Watch out for Nevada Law...

Day 9: July 6, 2009 – Kaibab National Forest to
…and Extraterrestrials

Ultimately, we’ve been on the road most of the day. And most of the day we’ve been on the road in Nevada. Very few exciting things have happened, but enough that we are able to blog: thank goodness!

To begin, we had been driving across a dry, sunny, mountainous state for many hours. We were apparently in the least populated portion of the state but managed to pass through a few towns of reasonable size. One town even claimed to have a Youth Center and a Super Park, we also noticed about 8 hotels. However, this town appeared to have only ONE gas station! This became a truth we saw in some other towns which we travelled through. Strange habit, Nevada, strange habit.

After stopping for gas in one of these non-gas-y towns, we were pulled over. Nevada has this other strange habit, or law you could say, that of requiring drivers to reduce speed from 70 mph on the Highway to 25 mph in the city limits, even when it looks like you’ve left the one-gas-station-town. So, Melissa was pulled over for driving 33 in a 25, fortunately the man was full of grace and gave us a verbal warning to pay attention to speed limits – Yes Sir! (and our apologies to the Rules of the Road).

Back on the road, we made our way toward the Extraterrestrial Highway which butts up against Area 51…spooky! Of course, Melissa was following all speed postings and even erring on the side of caution, Mike however made an unknowing choice to break another of Nevada Laws. Melissa calmly pulled to the side of the road, wondering what was wrong now. She rolled down her window, greeted the Sheriff and learned that her passenger had had his feet out the window – against the laws of Nevada. Hmm. Fortunately, this sheriff too was feeling gracious and let us leave with a verbal warning and making sure to also mention the fact that our license plate was not highly visible because of the bike rack and bike’s on back…just for our information.

On the road again, we had all our body parts in the car and maintained proper speed. We made the turn onto E.T.’s highway when we noticed three things: we were low on gas, there was a sign claiming no gas services for another 150 miles, and a giant sheet metal alien stood tall to our right. Game Plan: check out the alien and the store which it played greeter for and then head into the closest town for gas. The alien store, was…out of this world! Souvenirs included Star Wars, Men in Black, and E.T. memorabilia along with Pokemon and assortments of alien products; including Alien Tequila. The lady behind the counter offered us a shot, making sure we were of age and then proceeded to offer us two free stickers and two free shot glasses if we purchased a bottle of Tequila. We are sure it’ll make a great gift for somebody.

We made our way down the Extraterrestrial Highway where we think we may have seen a U.F.O. and have enjoyed the great expanse that is Nevada. After many hours on the road and in the car we made it into California where we located a camp site and began the wait til morning when we’d get to tour another World Famous State Park.