Travel Photography > Great Basin > Loneliest Road

We're following a farm truck, which ejects a rock from under its wheels. I have time to say to Jane, 'Don't hit us rock!' It thuds against our white merchant-ship, a hole through the headlamp.

Resignation to this fate improves the mood of the traveler, but today as travelers we are also movers, and there should be no such thing as happy moving-travelers.

Weariness and resignation are the Nevada interior. Las Vegas and Reno are poor indicators for the rest of the state, because Las Vegas is more associated with the Southwest and Reno with the Sierra Nevada’s. The Nevada Interior is the center of America's largest desert: the nearly cactus-less, nearly sand-less, largely cold, somewhat olive drab desert called the Great Basin. Hundreds of miles of basin and range, juniper peaks divided by flows of sage flat. The color of the Earth dull, the sky a brilliant blue, and the road straighter than a lizards line to the other side, a land resigned to having a dullard terrain, none of the mystique of the Arizona deserts, none of the color of New Mexico, and defined mostly by its grades so gentle as to offer a dozen hundred mile views an hour.

Hardly unspectacular, these two roads remind us that America still possesses somewhere beyond. On an African Safari, the endless views are a lie created by the photographer and sold by the outfitter, for the game park is tiny, surrounded by reality. But Nevada is truly vast, and these lonely roads are so empty and serene they make your heart like before the roller coaster goes down.

The Loneliest Road in America itself is Highway 50, which begins near a small town called Ely, on the border of Utah. It ends near Reno and Fallon, on the other side.

Nevada is the most mountainous of America's states, 200 ranges in the state. Because Nevada is the Great Basin, most of the lower elevations are like ocean surface, devoid of texture. The mountaintops in this land then are like islands, and biologically they are alpine havens, stirring with life.

One such mountaintop island has been designated a National Park. We spend our evening here in the high elevation of Great Basin National Park, which is filled with alpine colors. From this height, the deep mountain shadows beyond reveal the character of Nevada’s ranges. Isolated by the flattening nature of loose sediments, each north-pointing range is its own entity: animals tend to stick to the ranges themselves, so that the great in-between is nearly lifeless. The island-like nature of this land is revealed by the animals, who would unlikely survive a journey across the valley floors. Central Nevada then, is more Galapagos than desolate – its life stirs among the clouds.

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