May 6th, 2019 / (124km/77miles, 1300hm)
This morning during breakfast at the motel I run into Daniel, another German bicyclist who’s crossing America — in his case from NYC to San Francisco. He’s already 40 days on the road and expects to be in San Francisco in 4 days from today. He has been taking the direct route from NYC to here — sticking to the big highways and not taking the American Bicycle Association’s TransAm Bike route that I am planning to follow. He’s traveling super light — just 5kg of luggage, stored in a small triangular bike bag that gets attached between his bike frame. Plus a small bag behind his saddle. We share a few stories and exchange infos about the route. Then our plans take us in opposite directions.
The day today is not much different than yesterday. Very light on traffic. The usual US-50 pattern of steep summit, endless flat valley and steep summit again repeats for 4 or 5 times. Today is 125km — enough for my back.
Like yesterday, there’s hundreds of butterflies crossing the highway carried along with the wind. I think I have never seen so many butterflies in the wild (nor somewhere else).
Ely is a mining town. It has everything one needs — motels, supermarket, restaurants and bars — but the town, like Eureka and Austin, is half in decay.