Beautiful Downtown Tonopah

We slept in this morning, had breakfast in the Tonopah Station's restaurant, and began our exploration of Tonopah by heading downtown. Incidentally, in this and the other entries for today, as usual, click through the photo to go to Flickr where you can see many more photos.

( The Great Race )

When Lisa was stuck in Tonopah for several days years ago waiting for her pickup to be repaired, she looked at the Tonopah Convention Center, and finally she got to show it to me, this being the first time we have been here on a weekday during business hours when there are staff around who could show us things.

( Nice Small Convention Center )

Tonopah is remarkably well-served with convention facilities for a town this size. (It's about one-tenth the size of Fernley.) Aside from the obvious difficulty in getting here, it wouldn't be impossible to run an SF convention in the 300-person range here. It would be challenging to split the convention between daytime at the Convention Center and nighttime at the Tonopah Station (which has the best facilities for evening hospitality functions, in my opinion), but it could be done. The question really is whether the 300 Westercon "if you hold it, we will come" regulars could be persuaded to do so, particularly those who would have to fly to Reno or Las Vegas and drive 200 miles to Tonopah.

Not that we're actually bidding or anything like that. Think of this as Conrunners' Syndrome; the inability to be in a hotel or convention facility without modeling how you'd run a convention in it.

To The Mines

One of the biggest attractions in Tonopah is the Tonopah Historic Mining Park, which covers the grounds of the mining area above Tonopah. We spent most of the day ranging over the grounds of the museum.

( A Day at the Mine )

Even spending most of the day at the Mining Park, we still didn't see everything. We might come back again and attempt the hike to the upper level and explore some of the areas we didn't see because by 4 o'clock we decided we needed to leave while our legs were still working. The rest of today's tourism would be mostly by car.

The Future's So Bright...

One of the things Lisa wanted to see was the Crescent Dunes solar thermal power plant, located about 15 miles northeast of Tonopah. We could see the plant clearly from the Mining Park, with the power tower glowing from the sunlight focused on it from the thousands of mirrors. So after we left the mining park, we decided to drive out to have a look.

( We've Gotta Wear Shades )

We didn't spend a lot of time out here. But had we known the kiosk had a picnic table, we might have considered bringing a picnic lunch. By the time we headed back to Tonopah, we were getting pretty hungry.

( Dinner at the Mizpah Again )

We were not sorry to go back to the hotel, walk next door and get a few snacks from Raley's, and spend the evening kicking back in the luxury of our suite. We're both really tired. My pedometer turned sideways in its pouch, so it wasn't reading correctly, but I feel like I must have walked at least 15 km. Again, I'm happy to not have to be up early in the morning.