Day 18: Las Vegas to Caliente

Slept really well and woke to an overcast day. For the curious, here is what $45/night buys you in Las Vegas:

Photo hardly does the room justice. The bathroom had a marble counter and the hot water was hot as soon as you turned on the tap. I don't know how they do that (and yes I had a look under the bench to see). The TV was about 50 inches, and came with a wireless keyboard, plus on demand Adult Entertainment; I guess I'd expect nothing less from Vegas.

So I packed up and hit the road. Next stop, Caliente, NV. Along the way I came across some amazing scenery; Nevada never disappoints in the scenery department. In some ways it is very similar to NZ scenery, but then you round a corner and hit something like this:

And then you remember you most certainly aren't in NZ any more!

And you know what I said about how in Nevada the roads really are straight? I wasn't kidding…

Even the gravel roads don't disappoint!

Dead straight gravel road in Nevada. Actually took this because it reminded me of Craigieburn back home.

As you can see I'm no longer on the sealed highway. I decided to take a bit of a short cut into Caliente and took a side road down to the Meadow Valley Wash where the UP tracks are. I'm pretty sure it added several hours to my trip :-) See at first it was ok going, but then I encountered three graders grading the road, which was fine, but then I joined up with "Highway" 317 which was anything but a highway. See back in 2005 (and in 1901, 1903, 1907, 1910 I later found out) a huge flood wiped out most of the valley and they are only just cleaning up now. Whole chunks of road were missing, and in many places the edges of the road were crumbling away. Still there was plenty of traffic (relatively speaking) so obviously the road was passable, despite the big ROAD CLOSED signs at each end.

As I drove along there were lots of diggers and construction crews out tidying things up. It would've been an interesting drive in a normal car, lots of potholes and sharp dips, water across the road, etc.

The scenery was of course up to typical Nevada standards, maybe even exceeding them…

The Meadow Valley Wash is also known as Rainbow Canyon, on account of the many different colours of rock through here.

Eventually I arrived in Caliente, which is a surprisingly big town for the middle of nowhere. One thing that struck me straight away was how young the town's people are. Median age is 33 according to Wikipedia, with a population of just over 1,000 people. And yet for such a small town they boast 3 motels, a pizza place, several restaurants, a casino (more like a pub), and an amazing railway station. It takes no more than 5 minutes to walk from my motel to any part of the town.

The old Spanish Mission style railway station.

I checked into my motel which while costing the same as my 10th story Vegas hotel, does at least come with free wifi. And it is also pretty flash, the TV is only 21" but it is flatscreen. I also have two beds, fridge, microwave, very clean bathroom and toilet that has some serious suction! I'm talking about aeroplane rivalling suction here. It's too bad Angela isn't here, she would've screamed first time she used it! It gave me one heck of a fright myself. Most American toilets take their serious time at flushing, first filling the bowl and then gradually spinning faster and faster until it's all emptied. Not this one. BANG and it's all gone. It surely must be power-assisted.

Having satisfied my curiousity plumbing-wise I went outside and UP were kind enough to send through a manifest for me.

Afternoon glint shot.

One downside to Caliente and the surrounding canyon is that their days are short and photography is a challenge. Add to that March being maintenance month for UP on this part of the line and I'm not seeing many trains. At night there is about 1 every hour, but during the day I'm lucky to see more than one.

Main street of Caliente / Rear end pushers on a colourful intermodal.

I notice the locals here don't pronounce the T in Caliente, so it sounds more like Calienne. Then again, the accents are very strong here.

Went to Pioneer Pizza for dinner which was a very drawn out affair. Don't get me wrong, the pizza was fantastic, but it took 10 minutes to place my order and 30+ minutes to make. I noticed they were quoting 45 minutes on the phone when the (wise) locals phoned through their orders.

Wandered back to the motel, had a quick Skype chat with Mum & Lottie and whacked out a few blog updates. A train came through while Skyping so Mum & Lottie got the pleasure of hearing the train toot for the crossing, which over here is a very serious matter with the standard long-long-short-really-long sequence for every single crossing . Luckily Caliente only has the 1 crossing, but the cool night air carries sounds very well out here.

Caliente seems a nice town, certainly small but surprisingly busy with quite a few shops. They have an electronics store, a hardware shop, small supermarket, and so on. For such a small population (same size as Loburn back in NZ) they seem to be doing well for themselves. I'd certainly like to come back here in the Fall when the Cottonwood trees have some colour to them and the UP are running a few more daylight trains.