Greetings to those who love a road trip to harvest chips!

Ely to Elko NV

On the road to see the Total Eclipse. Gonna take a few days driving to see small town Nevada and collect chips from casinos that don't order chips by the tens of thousands, as the Strip Casinos do. Goal: Scoreboard Casino in Spring Creek NV. A Killer location to have in your small town Nevada collection. Of course, lots of other places to collect along the way.

Today's leg of the trip is from Ely NV to Elko NV. Going to take the back roads to get to Spring Creek so as not to have to backtrack 100 or more miles to do it. Might be fun to get off the US and State highways and onto some county roads. Really get a taste of Northern Nevada that most of us Las Vegans know nothing about.

I planned out the trip on Google Maps. Printed them off to have with me. I don't trust GPS units, I used to sell Real Estate and there were many times the GPS couldn't find it's own cheeks with both hands. I took printouts of the Satellite Maps with the route overlaid. Snapshots of the Street level views to pinpoint what the signage and intersections would look like.

I'm just not all that adventurous.

So, there is a road sign saying Lamoille thata way. I'd known to look for that and not a sign to Spring Creek, courtesy of Google. Kinda wondered why there were no further street level pictures of the next part of the route.

The satellite maps did not show that the roads were not paved! I'm driving my 18 yr old truck, 225,000 miles young, with my Mobility Scooter hanging off the back of it. I don't do gravel roads.

But, oh well. I set off down the road.

These pictures are screenshots from my Dash Camera. Not meant to be great Photography. A lot of the dashboard reflecting on the windshield, putting in odd lines and shadows. I've cropped off the worst of it, but some reflections remain.

So far, not so bad. I've got plenty of time.

Made a turn and...

I come to a fork in the road with extensive signage. I've stopped to try to find where in the hell I am on the map. Coin says left.

More fun road, and then around a corner I stop to take in this view. The road drops off and curves around like Lombard Street!

Keeping on trucking and in my head inventorying the food and water on board, just in case I'm not found for a week. Finally I see a sign of good luck: Another truck on the road. Must have come from somewhere up ahead, maybe I'll find civilization again.

Another fork in the road. This time with a car coming from it, giving me direction to go, so I'll take the high road. Not my usual choice

Another turn and... Ya gotta be kidding!

Down in the valley, a "river" runs through it.

Another turn, another valley. I expect I'll be in Mexico soon

Whoopee! It's not all desert.

For some reason I'm getting hungry. A Hamburger would be good right now. Need a new belt too!

Yea! Finally a road sign at this fork. Problem is that it just lets the other folks know the obvious right or left turn only. Thanks.

Further down the road, a church. I should stop in and ask Rod Serling how to get back to civilization. I'm not looking for anything fancy, somewhere with a drive through fast food joint will suffice. Looking at my maps to see if Straight or Right, I realized the road to the right was paved. The hell with the maps, paved works for me!

Another 20 miles or so headed back to civilization and I arrive at the Scoreboard Casino.

Victory!

Except that they had taken out the blackjack table a couple of months earlier! No Chips after this drive?! Hijo de la chingada madre!

[Note: in a previous post I told of trying to pry chips loose from the casino manager]

There had better be some great chip harvesting when I drive the rest of the way into Elko!

Steve