Day 16: Battle Mountain NV - Bend OR

I could quite cheerfully have remained abed this morning until Nice Lady Maria had me bodily thrown out of the Super 8, or at least charged me for another night.  A lot of people had already gone by the time I surfaced and most of the rest were shambling around with bags and boxes and the sort of thousand-yard stares one normally associates with an Audax control in a draughty church hall at two in the morning.  Not us though, because our table at the awards bash drank nothing stronger than water all night, boring old gits that we are.  My grate frend Mr Woolrich had not been spotted by the time I left.  The car park of the Big Chief motel, home to large parties of PSOs, was also suspiciously quiet and the Scousers' truck was still parked outside the Civic Center...

I-80 west of Battle Mountain is going up in the world.  I'm sure there wasn't a "gas" station at Valmy the last time I came this way.  North up US-95 from Winnemucca.  The roads are mostly dead straight and afford ample opportunity for dozing off even though today was the first of the trip on which I'd had the top down from the off.  I stopped at a rest area, because you can't smoke in a moving convertible without at the very least setting your eyebrows on fire.

Monument.  USAnia.  Sunday.

The above commemorates five volunteer firefighters killed utterly to DETH fighting a wildfire near here in 1939.  A Nice Man told me that a heatwave was expected in the west for the forthcoming week.  This news made me happy.

As you can see from the above the scenery round here is very little different from the rest of Nevada, and it doesn't change much when you cross into Oregon.  The wet bit of Oregon, with the trees and Bigfoot, is on the other side of the mountains, y'see.  This bit differs mainly in slapping a 55 mph speed limit, which everyone ignores, onto a road that had a 70 a mile away.  Also in Oregon you are marginally more likely to see a tree.

Fed the motor-car at Burns, where I spent a night in 2008.  The next morning Hertz'  idiot Sat-Nav tried to send me and a car with a ground clearance lower than an adder's armpit, down a logging road with ruts that might stop a Jeep without too much difficulty.  I shall stick to the paved road today, I think.

And so to Bend.  I am paying a small fortune for this room, because I was seduced by the words "whirlpool" and "tub" in the description, and I have just spent an age in it and have mostly stopped aching.  The place is an order of magnitude less poncy than Chateau Jasper at a similar price, but the room is actually a suite with two tellies, a sofa and an armchair, a decent kitchenette and a four person dining table.  All for meeeeeee!

However, Burns is still a bit third world in that, while it has whirlpool baths anna big branch of Target anna Volvo dealership, the nearest branch of Pizza Hut is seventeen miles away.  Hence by the time of publication this photo

Nom nom nom

may not be accurate in its depiction of how few stroopwafels I have et today.