Week 3 11/9-11/15

We ran 122 miles this week. We left Whitmore Hot Springs, California and headed east towards Nevada. It would be our first state border crossing. It was very exciting to finally reach another state. Nevada is called the Silver State because of the silver deposits that were discovered there in the 1800s. Nevada has some really fun places to explore including the Mojave Desert, Lake Tahoe, and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The Mojave Desert is the driest desert in North America and is so large that it is in 4 states including the states of California, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah. Lake Tahoe is the largest alpine lake (mountain lake) and is at 6,225 elevation.in the Sierra By comparison, Carver is at 92 feet of elevation since it is down near the Atlantic Ocean and not up in the mountains.

We had nice weather during the daytime averaging in the mid to upper 50s, but the nights were cooler. The higher up we were in the mountains, the cooler it was. We ended our week in the town of Goldfield, Nevada. It is a fascinating place. It used to be Nevada's largest city back in the days of the gold rush. Now there are roughly 286 people who live there. Goldfield was established in 1902. By 1906 it was a city with some of the finest hotels in the state. These days there isn't a lot there, but we did find a super cool attraction called the International Car Forest. Beginning in 2002 an artist took what was left of an old car and "planted" it into the ground outside of Goldfield. They painted it with fun colors and then more cars were added. We were hoping to stay in a hotel and to sleep in a "real bed" but there weren't any in town since their last hotel closed down in 1945. Lucky for us, the mayor of the town let us all camp out in the old fire station.

Mojave Desert