How to make friends on “America’s loneliest road”

My Highway 50 journey began at the city of Fallon near the western edge of Nevada, home to the curious combination of a thriving farming community, the TOPGUN Naval Air Training Base, and the Paiute-Shoshone Native American Reservation. With the area hosting 24,000 residents amid a sprawl of farms, mini-malls and casinos, it’s the largest population for hundreds of miles east. Even the birds use it as a last jumping-off point, migrating through a nearby wetlands wildlife sanctuary.

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A local tourism rep enthuses about Fallon’s sense of community. “It just feels like home here, so much better than the big cities, a great place to raise a family,” she says, adding that I simply HAVE to come back for their annual cantaloupe festival (“best tasting melons in the world!”)

A few miles outside of town, beyond the limits of irrigation, there’s nary a melon, or even a tree to be seen. Bleak white salt flats line the road like the spiteful remnant from some departed army. In the middle of the wastelands, tucked within a ’V’ of two hilly ridges near the highway, a sand dune looms like a giant anthill—I even see skittering black dots crawling all over it.

I drive to the base of the aptly named Sand Mountain to find dozens of people camped with RVs circled around them like wagon trains of old. Four-wheeled ATVs and motorcycles zoom up and down the hill, popping wheelies and racing. One family offers to take me for a spin in their sand buggy (after first making sure I’m not “some damn environmentalist”).

The many, many Trump flags, pro-gun banners and “F-Joe Biden And Anyone Who Voted For Fim” signs around the campgrounds make clear this is a tight community. Despite the hostile signs, the RV campers are uniformly friendly and welcoming to me, likely assuming I’m part of the same tribe gathered at this recreational and political oasis.

The bartender shares her stories like I’m family too—the ketchup dispenser incident, the community-sourced brake-job near-death experience, and her own family history: “You know, my grandpa smoked reefer with Al Capone,” she boasts.

Farther along the road, the food-and-fuel oasis of Middlegate Station is smack dab in “The Middle of Nowhere” as their sign says. The 150-year-old ramshackle roadhouse, once a watering station for Pony Express riders, now serves burgers and beers to passing truckers, Air Force troops and road-trippers.

Surrounded by a few folks living in trailers and a basic motel, Middlegate is the sort of place where people are identified by the gun they carry. As I munch on a burger, the chef tells his friend, “So I was talking with Jane, you know, the tall woman with the 9 millimeter…” And once beers are served, “Hey, almost anything goes here,” says the bartender, a retired woman now living in a nearby trailer surrounded by hay bales to keep out the wind. “You want to take a six-pack outside and shoot off your guns, you just go for it.”

I ask an older couple drinking Bloody Marys at the bar if they were lonely here. “Honey, I have 13 kids and 34 grandkids,” says Jan Vasquez, “There’s never been a lonely day in my life. Lord, I would sure like some though!” she adds, laughing.

Her husband, Mike, chimes in: “And not just our kids… there were always some other kids wandering through our place. That’s what it’s like out here, we’re all family.”

The bartender shares her stories like I’m family too—the ketchup dispenser incident, the community-sourced brake-job near-death experience, and her own family history: “You know, my grandpa smoked reefer with Al Capone,” she boasts.

She tells me the dollar bills stapled to the walls and ceiling were a tradition begun by the Pony Express. “You see those young riders knew they’d spend their pay as soon as they got it,” gesturing to a photo on the wall of the 1880s-era prostitution license of Julie “two cups” Smith who earned her nickname with her talent for balancing two teacups (with saucers) on her ample bosom. “But the riders wanted to be sure to save something for their trip home, so they’d nail a dollar to the wall here with their name on it to pick up on the ride home,” says the bartender.

As the sun begins to set, I hurry further along Highway 50, diverting to rutted side roads to find the Spencer Hot Springs. I bump along dusty paths until I see a few RVs and campervans parked discreetly separate from the others, each a lonely island in the Nevada backcountry. I hop into a natural tub carved into the rocks and soak for a while, enjoying a spectacular sunset with only the faint voices from the campgrounds to keep me company.

I then drive through Austin and Eureka, two historic towns that are pretty much just a post office and a gas station away from turning into ghost towns themselves. Virtually every one of the few shops in these two towns are closed during my brief visit—either permanently or for the day. The only person I see on the streets does smile and gives me a friendly “hello!” The Austin area is known for great nearby biking and hiking, but lacking guidance, I walk to their most notable (and symbolic) structure—Stoke’s Castle. This abandoned three-storey stone tower built on a hilltop at the height of the gold rush has since been condemned as dangerous and fenced off, standing alone overlooking a vast vista of nothingness.

I’m alone, but not feeling lonely. Highway 50, stretching into the distance below, with all its surrounding scenery, personalities and community, has become like a character itself.

As darkness descends and the elevation increases, I seek out the ultimate in loneliness: Solo stargazing. I leave the highway and drive along backroads to reach the remote, high and dry “dark skies” setting at the Ward Charcoal Ovens State Historic Park. These curious bee-hive shaped brick ruins are remnants of the 1880s when miners chopped down the few remaining area trees to turn into charcoal. They now serve as a scenic backdrop to a dazzling night sky, under which I feel as small and distant as a remote star.

The last real town before the Utah border, Ely, population 4,000, is a former mining boomtown trying to survive as a recreation destination. At the historic Hotel Nevada, I ask a clerk if it’s lonely there. “Lonely? Not me,” she answers, “It’s hard to be lonely when you’re related to most of the town.”

Three giggling teens working at the Taproot Coffee shop tell me “Aw, it’s not so bad here, we hang out with friends and stuff.” Strolling through town, I see cheerful families dressed in camouflage, shopping together for their hunting trip at the local sporting goods store where racks of guns are displayed next to shelves of whisky. “We’re all very polite here,” one resident tells me later, “because, you know, everyone’s got a gun!”

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For those who do find Ely lonely, the town has you covered: Two legal brothels and a massage parlor occupy a small red-light district on the edge of town. “They have their patrons,” a woman at a local art gallery tells me with distaste. “The mine reopened recently, and well, you know miners…”

I learn about other connections made in Ely at the Nevada Northern Railway museum. The station houses massive, still-functional steam engines dating from 1909, taking visitors on excursions along the rails and into the past. My tour guide tells me that “railroads were the Internet of the 19th century, connecting folks and spreading information around the country.”

Beyond Ely, I go off-road again, searching for ghost towns in the hills. I wander through abandoned 19th^–century cemeteries, explore crumbling ruins, following a dwindling dirt road into the hills until it comes to an end at the recent ruins of a mining operations. The ruins are are filled with collapsing racks stacked with thousands of core samples, offices with wires torn from the ceilings, bullet holes in walls, bright red shotgun shells scattered about. It looks like the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse.

I can almost hear a movie audience in the background shouting at me, “Don’t go in there!” as I walk deeper into the ruins. Feeling like the last person on earth, I hustle back to my car, and hightail it back to the highway, still devoid of any traffic. Driving east toward the Utah border, the few inhabited-looking houses and buildings are plastered with “NO TRESSPASSING” signs, one is surrounded with an electric fence.

In the comfort of sunlight emerging from the clouds, I journey to the highway’s final destination, Great Basin National Park, near the Utah border. The park is home to the oldest living things on earth—Bristlecone Pine trees that have a life span of more than 4,000 years. You’d think that would be the ultimate in loneliness, but there’s a big grove of them up at 10,000 feet elevation in the park, where I imagine they’ve been having conversations between each other that have lasted eons.

Looking over the expansive vista from my perch with the trees, I’m alone, but not feeling lonely. Highway 50, stretching into the distance below, with all its surrounding scenery, personalities and community, has become like a character itself, sharing new nuances daily, keeping me company. It’s time to hop in the car and see what the return trip reveals of my new friend.