It’s scorching hot and the desert stretches in all directions as far as the eye can see. I’m half expecting some tumbleweed to roll across the road; I’ve already seen wild donkeys. We’re driving along Nevada’s Extraterrestrial Highway – so called as this vast space, near the top-secret Area 51 military base, is reportedly the scene of lots of UFO sightings and unexplained activity.
We’ve just had a close encounter with Little A’Le’Inn, a popular stop-off for UFO hunters keen to share stories and keep a sharp eye on those big skies. Billed as a motel with camping and RV spaces, the tiny set-up at Rachel (population 48) on State Route 375, where an “earthlings welcome” sign is displayed and a spaceship is suspended from a crane, feels like the middle of nowhere. Inside, a blackboard features drinks specials with names such as Alien Blood and Beam Me Up Scotty, and walls are covered with memorabilia, alien-themed art and grainy photographs of mysterious lights in the sky.
Having browsed the merchandise, such as inflatable aliens and Area 51 shot glasses, we’re now huddled outside in the shade of a solitary tree where we fall into conversation with Jonathan. And Jonathan, who’s originally from Kansas, clearly knows stuff. It’s here that like-minded people while away their evenings – not on constant watch for anything unusual, he says, but open to it – and he knows their stories of strange encounters.
People only get to know as much as they can deal with, he tells us, adding: “You have to see the truth – and want to know it.” The words echo as we progress along the Extraterrestrial Highway and our next stop feels fittingly outer-worldly: the shining metal semi-circular shape of the Alien Research Center, where a giant silver alien stands guard outside a shop selling everything from spacecraft-patterned socks to alien-shaped bottles of tequila. By the time we reach another roadside shop, which boasts “ET Fresh Jerky” alongside mini spaceships and a mural showing cowboys and aliens, we hardly turn a hair when the welcoming staff tell us of sightings of strange lights over the mountain directly behind.
Rachel is more than 100 miles north – and seemingly light years away – from Las Vegas, where we started our road trip. There we were immediately seduced upon checking in to the 67-storey Fontainebleau Las Vegas which whispered – or rather, bellowed – luxury in every corner. It’s never too late and you can never be too tired to explore the lights of this dazzling stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard.
In bed that night, while watching constantly changing images play out like a theatre show beyond my window, I felt this was already an out-of-this-world experience. It’s a spectacular, huge hotel: I needed the hotel map the next day to find our breakfast meeting spot. Luckily, I have no navigation responsibilities on our road trip – the reason we are in Nevada – and away from the buzz of Vegas, our driver Earl soon has us immersed in desert as we cover mile after empty mile of straight roads lined with Joshua trees.
Our upcoming section of the Alien Highway is one of a number of road trips through this 110,000 square mile state. Among the 10 highlighted on the Travel Nevada tourist site are the Great Basin Highway; Cowboy Corridor and the Loneliest Road in America. There’s a Free Range Art Highway too and some unique art installations, which loom like mirages in the midst of the grey desert.
What I’d been looking forward to most were the ghost towns of Nevada, the remnants of the silver and gold rush days I’d learned about only in old movies. Rhyolite is said to be one of the most-photographed ghost towns in the west, and we reach it just as the only two other tourists depart. There’s actually little left of a once-booming town which began as a two-tent mining camp in 1904 and grew to 5,000 residents within six months.
It’s hard to visualise its heyday, when saloons, boarding houses and even a weekly newspaper thrived, as we stand outside the old railway station and view the nearby ruin of a bank as rising heat levels add a shimmer to those gold-rush hills. But Goldfield – dubbed a “living ghost town” – is another matter. It is the highlight of my favourite day of the trip, which begins with the sight of a rusting graffiti-covered car sticking nose-first out of the earth.
Further off are more vehicles, including trucks and buses, projected at various angles as if dropped from a height –some almost fully submerged in sand; all in advanced state of decay. This is the International Car Forest of the Last Church, a Goldfield resident’s attempt to break a world record. It’s not clear whether he managed it but, helped by two artists, he’s half-buried more than 40 vehicles here.
It’s all strangely fascinating. It’s also as quiet as a graveyard – and eerie, despite the sunshine. We find Goldfield itself almost as silent.
This was once home to 20,000 people, now there are 250 residents bringing life back to its abandoned heart. Not that they were in evidence as we walked past rundown properties, fading Esso signs at long-closed garages, rusted cars and warnings to “slow down: donkeys in town”. There’s a workshop selling jewellery made by an artist couple, and an old courthouse, complete with sheriff, displays fragments of the town’s history.
We tracked down a bar, which passed as busy and certainly had a wide range of beer to help take the edge off the heat. Then we rounded off our day in Tonopah, a former mining town nicknamed Queen of the Silver Camps, which now has a brewery where we sampled some excellent beers. Later that night we drove to the nearby stargazing park, where the clouds lifted just in time for us to take in an expanse of glittering skies, in a perfect end to our ghost town day.
And if you want “real” ghosts, Nevada has those too, as we found the next morning when we left Belvada Hotel for the famously haunted Mizpah Hotel opposite. A breakfast of biscuits and gravy fortified me for a tour of its spooky basement whose tunnels, now sealed, once linked to the surrounding mines, offering easy access for the men at the end of their shift. Its most famous ghost is said to be that of its resident courtesan murdered in her fifth-floor boudoir by a jealous lover.
You can stay in one of the themed rooms at Tonopah’s Clown Motel, where a visit to its clown-stuffed lobby shop proved enough for me. It adjoins a 1901 cemetery, adding a further level of creepiness. Sign up for FREE to Mirror Travel and discover dream escapes, latest travel advice and more JOIN OUR WHATSAPP GROUP: Discover your next dream getaway in the UK or abroad by joining our free Mirror Travel WhatsApp community HERE .
GET THE NEWSLETTER: Or sign up to the Mirror Travel newsletter for a weekly dose of the best holiday deals, travel warnings, expert advice and hidden gems, straight to your inbox. We had a taste of Nevada both big and small – Vegas-flash and desert-lonely – and the snapshots of life, then and now, will stay in my memory. Much of it felt like a film set, and of course Nevada has been the backdrop to many movies.
Along the way, we ate at chains such as Denny’s and In-N-Out Burger. We enjoyed Mexican dishes at tiny roadside Gema’s Café in Beatty, and pizza and margaritas at Side Track Restaurant in Caliente. On our final day we visited the beautiful Valley of Fire, so called because of the effect of the sun on its red sands and sandstone formations, and saw carvings made by native Americans thousands of years ago.
If you’re looking for something different – and surely aliens and ghost towns are about as different as you can get – then Nevada can offer it, even without ET’s help. Book the holiday Virgin Atlantic flies from Heathrow to Las Vegas, Nevada, starting at £590 return. Rooms at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Las Vegas start at around £169 a night.
fontainebleaulasvegas.com Rooms at the Motel 6 in Beatty start at around £70 a night. motel6.
com Rooms at the Belvada hotel in Tonopah start at around £140 a night. belvadahotel.com Rooms at the Shady Motel in Caliente start at around £75 a night.
shadymotel.net For Las Vegas area tours see pinkadventuretours.com More info at travelnevada.
com.
