Day 40, Thursday April 9th: The Oregon Trail and onto Nevada

 Thursday it was a chilly 35F when we got up, but still another pretty day. 

Copper Belt Winery

We had a nice night and sunrise at Copper Belt Winery, the views from their place are quite pleasing.

As we left our HH we drove by the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center and stopped in to check it out. 

The Oregon Trail

The story of the 300,000 to 500,000 settlers that made the trek across the country in wagons is a bit mind bending.  It was nearly 2000 miles of torture and many did not make it. 

The Oregon Trail

They had lots of realistic displays and many quotes from the diaries of those that made the trip. Reading the diaries was enlightening, it was a difficult journey with all kinds of challenges including Cholera, starvation, and Indians. I could have read the diaries for hours. 

We were glad we stopped and spent about an 1 1/2 hours touring the displays. They also have a movie but the next showing was not until Noon, so we moved on. 

Van Ornum Massacre

As we drove south we saw a marker for the Van Ornum Massacre.  Although they say Indian attacks were rare, they did occur and since we live on 'Van Ornum Drive' in Addison, this peaked my interest. It is a sad story. 

You can read more detail here: Van Ornum Massacre

We took I84 south to Rt51 to Elko, Nevada. The scenery had more hills and scrub brush, but still no trees for miles and miles.  I just can't imagine traveling this country in a horse and wagon, little water and no shade. 

There is nothing for a long ways

Free Range Cattle Sign

There is much of nothing but cattle ranching as we drove south, much of it is free range so you need to keep an eye out for cattle in the road but only once did I have to really slow down because there was a cow on the shoulder. 

We had planned to camp at a place about 60 miles from Elko, it was primitive camping, too primitive. As we drove in we had flashbacks to Golden Bluff Campground in California.  We would have toughed it out but they had no water and we needed to reload our fresh water tank. 

Elko KOA

We elected to go to the closest KOA which was in Elko, we arrived around 19:00. The KOA is just what you expect with a KOA, nice, clean and $72/night.  

Tomorrow we will make our way to Idaho and visit friends.