Westercon 2017 Road Trip Day 8, Part 2: More Goldfield and Tonopah

I did not get the rest of my Goldfield and Tonopah photos uploaded until this morning, so here's some more about both.

( Tonopah Hotel and Musuem )

I also have a couple of more Goldfield photos from yesterday.

( Auto Graveyard and Striking Scenery )

I would describe Goldfield as "quirky." It has to be a challenging place to live, with nearly all services (such as the nearest gas station) 30 miles away in Tonopah, but it does seem to have some attractions, and there are still people who care about it, like those trying to restore the Goldfield Hotel to make it more of a tourist destination.

Westercon 2017 Road Trip Day 9: Tonopah to Fernley via Hawthorne

We set no alarms last night and I got almost a full eight hours of sleep. After a nice breakfast in the Tonopah Station Hotel restaurant, we set off for home about 10:45 AM. With only 200 miles to go, we knew we didn't have to rush. We congratulated ourselves for not making the mistake we made on the trip back from San Antonio, where an attempt to drive Las Vegas-Fernley in one day at the end of the trip nearly killed us.

( Avoiding the 8 Ball )

About 3:45, we arrived home. The house was in one piece. The various wildfires (and a fire at the asphalt plant across the tracks from us) did not affect our home, thank goodness.

After nearly 1,700 miles driving over the past nine days, we were happy to be home. We unpacked some of the stuff from the minivan, restarted the house (I remembered to turn the water heater on this time) and got the swamp cooler and air conditioning systems running, and tried to relax. I do have to run out and get a few groceries for tonight and for tomorrow morning, which is an ordinary work day for me, but otherwise we're going to try and wind down.

While I'm sorry we couldn't also attend NASFiC this year, I can see that such a trip would have wiped us out. With nearly three weeks planned for the Worldcon trip (for which we set out in just under three weeks), we need some time to recover and prepare for Helsinki. We won't have the luxury of traveling with a minivan-load full of our gear, so we need to think carefully about how to pack.