Cold Springs Station, NV > Austin, NV
Miles Ridden – 49.5
Mileage to date – 437.1
By now the astute reader may have noticed a pattern in our riding across Nevada – up, down, up down…… Nevada is a series of mountain ranges and basins. We will traverse many of these in the next several days.
Despite lack of survival training (inside joke for our dedicated readers), John and I survived the night camping at Cold Springs Station. We awoke to the sounds of a coyote howling and a cow mooing. John was wondering if it would be safe to keep food in the tent overnight as it might attract animals. I told him that I bet the majority of the guys in the RV’s next to us have guns so we should be OK if any bears show up!
As we were packing up camp, the forest fire fighters stopped by the hose next to us to fill up multiple containers with water. The looked at us and our bikes like we were crazy. One of the guys said to another “it takes real endurance to ride a bike out here”. Unlike fighting forest fires in the summer in Nevada?!
The fire fighters loading up with water-
We had a leisurely start to the day since it was a short mileage day and did not leave until 8:20 or so. We immediately started heading downhill for several miles and then climbed up to New Pass at 6348. We then descended and rode across a basin and ascended to Mt Airy at 6679. We descended into a giant basin where we rode downhill for probably 12 miles and then we ascended to Austin at 6605 with the last 5 miles or so uphill.
We found a hotel, got cleaned up and had lunch down the street.
Our hotel-
There is not a lot going on in Austin. It has a population of 197. It is an old silver mining town and before the mine failed the population was several thousand.
I was just thinking that we had not met any real characters today when a guy walks into the restaurant with no shirt on. The look of shock on his face was priceless when the waitress asked him to put on a shirt.
Next we walked into a minimart. The fellow behind counter started chatting with us and told us he was originally from near Malone, NY. He told us that the one of the prisoners that escaped from Dimora prison was killed on his cousins farm. He later told us he was a distant relative of General John Stark who he told us had committed suicide. He then told us that his grandfather committed suicide and then (kiddingly?)said that he pretty much thought about suicide very hour. John asked him if he could hold off another 5 minutes until he checked us out. The clerk thought that was hilarious.
Tomorrow the roller coaster continues. We are headed to Eureka which is about 70 miles away and there are no services in between here and there.
Downtown Austin
This is the giant basin we descended. It was 18 miles from the pass to Austin-
