U.S. Route 50 America's loneliest route

When a person grows up seeing nothing but pine tree farms, water moccasins and mosquitos so large they need air traffic control - cactus and rocks looks interesting.

ppine wrote:
Nevada is nothing but cactus and rocks.

You have that opinion because you see it every day. People visiting Florida like the scenery down here but it is old hat to us. We like mountains and such because we don't have any, not even a good hill in the whole state.

Loneliest portion is from Fallon to Ely not all the way across US.
We have travel much of US 50 across the US and this portion is definely a lonely stratch. Much to see! Great views! We stayed at gravel pit campgrounds on several of the high points.
To us, Nevada is more then just rock and cacti!

DW and I rode 50 across California, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado on the Goldwing 4 years ago. It was much more pleasant and scenic than I80. Pulling the pop up camper we can get about 175 miles on a tank but that wasn't an issue. Just get gas at every chance LOL.

As I recall there ar 7 "passes" across Nevada on 50. It is also the Pony Express route.

We were lucky in that the temperatures were in the 80's. Could have easily been over 100 in July.

ppine, we thought Nevada was going to be dull, but we were wrong -- the northeastern corner of the state is mountainous and beautiful. Here is a link to our recent trip to Great Basin -- lots of photos:

GBNP

And even the parts of Nevada that were cactus and rocks were terrific in their own way -- distant horizons, sweeping valleys, lonely ranches, wild horses on ridge lines. It was like driving through a huge Western movie set.

Nevada is nothing but cactus and rocks.

Looking forward to seeing the "other end" of US-50.

The other end of US 50 is Sacramento. But before you get there heading west you will travel very near Virginia City, through Carson City and access the south end of Lake Tahoe. The great American author Mark Twain called Lake Tahoe in his book Rouging It 'the fairest picture the whole earth affords'. It is worth a visit.

On the bucket list as well...I've heard great things

There are a lot of very desolate highways in the west but Nevada has more than its fair share of them. Outside of the Reno/CC and Las Vegas metro areas, the biggest town in Nevada is Elko at 16,000 - and it's the only one with more than 10,000 people. Apply that to a state the size of Nevada and you start to get a handle on how desolate it really is outside of the two aforementioned metro areas.

US-50 is on our bucket list. We enjoyed a few days Ely--great train ride, touring the steam locomotive repair shop, the charcoal ovens at the state park, drives into the area mountains and a nice small town! A little further east is Great Basin NP--cave tour, hiking bristle cone pine trees, and great views in the afternoon with the mountain shadow advancing across the desert. Looking forward to seeing the "other end" of US-50.