Campground, just east of Austin, NV, middle of nowhere, USA. Just our luck too, the camping was free since there were no services to offer us tonight. Fortunately we are always prepared; we had stocked up on beer and whiskey when we stopped earlier in Eureka, NV for dinner at that nice little Chinese-American Diner that serves the town of 27 good eats day and night. As the moon chased the sun from the sky, we made camp for the first time. It was definitely nice to be under the stars instead of inside the Clipper for once. The evening commenced with good-natured, easy-going inebriation... The Evening ended with the Chumming.Com Staph playing its favorite drunken campfire game, Hot Chinchilla. Standing around a bed of fiery hot coals, we guzzled beer, shot whiskey, toked Humbolt, and pulled burning embers from the center of the fire to toss back and forth across our tiny circle in a game of all-too-real hot potato. We had a couple newcomers to this game but they quickly mastered some of the more advanced moves, like Caging... the Martini... and the most difficult of moves, the CrapShoot. We finally went to bed once our hands were sufficiently blistered and our egos accordingly bolstered. The next morning we headed off in search of Uncle Filthy. Gobbling up the miles and crossing the rest of Nevada without incident, our sights were set on the beauty surrounding Lake Tahoe and a man who could hopefully fill our heads with what they needed... a good, healthy dose of psychedelia. But Uncle Filthy was nowhere to be found. We looked in bars, yogurt huts, abandoned houses, under rocks, everywhere. We ended up settling for a couple pitchers of Steelhead and 2 large pies at a local pizza hub, enjoying the company of our talented bartender and some late afternoon sunshine. Lake Tahoe is awesome... a little crowded but stunning country. I made a mental note to return here some day when I had more time. A quick survey of the Staph resulted in a unanimous decision to head out... press on through the night to the truly fine city of San Francisco. So that is what we did... we headed farther west under a thick cloud of anticipation for the RollerBettys that were to greet us at the coast...
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