Monthly Archives: August 2013

The Best Beach So Far This Year?

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The view of California from Nevada Beach in Zephyr Cove, Nev. (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

The view of California from Nevada Beach in Zephyr Cove, Nev. (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

ZEPHYR COVE, Nev. — I’ve been truly lucky to have visited some wonderful beaches so far this year. The standouts have been Kailua on Oahu’s Windward coast and a private stretch of sand I had mostly to myself near Mahogany Bay on Barbados this past winter.

While my ultimate destination for my Lincoln Highway trip has been San Francisco, I feel like this beautiful view has been my reward for my long journey across the United States. This beautiful spot is Nevada Beach on Lake Tahoe. I’m in the middle of the Sierra Nevadas. Across the lake is the great state of California.

Nevada Beach, near the Nevada-California state line on the southern end of Lake Tahoe. (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

Nevada Beach, near the Nevada-California state line on the southern end of Lake Tahoe. (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

After crossing the great expanses of the Great Basin and the Great Plains, it’s nice to see a sizable body of water that’s not salty. Earlier on this trip, I listened to this National Public Radio report featuring a group of crazy swimmers who battle brine flies and endure pickled tongues while swimming in the Great Salt Lake.

A lake that’s saltier than the ocean with water that’s corrosive to bare skin is not appealing to swim in. I breezed right by the Great Salt Lake a few days earlier.

Lake Tahoe is a different matter. I happily went for a swim here.

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Last Chance for Desolation Along America’s Not-So-Loneliest Road

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A Lincoln Highway marker stands alongside the Loneliest Road in America. (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

A historic Lincoln Highway marker stands alongside the Loneliest Road in America. (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

FALLON, Nev. — In my trek westward toward San Francisco on the Lincoln Highway, my earlier travels across the grand emptiness of the Great Plains may have spoiled the so-called “Loneliest Road in America.”

Along U.S. 50, the so-called "Lonliest Road in America," near Austin, Nev. (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

Along U.S. 50, the so-called “Lonliest Road in America,” near Austin, Nev. (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

Sure, the distances between towns on U.S. 50 in Nevada can be quite far, but I was never truly alone out in the middle of nowhere like I had been, for instance, for most of U.S. 30 near the Medicine Bow Mountains in Wyoming, a stunningly beautiful place that made me feel blissfully alone under the endless mountain-framed skies.

On the Loneliest Road in America — that description for this stretch of U.S. 50 came from a 1980s Life magazine feature and is now used for regional marketing — I encountered a car or truck every few miles — sometimes even more often than that. At historic markers and other points of interest, there had been other tourists, including those seeking to get souvenir Loneliest Road travel passports stamped along the way.

When it comes to central Nevada, Lincoln Highway enthusiasts often talk about the older, more desolate alignments that roughly parallel and intersect the modern road along the way. Those who are more adventuresome might want to attempt those rougher alternative routes less traveled. While those roads may be more historically accurate, adhering to the original 1913 Proclamation Route, I didn’t want to test the limits of my rental car out in the desert.

The vastness out here hasn’t made such as big an impression as I thought it would. Yes, this territory has a rough beauty, but it’s not stunningly beautifully. But that’s not why I came out all this way.

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