The Great On-Going Nevada Road Trip

These Nevada travel stories and recommendations are drawn from the experiences of two best friends/fellow geeks/quirky goddesses, who decided after 15 years of friendship that going car camping together was a brilliant idea.

...And then it really did turn out brilliantly! 

Here are notes, recommendations and road stories from our many adventures in Nevada. The more we go there, the more we find to do!

Due to our involvement with a Vegas group that hosts events several times per year, we've found ourselves in the "Battle Born" state at least once a year for the better part of the last decade. We don't always have time to do an extended road trip for each visit, but there have been several that lasted more than a week, plus handfuls of short jaunts. Add that all up and we've managed to cover just about every part of the state not owned by the government (which turns out to be a lot).

Meet the characters and their mission

The two of us have been friends since we met years ago, living in Santa Cruz, CA, when we were both working at SCO. Being the techno-brainier of the pair of us, Calyxa was working as a sys admin, and I was working swing shift, doing light-industrial assembly, i.e. putting software and books in boxes.

Suffice to say, a strange friendship got kindled. That was the early 1990s, and it's still going, stronger than ever. We're sisters from different mothers. There is a Penn-and-Teller-like quality to our interactions, although there is only a 5" difference in our heights. Calyxa does talk, really, but it's also possible to miss those bits in my veritable verbal wake. I use weeks and much Virgo-ness to formulate the trips, and then Calyxa does all the driving. I mean ALL the driving. Calyxa leaves a cat and a husband at home when she travels, I leave a moss farm.

It used to shock the hell out of people that we did those first road trips without a single cell phone. Rae still doesn't have one but everyone else she travels with does, so she's better covered on the road than when she's at home.

In 2005, determined to get to Nevada for a fire circle gathering, I convinced Calyxa that this was somehow a moral imperative, a mission from the Goddess and not really a bad idea, even though we'd never traveled anywhere together before. We had our first visit to the Sekhmet Temple that spring, and in the fall of 2011, marked our sixth year of visiting the temple site.

We made a gigantic reverse C in 2005. I was living in the Bay Area, just north of my intrepid driver. I went down to her house the night before we were to depart with all my gear. We packed the car in the AM, made one final round of visits to the loo and we were off.

We started out heading south in CA, and then made a big curve up and around Nevada. Our route was a big backwards letter C. We started off through Joshua Tree and Mohave, then went up to the Valley of Fire, then back through Las Vegas to Cactus Springs. Then we crossed over to Rachel, then up to Ely, and over to Ruth, Austin, Gabbs, Fallon and Reno. We stopped at Rachel and Ruth, just 'cuz those are our names.

We went to the Mitchell Caverns in Mohave and the Lehman Caves up near Ely. Flat-top Tom at Big O in Yucca Valley totally save our road trip with a used tire on day one, and Ranger Tom at Mohave's Hole-in-the-Wall totally got our fire going and his dog Max was great entertainment.

The Vegas Vortex are the folks we hang with in the Vegas vicinity. I've been doing alchemy with this gang for a few years now.

We saw the Amboy Crater (in CA), saw lots of train track, cows and cow grates. As you approach Lehman is this great stretch of road with fencepost art. We got hailed and snowed on, despite the fact it was May. We stayed one night at a Goddess temple.

And when we got to Reno at the end, we saw "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" movie (OF COURSE we had our towels with us!), and the kickass show of Maxfield Parrish that was in town at the time. Then after all that, we told all our crazy adventures to my driver's friends, who put us up for the night in Reno at their house and let us soak our road-weary bods in their hot tub.

Their parting words were.... "gee, if you do this again, you should borrow our Jeep...."

This road trip took place between May 9th and May 20th.

One of the best things we did on the 2005 trip was our visit to Lehman Caves. Neither of us ladies is all that into really hot temps so the chance to go underground was welcome.

Lehman Caves is part of the Great Basin National Park, and it's located east of Ely, NV. We were going to camp near Lehman, but a freak spring snow storm changed all that.

Our park ranger had a great little schtick for the tour. He had little bits of paper with historical facts on it and each one was a "character." He took volunteers, passed out the bits and everyone got to read their pertinent historical tidbit when that moment came up on the tour. Calyxa got "the geologist" and I got "the wizard."

See, it turns out, back in the 1960s, a low-budget sci-fi movie was filmed in the cavern's. What you see here, "the Wizard's Grotto" was used to show the surface of Mars. The ranger station had a picture of astronauts sitting in a raft in the middle of the grotto in it. We thought that was pretty funny.

Looking at it, I kept expecting Gollum from THE LORD OF THE RINGS to appear, muttering about his precious and trying to catch a fish.

Highlights of the Infinity Tour

This year's road trip made the shape of a figure eight that was tipping over, and thus the Infinity Tour was nicknamed! We started in Reno this year, totally holding our friends to their offer of their jeep. We had 4-wheel drive, a moon roof and a GPS unit plus higher clearance and better car tools. We also had up-to-date road maps. We were definitely upgraded car and tech-wise this year.

This picture is from our first night officially on the road, or really, at the end of the road. We were going to camp in Wells, NV, way up in the NE corner of the state, but the road up to the campground was closed. Whether it was from there still being snow, or washed out due to rain, we don't know exactly but our night in the motel was a good call. We both woke up very early and heard pounding rain.

We were trying to find a site for rockhounding near Ely, but to no avail. The Ward Charcoal Ovens were fantastic anyway. Highway 6 brought us sights of the Wall, the Lunar Crater, a gathering pow-wow, a guy who was camped out in the middle of nowhere to watch US military secret flights at night, and the Clown Motel.

Our leg down to the Sekmet Temple to work on the goddess labyrinth took us past art cars and the best homemade jerkey in Beatty. We only got gas and groceries as we passed through Las Vegas this time, and an abortive hunt for neck coolers.

After our gathering, we actually saw the petroglyphs at the Valley of Fire this year. We took a very weird backroad north from there and had the best 10 miles on a nearly washed out and closed-to-locals-only highway on our way up to Cathedral Gorge. Once there, we stayed at the snazziest state park campground we've come across yet. Our swing back up through Ely let us stumble across the rockhounding site we'd missed the week before, so we quickly pulled over and hunted garnets. That was amazing.

We took one look at the Jerusalem crickets swarming all over the campsite near Austin and went into town and got the same room as last year at the Pony Canyon Motel. We also learned there's a guy who has visited that motel annually for over 50 years. We visited the historic Stoke's Castle and the graveyard on our way out of town this year.

By this year, I was now living in Seattle, so I flew down with all my crazy camping and gathering stuff to Reno. Calyxa drove up from the Bay Area.

Our trip ran from May 6th thru May 17th. This year's travel plan made a sort of figure eight shape that takes us all over most of Nevada in just those 11 days, hence the "infinity tour" nickname. We got temps that ranged from daytime highs of 100 to nighttime lows that hit freezing.

You can tell by the travel guides that we like to get off the beaten path a little bit. And doing historical and/or geeky stuff on the road is always good too.

I'm the one in charge of compiling any and all travel details. We always have alternate plans in case of inclement weather, or sudden flights of fancy.

A pure road trip moment

Ok, I'll confess right up front, we've never stayed at the Clown Motel in Tonopah. However, it's become the #1 entry on what's slowly forming as the "Grand NV Tour" where we purposely do a bunch of our fave stuff just 'cuz.

In 2005, we drove thru Tonopah, saw the sign and photographed it. Calyxa was the one who said this year, hey, let's go photograph that wacky place again. It was way more spiffed up looking then last year, and then Calyxa said, no really, let's go in the office and see if they have a card or something.

She must have been having a funny sixth sense or something because this office was THE CLOWN MOTHERLODE. I figure it's what it's like on the inside of those crammed little cars you see at the circus.

There are several sets of shelves that are wall to wall clowns. I could hear the sound of small children crying off in the distance as they all leered at me. It's fantastic, and thank the Goddess, they don't have that evil Pennywise, ala Tim Currey from IT. That clown I just can't take...

The woman at the desk was named Pearl, and when Calyxa said "Hi, we've just come to admire your motel" she cackled back "Ha..too late!" Pearl was a total treasure. She told us the story of how a couple came to stay once. The husband had made the reservation, and the wife had a fear of clowns. She asked if they could take down the clown art on the walls of the room. Turns out all the clown art has been made permanent to the walls so it can't be stolen. Pearl was all "I mean, it's the CLOWN MOTEL.... what did she expect?!"

We totally have to go back there someday and just stay. Your clowniest room, please!

This lens tied for runner-up in the
Squidoo Travel Challenge!

It was co-featured as
Lens of the Day
on August 26-27, 2006.

The Alchemists' Circle

In 2007, a combination of things (mostly lack of money) reduced our adventures to just our usual fire circle gathering. No, it's not Burning Man. That takes place over Labor Day weekend and it's held in the northwest corner of the state. Plus our gathering has a distinct lack of drugs and drinking, pretty much the opposite of BM.

It was freezing this year, with windy temps in the 40s and 50s, a big change from days of 105 which was what we got last year. I think I learned everything and anything you might learn about having sand in your tent. This is our campsite in the Valley of Fire. Since sleep schedules can get wacky and the car often is moved to a remote parking area once unloaded, we both bring tents to ensure better rest and sanity.

If there's one place that Calyxa and Rae visit again and again in Nevada it's the Center for Goddess Spirituality Dedicated To Sekhmet, aka the Sekhmet Temple. It's a women's retreat center about an hour northwest of Las Vegas and if they find themselves heading anywhere within that vicinity, they stop and stay for a visit.

In fact, they've stayed there so many times and done so much fun stuff that there's a whole lens about that too:

The Collaborative Art Of The Sekhmet Temple

It was a pleasure having you travel with us! If you enjoyed our adventures, please let us know by signing the guest register below, thanks!