Tonopah, NV – evening

According to the menu here at the standard issue Nevada hotel/casino/24 hour restaurant 3 hours from anything in any direction, “Tonopah” is an Indian word that means either “little water,” “little spring,” or “water brush.”  Search me why they’d name this town any one of those things.

Did I mention that I had the worst shrimp cocktail ever at lunch today?  I know, “seafood in the desert?” what the hell was I thinking.  What I was thinking was that it sounded rather cold and refreshing after spending a couple hours in the RV on the side of the road.  I had mercifully nondescript turkey sandwich and some actually quite tasty cole slaw to complete the ensemble.

Okay I have to break in here with a dinner update.  My iced tea came in one of those litte six ounce glasses usually reserved for a two dollar serving of orange juice.  Sure, you get free refills, but still…  Anyway, apparently in an effort to make up for the puny size of the glass, they fill it right up to the top, we’re talking meniscus city, here.  Then they stick half a lemon on it.  Push the lemon in, lose half your tea.  And just _try_ stirring sugar into that thing.  So I make do, and she comes back for refill time, pouring warm tea, again, right up to the top.  No clue where they learned so much about surface tension.  But worse than that, there’s now no ice.  I had a rather scathing little monologue forming on the subtleties of the prerequisites for a glass being full of _iced_ tea, but I let it slide, cynically determining that most of the polysyllabics would have been lost on her, anyway.

Well, back to the story.  Of which there’s not much interesting: after lunch I put another quart of oil in the RV and enough fluid to make up for the amount that looked like it boiled out, and off I went.  And here I am in Tonopah, without further ado.  It’s only about seven thirty, and I’m just finishing dinner.  I’m going to go back to the RV and read and go on to sleep early, with the intention of getting on the road in the cool before the sun comes up tomorrow.

By the way, I successfully navigated my first back-in RV site tonight.  Up until now, all the campground I’ve stayed at had the easier to handle pull-through type sites.  But beggars can’t be choosers in the middle of the damn desert.  I suppose I should be glad I’ve got a place to plug in the air conditioner.

I know I’ve said this in a couple updates already, but, everyone, please be sure to remind me, that I am _never_ going to the desert again.  Perhaps if I’m passing through at high speed, with the windows rolled up and the AC going full blast, but only to get to someplace nice like San Diego.  I understand and accept the realities of my situation, so I’m being happy with what I’ve got, but all the ingredients are here for me to be absolutely miserable.  It’s at least 85 degrees HERE IN THE RESTAURANT.  There’s _no_ sweetened iced tea _anywhere._  The doors are always open, so there’s flies on my hands, computer, and tea glass if I stop swinging my arms around for a nanosecond.

But… Portland in September.  Cool.  Rain.  Rain, I can’t remember the last time I was in rain (of yeah, that big storm in the desert.  But still, it’s not rained much overall).  What’s above Nevada, Montana?  Yeesh, talk about your big square states… I wonder how long it’s going to take to drive across _that_ sumbitch.

But hell if I’m coming back through Nevada.