Give it a rest

Recently, while listening to Cory Farley’s radio show (there you go, a little plug for the new guy), he had a couple of guests on who rolled out a pretty good idea—a state park for wild horses. I gotta admit, a park like that would kill. Just positively kill. Is there a park with that theme in the entire West? Think how many people in this country (and leave us not forget the Europeans) are just googoo for horses. You whip up a nice state park with picnicking, camping, and guaranteed views of wild ponies, and I’d have to guess Nevada would have a major winner on its hands. Where? Well, these folks were talking about such a park in Storey County, which would probably be just dandy. So somebody get right on that, OK?

Since we’re on the topic of new state parks …

I know some of you are aware of the insanely wondrous Fly Geyser, about 20 miles north of Gerlach on Highway 34. The place is now closed off and locked up, since it’s privately owned. What a park that would make, if only the state (or county, for that matter) could pull a deal. Created by accident by people drilling for something and who instead hit hot water, Fly is now one of the coolest little aquatic features in the American desert. It’s like a slice of Yellowstone in the Black Rock, with its mind-boggling colors, formations, terraced pools, and the warm spring wetland it has made as a result of the constant spewing of hot H2O. It would have to be tightly policed and strictly controlled in terms of campers and visitors, since it could be easily overwhelmed by clods, but that’d be OK. It would give the park a sense of exclusivity, a tough ticket to score. As it stands now, Nevada has exactly zero parks built around one of its most attractive phenomena—hot water in the desert. A small but swingin’ park at Fly Geyser would fix that in a jiffy.

Between Walker Lake and Beatty, there ain’t a whole lot happening on much-traveled Highway 95. That’s about 200 miles worth of zilch. So why not do something in that interesting forest of Joshua trees surrounding the constantly forlorn town of Goldfield? Maybe a state park, or just a nice, spiffy new picnic area, complete with a deluxe, state-of-the-art rest stop. Emphasis on state-of-the-art. A rest stop with some decent coffee, plus sandwiches, pastries, and a restroom that won’t gross you out. A rest stop, in other words, that’s a giant step up from any the state now offers. A rest stop like those I rested at in Portugal, for God’s sake, which made ours look like mighty weak in comparison. Hell, our rest areas are now so lame, barebones, and, in some instances, dilapidated, that to offer a new one with some actual amenities would be like a state park unto itself. And probably more popular than all the current state parks combined.