We woke up in Ely ready for our last full day in Nevada. Our destination was Baker, Nevada, a very small town located just outside Great Basin National Park. It was 64 miles away with two passes to go through.

After a quick grocery run, we left Ely. A few miles down the road, we started seeing a large thunderstorm coming over the mountains in front of us. The wind was picking up and the dark clouds slowly rolled to us. There was no cover around with just miles of desolate land. We had no choice but to continue. Flashes of lightning and thunder claps made the moment even more intense. We continued down the road seeing that it turned away from the storm just ahead of us. We could see the sheets of rain about a mile from the road but they never reached us. We were yet again fortunate to just miss a storm that was passing by.

After avoiding the storm, we climbed the first of two passes. The sun came out and started to roast us as we had just put on our rain gear. At this point, we have become used to 1000+ foot climbs after having 2-3 a day for the past week. We each had our own routine for getting to the top and would wait for each other and snack until we were ready for the descent. The climbs are made fun by the descents that they produce. We go down as a group and take turns drafting which allows us to go even faster than by ourselves. One person will shoot to the front and then the other two will pass without the hindrance of wind shortly after at speeds of 35-45 mph.

After this descent we had one more which went around Great Basin National Park. We came into the valley and saw even more intense storm clouds than we had seen in the morning over the snowy peaks of the park. We stopped for lunch and checked the weather to see that there wasn’t really a good time to cross through where we could be sure it was clear unless we waited until the evening. We decided we had no choice but to go for it. We declared it an “every man for himself” situation and went as fast as we could.

We started into the cold and wind at our own fastest speeds and quickly separated. There were strong winds and some showers but fortunately not too strong. We could see the stronger sheets of rain passing in front of us. We eventually turned with the wind and slowly the rain stopped. This meant we at least could do the long slow climb without being soaked.

We eventually reached the top and were surprised to find that it was totally clear. After a snack and a brief rest, we descended down into with the tall snowy mountains of Great Basin on our right.

5 miles before entering Baker, we turned off of Route 50 after almost 350 miles. We weren’t too sad to see it go because it was very hard traveling the whole day with no towns to stop in for food or water. We will cross it again in Colorado when we head to Denver.

After entering Baker, we discovered that it was a very small quiet town. There were two restaurants and one also functioned as the grocery store. Unfortunately, they were both closed on Tuesdays, and one was actually closed Monday-Wednesday as well. We decided to go to the National Park visitor center to see what was around.

We learned about the park and found out that inside the park was one of the darkest places in the continental US. The few lights in the small town were all facing down and covered in order to prevent light pollution. We also learned that the Great Basin actually refers to a large area covering most of the Western US. We were able to see a topographical map that detailed everywhere that we had been so far. It was neat to see our progress as well as all of the passes that we had gone over.

We went across the street to an RV Park that advertised camping for cyclists. Because we had arrived early, we were able to rest up and relax a little bit. We ate our classic meal of beans (20 servings split three ways) on tortillas and then made a campfire and made s’mores with marshmallows we had found in the dumpster the night before. Unfortunately it was a partly cloudy night with a very bright half moon so we didn’t get to see anything’s special. We had been told that you can see the Milky Way on a clear dark night.

We went to bed excited to move on to a new state and the exciting new scenery it would bring!