Reno NV to Willow Springs California

October 6 - 9, 2017: 

Neglected to mention that this trip to Nevada marks our 48th contiguous state in the RV! Yay us!!

Patty holding up the last state Nevada to put on the map 

Whoo Hoo!!  All 50 states we have spent at least a night in.  All but Alaska and Hawaii we spent the night in our RV.

We left Reno heading southeast into and along the California Nevada border.  This was a great trip pulling the RV!  The scenery and landscape is absolutely beautiful along route 395.  And since the 395 is not an interstate the speed was slower so we could take in the sights and the tiny towns we went through along the way.  Willow Springs, where we stopped on our way to Death Valley was a nice area too.  This was all a surprise as this was to be just an ordinary pull and stop over between destinations. (In reality, we had planned Yosemite, but it is a 2-hour drive.)

Love the overpass art here.  This is all over the west.
This one is as we are leaving Reno heading south

About 20 miles out of Reno we were entertained by a plane
doing acrobatics in the desert valley.

It is always interesting to see a lake in the desert.  This one is Topaz Lake and it sits half in NV and half in California

Just very cool scenery along the Sierras going south on 395

Willow Springs is very remote and which was a surprise for us being in California.  We are on the eastern side of the Sierra Mountains and just west of the Nevada border.  It also got damn cold while we were there!  It didn’t help that the Northwest was having a cold snap too.  The overnight temp on our third day there was just 21 degrees!  That is the coldest the RV has ever been in and our first time in freezing temperatures.

We stayed at the Willow Springs RV Park and Motel that is directly on route 395.  

The entrance to the Willow Springs Motel and RV Park along route 395

Our site in Willow Springs

It is just a short walk from the park to the Virginia Creek Settlement Restaurant.  We went there to eat on our first night there.  It is a nice warm and friendly family run place just like the RV Park.  The next closest piece of civilization is about 10 miles north on 395 to the town of Bridgeport.  And in the other direction, south, is Dog Town.  Yup, we are more than 70 miles from the nearest Walmart!  

The Settlement Restaurant.  It sits along 395 on the opposite side of our RV Park about a quarter of a mile south

This is the pen they gave me to sign my CC receipt

While we were in the Willow Springs area we decided to go to the ghost town of Bodie our first day.  Bodie is about 10 miles away to our south.  Bodie is an old gold rush town that was left behind in the 1940s.  The last 5 miles to the town is on gravel switchback roads taking us up in elevation to 8,000 feet or a gain of about 2,000 feet.  It is real hard to imagine how anyone lived here back in the 40s let alone back in the 1800s!   This place is very isolated up in the mountains and with very harsh weather in both winter and summer. 

Road to Bodie where the pavement ends and the gravel begins. 
I found that I could actually go faster in low 4x4 on the gravel.

Bodie is about 5 miles out and up on this gravel road.

We go up about 2000 feet in elevation in the 5 miles to Bodie

Bodie is on the left in the foreground

The town is kept at what they call "as left", meaning that no real preservation is done except to keep the place as it was when the town was vacated.

The town was vacated in the 1940s leaving one guy to protect the town.  He was the town caretaker until the state purchased the town in the early 60s.  The guy is buried here too!

The school still has class work on the blackboard!

One of the last gold extraction sites.  It was too dangerous for us to visit.  

A covered up mine shaft

Bodie as seen from the cemetery

Grave of the caretaker for Bodie

One of the elevators to raise and lower men into the mines

Our second day the 10th of October we were going to take a scenic tour nearer the mountains and visit a hot spring.  We started off with having lunch in the town of Bridgeport.  After lunch a new cold front came in and it was really cold, dropped to 50 from near 70 when we went in to eat.  Also the wind picked up to 30 mph.  It was still very sunny but just damn cold!  We decided to just head back to the RV and take a hike behind the park.

There are a couple of hiking paths behind the RV Park.  One of them is very short but very steep.  The owner said that people take that path to the top as they get cell reception up there.  I actually have fairly decent cell phone coverage here with Verizon, Patty not so much, so we opted for the longer 1.5 mile hike back into the boonies.

Taking the longer less steep trail was the right thing for us! This trail was fairly easy and was a very beautiful hike.  It is really amazing to us just how quiet it is here in the west.  We could actually hear the wind in the forest coming from quite far away.

A styrofoam bear used for target practice, at least that is what we think it is!

Patty dressed in layers for our walk

After the hike and the nice lunch in town and it being cold, it was time for a nap!

Tonight is going to get real cold, the coldest we have had the RV in ever! The outside temperature was going to go below freezing around 3 am and then it would continue on down to 21 before daybreak.  It wasn’t supposed to get above freezing until around 9am.  So we would be below the freezing point for 6 hours! 

To prepare for the cold overnight, just before dark I filled the fresh water tank up to just over half full (about 25 gallons).  This way we can use our on-board pump to supply water to the RV.  I then disconnected our hose, drained it and put it away.  That was it for prepping!  We also disconnected the water hose from the park connection, drained it, and stored it.  

The next morning and our leaving day it was as predicted, 21 degrees outside!  Not a problem for us as we had the fire place on all night with the propane furnace set for 61.  The outside temperature needs to go below 40 before the inside would reach 61 so it didn’t turn on until around 4 am.  We get up at 7am and then just turn up the furnace to 68 and we are good.  We also open the blinds if it is sunny to help heat up the inside.  I really don’t think we would have any problems living in the RV with temps consistently below freezing even during the daytime, not that we would want to!  The thing that would be the hardest I think would be snow and it's constant melting and freezing.  We probably will never test that! (Note from Patty: delete "probably".)

We are now on our way to Death Valley.

Stay Tuned!