Tecopa, Shoshone, Amargosa, Pahrump.......

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7:02 am - PST - Friday - 50º F, humidity 53%, wind 5 mph out of north northeast....feels like dead calm......high wispy clouds.....forecast high for Friday 84º F....we are in a warming trend, that will continue for the next week, even in Las Vegas where we are headed.

Thursday morning all I had to do was publish the blog as I had written it Wednesday evening, and then it was off for me on a 17.1 mile bike ride over to Shoshone, CA and back....the road is quite new, and for the first time in weeks I spent my time riding and enjoying the scenery and worrying about where the smooth spots were in the road.  I did love riding around Borrego Springs, but come on Borrego Springs.....repave your roads....they're terrible!

I left for my ride about 8 am.......the terrain surrounding Tecopa is quite stark.....took these three pictures just 1.5 miles from the campground.....

.....since I was out on my ride so early there was hardly any traffic between Tecopa and Shoshone.  Once I turned on to SR-127 I began a 5 mile climb into Shoshone.....not steep, but steady....I gained about 200 feet in elevation by the time I turned around and headed back to Tecopa Hot Springs.  Naturally, the ride back was 5 miles of downhill to the Tecopa turnoff, so I was pushing 20-22 mph most of the way......my total riding time for the 17.1 miles was 1 hour 11 minutes, averaging about 14.5 mph, and burning 1100 calories.  By the way, I continue to lose weight.....down almost 14 pounds, and my 16 pound weight loss goal is in sight!

Downtown Shoshone, CA....you can walk from one end to the other in 5 minutes...maybe less....a cool little town, nonetheless.

After my ride I walked over to the men's hot pool and soaked for about 30 minutes.....really takes the soreness out of your muscles!  After my soak we got dressed to take a drive and do a little site seeing.....first stop was the Amorgosa Opera House and Hotel in Death Valley Center about 35 miles from Tecopa Hot Springs.

Death Valley Center used to be called Amargosa, but the name was changed back in the early 1900's to its present day name.  The building which houses the opera house is located was built back in 1924 by the Pacific Coast Borax Company, was called 'Corkill Hall' and was the social center for Death Valley Junction.  It was abandoned by Pacific Coast in 1948 and stayed that way until 1967 when Marta Becket discovered it and reopened it under the name of 'Amargosa Opera House'....

......the plaque below gives more information about this historic little town......

The Amargosa Hotel

.....the current owners give tours on the weekends to tourists, and the hotel is still in operation, although it looks as if it could use little freshening up.  There is also a cafe open Friday through Sunday.  We spent about 30 minutes walking around the complex, and through the hotel before it was time to retrace our steps.

We were getting low on gas and buying gas in Shoshone where it is close to $5/gallon was not enticing so we decided to drive 27 miles (Shoshone to Pahrump) to Parump where gas is much more reasonable, and we also wanted to check out the dump station possibilities.  We can dump our tanks where we were staying, but there is no fresh water available, and we'll need that too before we spent 5 days dry camping at The Orleans Casino in Las Vegas for our college reunion.

We arrived in Pahrump around 1 pm, fueled up at a local ARCO, and then found a Starbucks where we had good broadband and could search for a dump station with fresh water.  We checked out a local casino which had a dump station, but no fresh water, then TLE looked up Elks Clubs and found there was one just a little over a mile from the Starbucks....we went there and they have a nice dump station and also fresh water so that is were we will take care of that! 

We were back home before 2:30......we had a 3 pm reservation to use the private hot pool here, which is only $10/hour if you are staying in the RV park, which we are.  We enjoyed our private soak for about 30 minutes.....the private pool seemed a little hotter to us than 104º F, and even though we loved it, we could not stay in longer than 30 minutes!

We heard there was a local micro brewery called Death Valley Brewing company (of course), so we drove over to check it out.....it was not open on Thursdays, but the 'Steak and Brews' place next door was, and they had a couple of the DVB brews on hand.....TLE and I both jumped on the DVB Porter, and it was special......

 Sittin' outside around 4:30 pm enjoying the balmy air, good conversation and a good brew!

.....we'll head back over Friday to check out the brewery itself.  We were back home by 5 pm sitting outside until almost 6 pm enjoying some Blues music once again, and reading....a nice way to end an equally nice day spent with my best friend.

Thanks for stopping by!