Ghost Town Vacation

Rhyolite is very near Death Valley National Park. A short trip over the mountains will take us there.

The entrance to the national park. There is part of the park that sticks out into Nevada. Just up the road is California.
The pioneers in the olden days wouldn't have had a nice paved road like this as they made their way through the mountains.
A panoramic view of some of the mountains that must be crossed to reach the valley.
Once you make it over the mountains you see the valley. Looks like death, eh?
A panoramic shot of Death Valley. It's a whole lot of nothing surrounded by mountains.
There was a sign that said something about the old wagon trails still being visible in this part of the park. I don't know if I saw any, but these looked like tracks. Then again, they could have just been where streams of water once ran during a particularly rare heavy rain.
Sand dunes. While I was here I was imagining what it must have been like to be a pioneer headed to the promise of California, the land of milk and honey, and seeing this desolation after having just crossed the mountains.
Old Stovepipe Wells. From the historical marker: This waterhole, only one in the sand dune area of Death Valley, was at the junction of two Indian trails. During the bonanza days of Rhyolite and Skidoo it was the only known water source on the cross-valley road. When sand obscured the spot, a length of stovepipe was inserted as a marker, hence its unique name. So you'd wander through the desert and have to look for a few feet of pipe sticking out of the sand to get water? No wonder people died.
More empty nothingness.
There were signs along the road indicating that visitors should not feed coyotes. Then this little fella comes trotting up the road in front of me.
I stopped on the side of the road to take another photo and the coyote just stopped and looked at me. Apparently there must be are a lot of people who don't pay attention to those signs, because it just looked at me as if it expected me to feed it.
Ubehebe Crater. It is not an impact crater from an asteroid. It is an old volcanic crater.
As the sun was setting in the west...
...the moon was rising in the east.
A lonely plant growing on the edge of the crater.
In the 1920's, rich guy Albert Johnson decided to build a large home near where he had invested in some mining operations. He was involved with a crazy local called Scotty who used to tell people that the place was being built from profits from his gold mine. It eventually became a popular hotel and tourist attraction known as Scotty's Castle.
I have no idea what this is. Perhaps something left over from a mining operation. It is close to the Castle.
Prostitution is legal in much of Nevada. I wanted to see some of the legal brothels that were on my route. This is the first, the Cottontail just outside of Goldfield. Doesn't look like much, does it? Well it doesn't really need to be much. Just a building with a few bedrooms for sex.
Beverly Harrell was the Madame at the Cottontail from 1967 to 1995. Then she died.
There are a lot of unmarked graveyards in the Goldfield Cemetery. It is still in use as some people still live in Goldfield.
Goldfield looked less like a ghost town than just a run-down town. As I drove through I got the impression that a fair number of people still lived there, but apparently not. This is the old abandoned Goldfield Hotel.
Sunset over the mountains outside Tonopah.
Okay, I think feet are the least attractive part of the body and mine are no exception. But I did take photographs for comparative reasons. Can you tell which one I sprained?
Early morning in Tonopah. These are some old mining structures and equipment.
There is a historic mining park in Tonopah. It didn't open until 10:00 a.m. I wanted to be on the road to other places by then, so I just took a couple of pictures from outside the gate.
The old Mizpah Hotel opened in 1908. It is said to be haunted, if you believe in that kind of thing. I had read that the hotel had recently been bought and that it was supposed to have been reopened last year. However, when I drove into town the night before I saw only a few dim lights on. And in the morning I noticed that the doors had no handles and there were no signs of activity. I guess the refurbishing is taking a little longer than the new owners had planned.
The population of Tonopah is around 2600. While there were plenty of shacks and trailers, I saw some nicer houses in town in Tonopah than some other places.

About the drive from Rhyolite to Tonopah: I initially wanted to visit another ghost town called Leadfield located within the Death Valley National Park, but the one-way road that takes you there was closed for some reason. It might have been impassable because of snow or something. There was some flooding in the park last year. Maybe that dirt road through the canyon was washed away. Anyway, I got to Tonopah around 5:00 p.m. After dinner in a restaurant at a local hotel and casino, I got a cold compress for my ankle. I don't think it did much more than just give me a chill. I got a bad night's sleep, waking up about every hour or so in pain. Walking to the bathroom the next morning was no picnic either.