Two great place names in one post title! Woo hoo! I’ll put them up with any place names anywhere. Add Ogalalla (Nebraska) and Canajoharie and Tonawanda and Cheektowaga (NY) and you’re well on your way to a top ten.
It reminds me of a song by a Canadian folk group, Stringband, “Mail Sortin’ Man”, in which John Henry meets the Canadian postal codes and stakes his life in a contest against the steam sorter. The steam sorter goes W1A 7Z5, and John Henry goes Honey Harbor, Ectobicoke, Parry Sound, and with his last gasp, Moose Jaw!
I’ve never found a lot to see along I-80 in Nevada between Reno and Elko. This trip wasn’t an exception. We set the cruise control to 75 and kept the car in our lane, and that was about it until Elko.
Two years ago we drove from Tahoe to Pocatello in one day, with a stop in Elko to see the Western Folk Life Center. We looked for it again today, without any directions. I was very proud of myself for taking the most direct route to it.
The Western Folk Life Center in Elko was having its gallery renovated so all we saw there was the gift shop. We got three CDs and played them in the car — why not take advantage of the CD player in a rental car? — on the way through Jackpot up to Twin Falls. One is all songs, Wylie and the Wild West. I’ve heard of the song “Strawberry Roan”, about a bronco-busting cowboy who finally meets a horse he can’t ride, but I never heard the song itself before that CD. The other CD has highlights of the cowboy poetry gathering at the folk life center from a couple of years ago. The gathering has made Elko something of a cultural center in the intermountain West ranching community, way out of proportion to anything you would expect of a city of 16000 people.
The Northeastern Nevada Museum was open, though. It had interesting displays about the Basque culture of the area, native american basketry and culture, and the history of the area. Most impressive was a collection of and stuffed animals, an incredible collection donated by a man who had hunted all over the world. It may be an exaggeration to say that if a big game hunter has hunted an animal, there’s an example in that museum; but it’s not much of an exaggeration. The display would be impressive at the American Museum of Natural History or the Field Museum; it’s mind-boggling in Elko.
Lunch, two big omelets with potatoes plus coffee, at a diner with a Basque name cost barely more than two small soups and two coffees had in Yuba City the day before. There was no non-smoking section in the restaurant, but there was a real local feel. It seemed to be the kind of place that had a lot of regular customers, ranchers who came in once every two weeks when they came into town for supplies and stopped there for lunch, with waitresses who knew who was going to want a pitcher of iced tea.
We got off I-80 in Wells and went north on US 93 through Jackpot NV to Twin Falls ID. We looked for a snack in Jackpot, less a town than a development of three casinos built just over the state line to attract business from Idaho, but didn’t find anything we wanted. In Twin Falls we got dishes of ice cream at Shake and Go, a take-out milkshake joint that was really just what we wanted. We phoned my mom from there. She was delighted to hear that we were already in Twin Falls. Next stop, Pocatello.