Cruising the Extraterrestrial Highway [251008]

(Posted 260211) We spent Wednesday exploring the Extraterrestrial Highway.  Although we didn't see any live aliens, we enjoyed visiting the kitschy little roadside shops/attractions along the way.

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Tuesday night into Wednesday night was chilly, dropping to a low of 37 degrees outside and 50 degrees inside.  After getting up around 7:30 am, we fired up the Truma furnace on electric to bring the coach temperature up to 60, and then switched to heating water for a rare morning T42 hot shower (since the site happened to be a power and water site) while going about the rest of our morning routine.

On her morning walk, Christine took a few photos of the interesting rock formations in the morning light.

After our morning routine + showers, we refilled our fresh water from the site's spigot and then stopped at the dump station on our way out of the campground.  The station's rinse hose had one of those non-threaded nipple heads on it that aren't made to be used with tank flush systems like ours, and what was worse was that the nipple head on it was too large to fit into the cutoff hose that we've started carrying to use as an adaptor for such situations.  However, the station also had a "potable rinse water" spigot that was threaded, but also only floor height and equipped with a non-locking foot-activated dead man's switch on it.  Kind of awkward, but useable.

Our last stop before we left the park was back up in the oasis area, to fill all our insulated water bottles from the blissfully cold water bottle fill station there.

We had a "you know you're not in California anymore" moment as we were driving through Caliente on our way out.  We noticed a huge plume of ugly black smoke rising from the edge of town, and assumed that it must be because of some sort of road or industrial accident. 

 As we passed by it, though, we realized: no, it was just some folks burning their trash.

Then we were on the open road, with our first destination entered into our GPS routing:

As we drove along, we were delighted to see to see a few Joshua Trees by the side of the road - which gradually increased in number until we were driving through a small forest of them.

Just before noon we reached our first destination (58 miles west of our starting location): E.T. Fresh Jerky.  The exterior and grounds were very interestingly decorated . . .

. . . with an interior to match.

"Most importantly": they had directions posted for how to get to the Back Gate of Area 51.  (The folks behind the counter had additional safety tips for avoiding a visit from some heavily armed guards, like "don't get too close to the gate, and definitely don't try to touch it." 😉)  The "10 miles down the dirt road" part pretty much eliminated it as a potential activity for us in the T42, but Tom thanked them for their efforts by buying a pack of Elk Jerky.

Less than a mile up the road was the sign marking the "official" start of the Extraterrestrial Highway.

Another short hop brought us to the Alien Research Center gift shop, which wasn't quite as interesting on the outside or inside as E.T. Fresh Jerky had been.

From there, we drove 40 miles up and down various passes, until we reached the other end of the Extraterrestrial Highway . . .

. . . in Rachel, NV - where we stopped at the Little Aleinn for more photos.

Of particular interest was a wall that contained pictures and information about actual UFO sitings that dated back to the 1960s. 

Leaving Rachel (never actually having seen the turn off to get to the Back Gate of Area 51) we travelled another 84 miles northwest to the Saulsbury Wash Rest Area, our stopping place for the night.  Oddly, Tom's phone and watch skipped ahead an hour for about 1/2 hour during the drive; did we encounter some sort of alien time dilation field, or just some errant badly programmed cell tower somewhere?  You be the judge. 😉

Saulsbury Wash is one of the rare Nevada rest areas with a vault toilet.  It also had a windmill next door, which we walked over to check out.

We wanted to open the window for ventilation, but the wind was gusting quite heavily and the awning windows in the Travato are notorious for getting damaged by strong winds (wind gets under window and lifts it higher than the struts are designed for which pops the window itself out of the groove that it rests in at the top - there's no actual physical hinge holding it in place - and the acrylic portion can go crashing to the floor below).  So Tom figured out how to use an old spare boot lace to tie the window latch to the table leg inside to prevent it from moving, even if a strong gust of wind were to catch it, and we enjoyed some nice air circulation, worry-free.

We only got 1 bar of LTE cell service out there, but the weBoost was able to boost it to 2 useable bars so we spent the evening finishing the Elko, Part 1 blog.  Dinner that night was tinned fish with leftover rice and grilled zucchini for Tom, and leftover Instant Pot Lasagna for Christine.

By the time we headed to bed at 12:15, two other folks (a camper van and a car) had joined us in the rest area.

Tomorrow we'd trade looking into space for looking underground . . .

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