7-23-2020 Winnemucca, NV

There are beetles here.  Thousands and millions of big, black beetles.  They are enormous, the size of frogs.  The only one I have seen that is larger is Paul McCartney.  The really big ones are wearing masks.  They don’t eat much and they’re probably supposed to be a good thing but truth be told, I can live without bugs.  Any bugs.  And certainly without bugs that are the size of a Pontiac.

Chief Winnemucca

Sarah Winnemucca

Winnemucca began as a small village back in the late 1800s.  In fact, even the name has a history.  When he was little, the chief of the Paiute Indians encountered a bunch of white pioneer travelers and he was wearing only one shoe, actually a moccasin.  They nicknamed him, “wan-na-muc-cha,” which was a bit of a bastardization of English and Paiute for, “one moccasin.”  He liked his nickname so much that he started going by it exclusively.  It eventually morphed into the word, “Winnemucca.”  His daughter, Sarah, became a very significant figure in this area.  She was well-read and smart.  She traveled long distances between pueblos to communicate and teach her people.  You can still see some of the trails she walked between the villages.  She worked with the feds to aid her struggling people and in DC, she met with folks such as President Rutherford B Hayes in 1880.  Sarah Winnemucca was the first American Indian woman to write a book, her autobiography, in 1883, “Life Among the Piutes.”  Sarah’s statue is in Statuary Hall in the DC Capitol.  So far, anyway.

Mining, agriculture and ranching played a major part in the formation of this community.  When the Central Pacific Railroad came through the area in 1868 on its way east, the railroad and the Humboldt River locked Winnemucca in as a significant crossroad of commerce.  As far as ranching goes, the Basque sheepherders seemed to like it here and now, the percentage of Basque folks is the largest, 4.2%, in the nation.  Here’s a little detail I learned about the Basque.  They came from a small strip in the Pyrenees between France and Spain and had their own culture and their own language, it’s true.  But more than that, their heritage goes deeper than culture and language.  Blood-wise, the Basque people make up 25% of the RH-negative and 55% of the Type O people in all of Europe.  I don’t know how this fits into all of humanity but it helps me to get all the lamb dishes I want at their restaurants.

Front of the Martin Hotel, est. 1898

Upstairs at the Martin Hotel
standing by room # 16

One very well-known restaurant here in Winnemucca is the Martin Hotel and Restaurant where we were provided with a wonderful Basque dinner.  They seated us at a long table where others could possibly join us.  Our dinner began with mushroom soup and their signature fresh made bread.  Then, salad, a bean dish and a bowl of chunks of chicken simmered in a spicy tomato sauce.  This was followed by French fries, corn on the cob, garlic mashed potatoes and lamb shank that was slow-cooked for hours until the meat fell off the bone.  A dessert of bread pudding was next.  All of this and a carafe of wine were inclusive.  The waitress just kept bringing plates of food!  As for the Martin’s history:  Although it is said to have been established in 1898, some history and a lithograph suggest that it was a house of “soiled doves” as early as 1881.  The grand opening of the hotel took place on Christmas Day, 1915.  In 1919, a fire destroyed a big part of the building and the Martins gave up and moved to San Francisco.  The hotel was restored by the new owner, Charles Weikel, by 1920 and he added on 25 rooms.  The restaurant and rooming house were always a favorite place for the ranchers and sheepherders as well as new Basque immigrants to hang their hats.  The hotel is no longer available for occupancy but the kind waitress allowed us to go to the upper floor to snoop around.  The restaurant is still considered the best place in Nevada to experience an authentic family-style Basque dinner.

Reinhart House built in 1909 while the
Reinharts vacationed in Europe.
Considered one of the most upscale houses
in town.

Rogers House 1901
They say this house was built with
"square nails."  Never heard of it!

Many other old buildings still stand intact in Winnemucca and date back as far as the mid-1800s.  With help from a map and descriptions of these old structures we were able to spend a few pleasant hours drifting around the town and absorbing the town’s history and culture.

This is the oldest house we found, the
W C Record Home, built in 1874
and still mostly original.

7-19-2020 Wendover, NV Part II

Rules, rules, rules.  Maybe it’s my imagination but the people here seem pretty damned bossy.  After spending so much time in Idaho which seemed like sort of a free country, we resent these pushy assholes.  Upon arrival at our campground, they were so nasty about the mask thing that, with that and the swarms of black flies, we almost turned around and left.  Part of all of this may be due to the fact that Wendover is split in two between Utah and Nevada.  That means in this one area, they have 2 mayors, 2 city councils, 2 fire departments, 2 sheriffs, 2 highway patrols and 2 city cop shops.  So that explains it:  Way too many people who enjoy telling you what to do. 

"Wendover Will"

Wendover Will is 90 feet tall and is lit with a quarter mile of neon tube.  He was created in 1952 by Bill Smith to replace a tall light that he had built in the 1920s.  For years, Wendover Will stood at the State Line Cobblestone Service Station at the gateway to Wendover.  He was donated from Wendover, UT to West Wendover, NV in 2004 and is now a famous landmark standing at the center of a round-about at the entrance to town. 

That entrance, before the construction of US Route 40 (not the I-40), was on the Victory Highway, sections of which are now relics, constructed in the 1920s and which traversed the nation from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans.  Here’s how it goes:  The Victory Highway got mostly paved over and replaced by US Route 40 which got replaced by the I-80.  The intention was to have a bronze eagle and a plaque at each county line where the Victory Highway crossed dedicating that stretch of highway to the county’s sons and daughters who served in WWI.  There are now only five of the original eagles known to exist, 2 in KS and 3 in CA.  The eagle here in West Wendover is a replica.  It is located on a small (~100 ft.) stretch of the original Victory Highway on which we were standing.

Rob really wanted to visit the Bonneville Salt Flats so we loaded up the cooler, hopped in the Jeepster and drove east of Wendover a few miles.  The flats are white salt.  And flat.  And white.  And salty.  And flat.  You can see Chicago from here.  This is a place where people build aerodynamically-streamlined vehicles and race them to see who can go the fastest.  It is tantamount, I think, to driving a fighter jet at full-throttle without ever rotating.  Only men know why this is a cool thing to do.  OK, so we saw that.

And we saw half a dozen scruffy looking animals, deer maybe, out on the back roads and 2 pronghorn antelopes grazing near Wendover Will.  They look like they sat in a bucket of white paint!

Deer named Scruffy and Scruffy Jr.

Antelope dining with Wendover Will

On to Winnemucca, hopefully a free country where we know that Basque Lives Matter!

7-18-2020 Wendover, NV Part I

If you drive around the country as often as we do, I guess you’re bound to encounter one of just about everything, eventually.  All Friday, the wind had been gusty, blowing us all over the road.  Late in the day maybe about 5PM, on Hwy 80 about 20 miles from Wendover just past the little berg of Oasis, we saw black smoke, then a debris field in flames.  A flatbed truck was hauling away a big burned chunk that looked like a wing.  Regretfully, I fear we had just come upon a plane crash and the situation looked grim.  We haven’t found any info on this.

Another note:  Pocatello has an interesting small “monument” with an Indian chief’s head in profile and the word “Chief” on it.  This was the sign that had been created for the movie theater that opened on January 5, 1938.   Mom would have gone to the movies there to neck when she was a teenager.  Admission was 49 cents.  I suspect that this sign will be torn down, now, in accordance with the latest trendy effort to homogenize the human race.  (By the way, rumor has it that New Zealand’s rugby team, the All Blacks, formed and named in the 1890s, is planning to change its name.  Ain’t that special?)

We spent most of our day at the Wendover Airfield.  We knew that there was a museum here but we found abandoned barracks and a few hangars, some weather-worn plaques and one forlorn DC4 firefighter.  Finally, we found the museum which, when the base was active, was actually the Officers’ Club.  Landon, the Curator threw open the doors and gave us a warm welcome.  We were full of questions; Landon was full of answers.

Atomic mission hangar - Note the cut-out
above the hangar doors.  They had to add
this to accommodate the tall tail
of the B29.

The bombsights were unloaded from the
airplanes after each run and stored in
these vaults for security reasons

Original control tower built in 1942

It is still an active airfield but its claim to fame is really its past.  It was the home of thousands of troops who trained for WWII.  At its peak, 18,000 military troops and 2,000 civilians lived on this base.  Construction began in 1939.  By 1941, groups and squadrons were stationed here and by the end of WWII, 20 groups of 4 squadrons each had been trained.  McArthur said that the gunners who came from Wendover were some of the best gunners in the Army. 

Inside the atomic mission hangar - Col.
Tibbet's office is above and behind this F86.

Bomb loading pit

Significantly, this base was the last training stop for the group that was to deliver the atomic bomb.  The hangar that could house two B29s is fully-restored and up in one corner is Col. Paul Tibbet’s office.  The Enola Gay and Bock’s Car were stationed here, their last stop before Tinian Island.  It is here at this base where bombing groups practiced loading the airplanes and making bombing runs.  Dummies of Fat Man and Little Boy were loaded but they were so heavy that the method of loading them onto the B29s consisted of lowering the dummy bombs into pits in the ground, rolling the airplanes over the pits and then lifting the bombs into their bays.  Little Boy weighed 9,000 lb. and Fat Man tipped the scales at 10,000.  A practice run loading, carrying and suddenly dropping this kind of weight was a fine art.  Other skills that were honed were the sighting in and firing of the on-board machine guns from the airplanes which were tethered to the ground.  Recoil, don’tchaknow.

Little Boy dummy bomb in the Officers'
Dance Hall

Original barracks

Living conditions in the Wendover area were harsh.  Oppressively hot summers and unbearably cold winters in the sparsely furnished barracks were a fact of life for these heroes.  Of the hundreds of buildings that were here at this base, only 90 remain:  some barracks, the nurses’ quarters and some of the hospital buildings, a few of the hangars and bath houses.  The severe quarters had no air conditioning, of course, and there were 3 stoves for the cold winter months. 

Typical barracks with porches

Restored barracks

Landon and Lindy on the
porch of a restored barracks

Vargas girls pin-ups in the barracks

Officers' Club cafeteria

Officers' Club - Now the museum

The devotees of the history of the events that occurred at Wendover Airfield do not wish to reconstruct but to restore and as generous donations are received, small projects make some progress.  What we thought would be a brief visit turned into an entire afternoon and Landon was a fine tour guide.  What a fantastic experience and another humbling lesson in gratitude to our brave war fighters.  If this memorial is an indicator, they are gone but they are far from forgotten.💖

7-16-2020 American Falls, Idaho

If you read the comments at the end of the last blog, you saw that our friend, Jim, met one of the Idaho Hermits, Buckskin Bill.  So of the 3 Hermits, two of them met up with my friends, what are the odds?

We tasted the cheese we bought in Salmon, “local sheep cheese.”  It is called Aged Carmen Carrano, “Our signature ‘Mandego-style’ Alpine Artisan Sheep Cheese with a perfectly balanced and distinctively rich buttery and nutty flavor.”  Ingredients:  Raw sheep milk, etc.  It was made at the Mountain Valley Farmstead in Carmen, ID.  The taste was very sharp and it’s kind of crumbly, a bit like extra sharp cheddar or parmesan.  A few slices with a cocktail are the perfect touch.  It's great crumbled on a salad.

Devil's Orchard

On 7-14, we stopped at Craters of the Moon National Monument, just a quick 100 miles down the road.  It is a massive lava field that was created by fissures and rifts in the earth’s surface that coughed up lava, not like you would imagine flowing down from the top of a volcano.  This stuff oozed out of cracks, dey ain’t no volcano!  The fields cover thousands of acres and looks like, well, the moon.  It all began 15,000 years ago but there has been activity as recently as 2,000 years ago, Jesus’ birthday.  Much of the rock and pulverized rock is iron pyrite (fool’s gold) and the land sparkles.  We hiked Devil’s Orchard, a field of nasty lava rock and cinders that is slowly beginning to show signs of vegetation.Next, we tackled the Inferno Cone.  It is a steep 300 foot rise to the top from where you can see miles and miles of lava fields and beyond.  We made it to the top!  The whole area is really pretty weird.

Oceans of lava rock in Devil's Orchard

Rob heading up Inferno Cone

We made it to the top!

This park, Willow Bay Resort, is situated on the edge of American Falls Reservoir.  The original dam was formed by a natural lava flow but in 1923 and again in 1978, humans engineered a dam that created this 56,000 acre reservoir on the Snake River which obliterated the original town of American Falls.

We’re pretty sure we got the best spot in the park on the end overlooking the water and next to a natural preserve where wildflowers grow and birds visit.  It is shady and sunny both, depending on the time of day.  In the evening, campfire.  In the morning, sunshine with a cup of coffee and Sudoku.  (12 minutes on this one.) 

Hi Roberto!

Today was kayaking day for Lindy.  I paddled out as far as I could, then along the banks where I heard that there is a moose couple living.  I didn’t see the meese (they might have gone to bed already) but there were big fish jumping (probably rainbow trout since salmon can’t get here from there), loons, ducks, great northern geese, white pelicans and cormorants.  The water was as smooth as glass in the small breeze and sunshine.  It’s always tranquilizing.  Gotta look into a kayak!

I'm out there... if you look closely!

Walter DeLaMare's place of business
for 50 years, Union Pacific RR

Today, in the afternoon, Rob wanted to explore a bit in Pocatello where his Grampa worked at the Union Pacific RR and where his Mom grew up.  The old offices of the Union Pacific, which are usually open to tourists, are closed for now, even with a mask.  Rob really wanted to see if he could find his Grampa’s old office among the artifacts but that was not to be.  

The Hotel Yellowstone across the street was built in 1915.  

This was originally the hotel receoption
area, now a bar and lounge

It was easy to envision Grampa walking there for lunch or stopping by at the beautiful old bar in the evening with his buddies.  There is an old elevator that deserves attention and ultimately, Mike envisions a uniformed and white-gloved elevator operator who will carry guests up to their floors.  One small room, constructed of rich dark wood and the original chandeliers, is furnished with overstuffed chairs where my imagination says that old rich guys sat and smoked cigars and discussed the state of world affairs, finance, banks and such while the women retired to the sitting room nearby to sip tea.  The building is in a transition phase now with struggling new imaginative owners and a challenging restoration enterprise.

Smoking lounge for old
guys with cigars and a snifter of brandy

The elevator:  restoration project 

Hotel Yellowstone in Pocatello, ID (built in 1915)

A small store called the Butcher Block had one slab of fresh Alaskan cod left.  That poor fellow is destined for tonight’s grill.  Life is good.

7-15-2020 A Few Notes

7-15-2020 A FEW NOTES:

My Pahrump neighbor, George, met Dugout Dick, one of the Idaho Hermits.  He was a crusty old goat that could run up the mountains, and so was Dick!  In Winter, he kept his beer in the refrigerator so it wouldn’t freeze (no electricity).  What a life.

The last picture I sent of the birds drew a reply from Bob and Ada.  Those are called “sandhill cranes” and they are very good eating.  They are called, “the ribeyes of the skies.”

Ribeye on the wing - Yum!

Here is the recipe for seafood lasagna:

Ingredients

2/3 c. each of Alaskan shrimp, scallops and crab, cut into pieces (or a lot more?)

15 uncooked lasagna noodles  (Surprise!  Never heard of this!)

½ c. flour

½ c. butter

½ tsp. salt

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

2 c. milk

2 c. chicken broth

¼ c. white wine

¼ tsp. pepper

1 tsp. basil

2 c. mozzarella cheese, shredded

½ c. green onions, chopped

1 c. cottage small curd cottage cheese

1 c. parmesan cheese, shredded

Directions

1)      OK to prepare a day ahead and refrigerate

2)      Melt the butter in a sauce pan

3)      Add garlic and stir in the flour and salt and cook until bubbly

4)      Remove from heat

5)      Slowly stir in the broth, wine and milk and stir until smooth

6)      Bring back to a boil for 1 minute

7)      Add cheese, onions, basil and pepper

8)      Spread ¼ of the sauce into a greased 9 X 13 pan

9)      Layer 5 of the noodles on top

10)   Spread cottage cheese over the noodles

11)   Spread another ¼ of the sauce over the cottage cheese

12)   Layer 5 more noodles on top

13)   Layer the seafood on the noodles

14)   Spread another ¼ of the sauce on top of the seafood

15)   Layer the last 5 noodles on top

16)   Top with the remaining sauce

17)   Sprinkle generously with parmesan cheese

18)   350F for 35-45 minutes, then let stand for 15 minutes before serving

19)   Eat!  Wash down with a fine white wine!

7-13-2020 Challis, ID

So where's Albertson's from here?

It couldn’t have been a more beautiful drive between Caldwell and Challis.  The road snakes through canyons then up the sides of the mountains and down along the Salmon River.  The Salmon River accompanied us for 150 miles or more.  It flows north, by the way, which looked a little strange to us but slowly we grew accustomed to it.  It’s a beauty:  clear, cold water drifting lazily or splashing over the rocks creating white rapids under an umbrella of royal blue sky.  It made our drive seem dreamy.

Driving along the Salmon River

The Sawtooth Mountains way out there

It is windy in Challis!  I’m sayin’ windy!  Gusts of 30 mph.  The locals say that it is like this all the time.  At the campground, our canopies retracted themselves more than once.  It was not conducive to barbecuing outside.  Our Round Valley RV Park hostess, Roberta, recommended that we eat at The Real Deal Smokehouse.  If only it were only open on Sunday and Monday.  OK, we’ll cook inside!  So we stopped in at the local grocery store in search of the elusive walleye.  No luck.  But we found big slabs of catfish and had a grand old feast.

Bison Jump

The Yankee Fork State Historic Site in town is a small park with a collection of mining, ranching and farming artifacts from the 1800s.  Nearby is a small cliff which archeologists and anthropologists have analyzed.  Hundreds of years ago, long before the white guys arrived, the ancient Indians used this cliff to “hunt” buffalo.  There are 2 theories.  1)  They scared the buffalo into stampeding but when they got to the cliff, they stopped and the Indians got a good bead on them with their arrows.  2)  The stampeding animals simply ran off the cliff to their deaths.  The cliff is called “Bison Jump.” 

Wells Fargo 

There was a lot of prospecting going on out here in the early 1800s.  Lore has it that an old guy with two bay horses told prospectors about a big lode over yonder.  The prospectors subsequently named the nearby river Bay Horse Creek and soon, when big veins of lead and silver were found, the town of Bayhorse sprang up.  A mill and smelter were constructed and people, including women, flocked to the area.  The population grew to 300.  There were general stores, meat markets, several saloons (naturally) and what is now called the Wells Fargo building.  I don’t really understand the story too well but two miners, Gilmer and Salisbury, who owned some businesses including Wells, Fargo & Company, had something to do with it.  The Wells Fargo building was substantially reinforced to support and protect tons of precious metals until they could be transported to be sold.

The Holiday Inn Express of its time

Many of the structures and artifacts at Bayhorse still stand, if a little wobbly.  Back then, the rocks were hauled in from the mines and dumped into the mill which was made up of many “stamps.”  The stamps crushed the rock smaller and smaller until it was a powder.  The sound of the stamps thundered and echoed through the canyons 24/7 and if that didn’t drive one mad, the powder itself was the cause of many deaths due to a lung disease called, “silicosis.”  (Hmmm.  Shoulda mandated masks!)  Then it was washed through wooden ducts (sluices) to the smelter.  The smelter operated at 2400F using charcoal that was cooked up in the nearby kilns.  The smelting process brought up lead and the precious metals and separated them from the rocks.  When the veins of valuable ore dried up, Bayhorse died and became the ghost town that the curious explore today.

The mill.  The rocks were dumped in at the top,
flowed down through a series of stamps
and at the bottom, a sluice carried
the powder off to the smelter.

A miner's residence

Five stamp machine that crushed rocks
day and night.  They ran on hydraulics
or electricity.

Two-holer biffee

A conduit (sluice)

Don't know what this is but it was
made in Racine and Waukesha, WI

The owners of Wells Fargo lived here

In the late afternoon, we decided to drive up to Salmon where a restaurant, The Shady Nook, features walleye dinners.  Once again, the drive followed the Salmon River and the shores were dotted with tiny villages.  Horses, sheep and cows graze on the great expanses of ranch land.  Occasionally, an old, broken, abandoned ranch house still barely stands in the fields, remnants of someone’s life dream left behind.  There are also “dugouts,” caves dug into the hillside where “Idaho Hermits” lived, guys such as Dugout Dick, Buckskin Bill and Hank the Hermit.  We couldn’t go to see them though because the government has closed them off.  They’re too dangerous!  In Salmon, we found the Odd Fellows’ Bakery where we had our eye on the homemade bread and since we had never eaten it, a couple of blocks of “local sheep cheese.”  We’ll have to let you know on that one.  On to American Falls, Idaho!

I don't know what these birds are.  They
are the only wildlife we spotted between
Challis and Salmon.  I bet
they're delicious!