Nevada

Nevada was always going to be one of the toughest challenges due to the combination of heat, desert sand and remoteness. This is brought home be our first nights stay in the town of Baker.

It is nothing more than a gas station, motel and a casino, one side of the road is Utah the other Nevada. All around is desert and mountains, on a scale that tricks the mind with distance. The valley we have ridden across to get here is twenty miles across , twenty miles of nothing.

We get an early start, all aware that we are going to be on the remotest section and that once houbara on the trail you have to get through to the next town as there is no other route out. The going is slow as we pick our way through the rough bush and decipher the route the GPS is taking us.

As sun rises and the heat buds you realise how exposed you are out here and when we stop I am in awe at the raw beauty of this harsh land. We know we can get out, we have fuel, water and a GPS, you can only imagine what it must have been like on horse back two hundred years ago. Tough men.

We exist the section to the town of Lund which is set on a wide open plan and had little to recommend it. We have lunch and bump in to the family we meet in Wedtcliffe, CO who are traveling in a tricked out F350. 

We decided to take an easier "green" route for the next section to Eureka, NV. This does turn in to a small adventure as we loose Brenton and end up making our own route through the desert for a time. We eventually find him at the end of the valley. Unusually no dust is thrown up by the bikes, so tracing someone through such vastness is incredibly difficult. It's again a reminder that you can't fuck about in this environment. 

In Eureka we meet an English couple who are riding the TAT on KTM690's , we share a dinner with them and get an early night.

We leave Eureka on route to Battle Mountain , NV, feeling pretty knacked we take an easier green route , which is still all dirt and arrive in town around 12 noon. A good coffee stop (yes real espresso) we head tears the nights stop of McDermitt. Now there are one horse towns and I've been to many, but in McDermitt even the horse has fucked off!

At least we have had a awesome ride over, as there is nothing to do in town. A faded motel and a casino run by grumpy Indians ( first Americans is now the correct term) we eat and hit the hay. 

Up early on Friday 17th July, we ride just 50 yards and we are in Oregon, our final state. We have made a tactical decision to miss two section that would have seen us ride sour in to California and back up to tonight's destination of Laje View. We have done this as otherwise we are going to arrive late at the coast and also have to push hard every day, giving us no leyway for error or problems.