Winnemucca to Fernley
This is the "let's get as close to Black Rock
Desert as we can" day. Originally we were planning to be out there for two
nights, but the rocket launches on Friday are experimental and "for adults
only," so we will head out Saturday morning. The closest place we found to
stay is the town of Fernley, about 100 miles south of the launch site.
When we were at dinner last night we found out about "Fifties Fever" in Winnemucca. This is an annual road event the town does that draws in vintage hot rods for show competition and drag racing. They close of an eighth mile of one of the streets and race on Friday night. We didn't want to spend another night in Winnemucca, so we would have to miss the drags (qualifications at 6:30pm, races at 9:00pm). We did, however, go over to the race check-in and checked-out a bunch of the cars. Here are two cool machines. The first is a vintage Ford, chopped and tuned. It sounded incredible when he lit it up. The second car is a four wheel drive Fiat. I don't think there was a 4WD class, and all the rest of the cars were American muscle cars from the 50s, 60s, and 70s, but it was cool to see anyway.
My favorite car there was a late 60s Camero - my dream car from my high school days - I shot some video of it to capture the sound. Sorry, no stills.
As for Fernley, we made it there in a couple of hours and then spent another hour trying to hunt down an Internet connection. We stayed at an RV park that was a part of the Best Western Hotel, but no way were they going to let us make a local dialup call. I guess you can only get that if you rent a room.
We finally found a connection at one of the truck stops, and we could upload web pages, browse and receive our mail from there. For dumb technical reasons we couldn't send email, though. See my page about connecting from American's highways for more info on that experience.
It started raining around 6 or 7pm and didn't stop until around 4am. It cooled us all off, but I spent much of the night worrying about the drive across the desert in the morning.
When we were at dinner last night we found out about "Fifties Fever" in Winnemucca. This is an annual road event the town does that draws in vintage hot rods for show competition and drag racing. They close of an eighth mile of one of the streets and race on Friday night. We didn't want to spend another night in Winnemucca, so we would have to miss the drags (qualifications at 6:30pm, races at 9:00pm). We did, however, go over to the race check-in and checked-out a bunch of the cars. Here are two cool machines. The first is a vintage Ford, chopped and tuned. It sounded incredible when he lit it up. The second car is a four wheel drive Fiat. I don't think there was a 4WD class, and all the rest of the cars were American muscle cars from the 50s, 60s, and 70s, but it was cool to see anyway.
My favorite car there was a late 60s Camero - my dream car from my high school days - I shot some video of it to capture the sound. Sorry, no stills.
As for Fernley, we made it there in a couple of hours and then spent another hour trying to hunt down an Internet connection. We stayed at an RV park that was a part of the Best Western Hotel, but no way were they going to let us make a local dialup call. I guess you can only get that if you rent a room.
We finally found a connection at one of the truck stops, and we could upload web pages, browse and receive our mail from there. For dumb technical reasons we couldn't send email, though. See my page about connecting from American's highways for more info on that experience.
It started raining around 6 or 7pm and didn't stop until around 4am. It cooled us all off, but I spent much of the night worrying about the drive across the desert in the morning.