Driving the Back Roads with a Perrier

Driving south from Oregon through the hinterlands of Nevada, we were sipping on our Perrier and singing the words from the 1970’s Little Feat song:

. . . I’ve been from Tucson to Tucumcari, Tehachapi, Tonopah.

Driven every kind of rig that’s ever been made.

Now I’ve driven the back roads so I wouldn’t get weighed . . .

We realized like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz that we weren’t in Kansas (or Oregon) anymore. We hadn’t driven through all of those towns, but we did meander through Tonopah. I was pulling Tim into this genre of creativity to break up the long 12-hour drive through Nevada with musings of how different this is than what we encounter in our everyday lives.

The terrain is a cross between Alaska and a lunar landscape. It looks like Alaska because of how far you can see and how vast it feels. It resembles a lunar landscape because of the odd shapes and dusty mauves, tans and brown colors. The vegetation is almost nonexistent except for the ground sagebrush that lies in waiting for the persistent gusty winds to blow it across the road as the winds continually buffet our small car. The road is perfectly straight until it curves around the Monte Cristo range. In addition to the milieu, there were also some interesting observations that we made:

• There is one lone tree that has many shoes draped over it’s branches just north of Reno
• We were tempted to stop in the More Than Likely Bar and Grill in Likely, California
• We travelled through Coaldale but didn’t see any coal.
• A sign in Lunning, NV warned us of a Lobster Crossing.
• Made a mental note of the “Naval Undersea Warfare Center” in Hawthorne where there is no water, let alone a sea.
• Observed guys dressed in fishnet hose and dresses in McDonalds and chose to believe they were donning their Halloween costumes early.
• Our map indicated a lake in several places, but there was no water to be seen. But Dry Lake was no surprise.
• We had our eyes peeled at the sign for bighorn sheep crossing but probably could have waited all day without seeing any.
• Were intrigued by Candelaria that was identified on our Nevada state map as a ghost town. We chose not to take the dirt road detour to it.
• When we saw the sign for the Veterans Memorial Highway we thought it might be closed due to the government shutdown. Luckily it wasn’t. We looked at each section, which was dedicated to a specific war. It began with World War One up to the Global war on terror.
• We were enticed to stop to do what the sign said, “Drink on the Brink at the Bug Bar,” but as appetizing as that sounded we kept moving.
• My favorite store that we didn’t stop at was Old Goldfield Anteeks in Goldfield.
• We found that many of the small towns were situated on the top of a hill with cattle guards protecting them.

Our Edward Abbey armchair account of the territory ended when we were greeted by the lights of Las Vegas with many empty cans of Perrier littered in the backseat of the car. We were not only enjoying the scenery and drinking Perrier, but providing a gift at the same time.

I usually buy generic soda water at the store. But I noticed that Perrier and our local grocery store, Fred Meyer, was participating in Miracle Aisles. This program obtains products from companies that are willing to give a portion of the proceeds to the Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland, Oregon. Then a retail outlet, such as Fred Meyer, chooses one of the products on the list to sell in its store and give a portion of the proceeds to the hospital. The program is the 26^th year and has donated over $3 million to the hospital.

Today’s gift was to buy the Perrier so that a donation would be given to the Doernbecher Children’s Hospital. Now that we’ve driven the back roads, we’ll savor our Perrier and know that the donations serve a very good purpose.

In Giving and Travelling the Back roads,

Robin