"I stopped overnight in Carlin, and left at 5:10, still travelling in the canyon, which extends from Palisade, thirty-five miles further east, to Elko. I had ten miles of fair going on the road, and then had to take to the railroad again. When I did so I was confronted by a tunnel just 3,000 feet long with a curve in it, so that you cannot see the little round hole of light at the other end. There was a river on one side, a precipice on the other and the tunnel beetween. There was nothing for it but the tunnel, and I went through it. I walked. I had to slide my foot along the rail in order tell where the track was. The other side of this railroad borrow the roadbed was sandy and I kept on walking. After tramping ten miles I reached Elko, where I stopped to by some gasolene. I got what two beer bottles would hold, about three pintes, and paid four bits for it. This is at a rate of about $1.25 a gallon, and was the highest price I paid anywhere.
I should say the average price I paid was about 40 cents a gallon. The further East I got the cheaper gasolene became. I used an average of two quarts of gasoline to every fifty miles very uniformily. My regular gasolene tank held two quarts, but the the Far West I carried an extra tank holding two gallons, so as to be prepared for the emergency of not being able to get any. On this day between Carlin and Wells I used three quarts of gasoline, travelling eighty-six miles.
After walking out of Elko, which I put down as a bunco town, because of the gasolene, I came to a piece of road that looked good and I started to motor. I was now entering the Great American Desert. After riding about two miles I rand into a washout caused by a cloudburst. It was six feed deep and ten feet across. I was going full tilt when I saw it, but I could not stop, for my brake was put out of commission when I broke my handle bars. The motorcycle went into the hole and I fell on the other side of it on my back. and lay stunned for several minutes. I tore a piece out of my finger, smashed my watch and sprained my back, but the motorcycle was unhurt. If it had been a rocky place instead of a sandy one this part of the story would be different. I reckon it would be about the place for a crape curtain to drop. I finally motored on to Wells, my mileage for the day being eighty-six miles."
Wells is a division town of about 200 population, with the biggest hotel I had seen since leaving Reno. The dining room there for railroad passengers would have seated the whole population of the place. They feed largely for 50 cents a meal, and I never left anything on the dishes. Riding over the ties must have jolted my food down to my boots. I was always empty, and I doubt if any restaurant made anything on me, even the high priced ones, where they charge 50 cents a meal. Mentioning prices, the highest figure for a meal I saw posted was 75 cents, but this was on a very nicely graduated scale of prices, one calculated to fit the different sorts of eaters and give satisfaction all around. This high price was on a board nailed on the outside wall of a dugout at a section station. The sign read:
Meal.................................................. 25 cents
Square meal....................................... 50 cents
Gorge................................................. 75 cents
I am afraid that if all the restaurants had such a schedule and lived up to it I would have paid 75 cents apiece for all my meals.
At Wells I had to tighten up the spokes of the wheels on my motorcycle, as I often did at other places. Pounding over the ties was a terrible strain on the bicycle. I marveled every day that it stood it so well. It is well I knew better than to congratulate myself when over the Forty Mile Desert. That was only a sort of initiation for me. The Great American Desert, which stretches from Elko, Nevada, to Kelton, Utah, is nearly 200 miles across, or 5 times as big as the first one. I struck the alkali sand of the Great American Desert going out of Wells, and for three miles found a stretch hard enough to ride on. Then I walked for two miles, and went over the railroad, where I found fair tie-pounding. I was interested in this part of the desert to find that the picturesque old prairie schooner of the Forty-niners, who traveled this overland trail, is not extinct. I passed quite a few of them at different times. Most of them carried parties of farmer families who were moving from one section of the country to another, and several were occupied by gypsies, or rovers, as the natives call the Romany people."
Reno, NV to Ogden, UT
May 21 to May 28, 1903
