Places We Won't Be Staying

Because some of you know about this place, I thought I should address it.

( World Famous in Some Parts )

However, if we really did hold a Westercon in Tonopah, some of the more adventurous/thrifty members might elect to stay here. Personally, I'd like to book the Diamond Jim room where we're staying this weekend, but realistically the convention would need to book the two accessible suites including it and dole them out to groups hosting parties. (The Tonopah Station has one more suite, but it's down a long corridor with several flights of stairs.)

Out and About in Tonopah

Today after breakfast, we could walk to our first stop, which was the second half of a museum we'd looked at on a previous stay. (Again, click through to see more photos.)

( Central Nevada Museum )

At the museum, they told us that the Mizpah gives tours. We drove downtown to the Mizpah, where they explained that there weren't tours, but that we were welcome to go walk around upstairs and if the housekeepers were working on rooms and were willing, we could have a look at some of the rooms.

( Read more... )

We got to see more rooms, including some of the smaller suites, but I did not get pictures. After seeing the rooms with her own eyes, Lisa decided that they were not quite as fragile looking as the hotel's web site seemed to imply, and we may indeed stop here on a future stay. It would be hard to beat the luxury (of our style) of the suite we have at the Tonopah Station, though. (For example, the Mizpah rooms don't have refrigerators.)

Downtown Tonopah has a bookstore. We went to examine it.

( Old Fashioned Bookstore )

Based on what we saw at the Central Nevada Museum, we knew that the former Tonopah Army Air Field is now maintained as a local airport, so we drove a few miles out of town on US-6 to have a look.

( Nye County Airport )

After our airport trip we went looking for lunch, but the first two places we tried were nothing but pizza, and Lisa wanted a hamburger, so we went back to the Mizpah, where we'd seen their lunch special was a specialty hamburger. However, the hotel was hopping with a large wedding party, and the restaurant appeared to be closed. We started to leave when a manager asked if we wanted lunch and when we said yes, led us into the restaurant. We were on the only customers, but the kitchen was open, and things were quiet on account of the wedding catering was all done. We ordered a couple of their burgers and chatted with the sales manager who had led us into the restaurant. She told us that Tonopah had recently hosted a convention of hospitality professionals, and as we thought, the town is punching considerably above its weight in the hospitality field. We also learned from her that the group that restored the Mizpah are also restoring the Belvada across the street, and that it should also be opened to the high standards of the historic Mizpah next year.

The chef brought our burgers to us. I confirmed that he had been cooking the last two nights as well, and complimented him on the lemon dill salmon we had on Thursday night. The burgers were excellent as well.

We were very impressed that the people there took care of us even in the midst of having just filled the hotel lobby with a large wedding group. They take their jobs seriously. Aside from the logistical issues of getting people to Tonopah, this place keeps looking better all the time as a site for a smallish convention of the sort we like.

Finally for this afternoon, we refueled the minivan and made one more pass through town to see if there were things we'd missed.

( US-95 Electric Highway... but only if you drive a Tesla )

Tonight we are going to see if stargazing lives up to its advance billing. A misadventure with Google Maps led us this afternoon down an unmarked road that came dangerously close to stranding us, but Lisa managed to persuade the Astro over a near-washout, and we found ourselves only a few hundred meters from our hotel. We drove back to the Tonopah Station over the much safer route from where we wound up, and we'll go back over there tonight after dark. Don't expect photos. I don't have the right kind of camera for it. But I can see why Tonopah Star Walks were billed as starting at the Tonopah Station Hotel, as it looks to be an easy walk to the Tonopah Stargazing Park.

It's been a really good three days here in Tonopah. We'll head home tomorrow, but I think we may come back again, and I recommend that if anyone reading this has cause to drive this way between Las Vegas/Southern California and Northern Nevada that you give yourself time to stop here in Tonopah and check out its attractions.

To The Stars

It was a little farther that we were comfortable walking in the night chill here at 6000 feet, so we drove (over the safe route past the high school) to the Tonopah Stargazing Park tonight after dinner. The park is a fenced off area with four concrete pads at the corners with picnic tables (good places for setting up telescopes) and a center concrete square with benches (I would have liked to have had a pillow). The west-facing portion of the fence is covered to reduce light coming from Tonopah. Unfortunately, a truck stop built behind the Texaco station has installed large lights that are not well aimed, and that's contaminating the viewing. Also, even only a few days past new, the Moon was very bright. Viewing conditions were thus not ideal. However, there were still vastly more stars than we usually see even at home in Fernley (which isn't exactly the most well-lit place) and the Milky Way was easily visible arching over us. Just after we arrived and were getting out of the car, a large shooting star that lasted several seconds blasted through. We went into the viewing area and let our eyes adjust, and we both saw several more shooting stars. And also quite a few airplanes passing overhead, at what seemed like streetcar frequencies.

We spent maybe 30-40 minutes enjoying the view. We're glad we made the time to come look at the stars. I can imagine what this must be like to a dedicated sky-watcher on a moonless night in July with pleasant weather. Lisa says I should write to the town and say they should get that truck stop to re-aim their lights, though.