Would you let alien-spotters look after your baby?

We did, and it was fine. Four or five of Rachel, Nevada’s 99 or so residents were gathered around a picnic bench at the town’s only business, the Little A-le-Inn, and asked whether they could play with Lulu.

The timing was ideal, since we were amidst the never-quick routine of packing up the Airstream for a day in the car. And if they tried to abduct her, there’d be nowhere to go, since Rachel is the only town within 50 miles in any direction.

So off she went in her stroller to the picnic table, in easy view of the trailer’s door.
Twenty minutes later, she was contentedly asleep in the arms of the proprietress’ daughter, having been passed around and cooed over the whole time.

Sophia also came away happy, having been given an stretchy purple and orange alien bracelet resembling a double octopus, as well as three heart-shaped rings containing lipgloss.

We were staying in a $12 per night RV park owned by the A-le-Inn, which also runs a bar, restaurant, motel and alien memorabilia business.

Rachel is a hotspot for alien watching, most likely thanks to its proximity to the US government’s top-secret Nellis Air Force Range Complex. It is unclear whether the reported activity is a result of extraterrestrial visits or government weapons testing, or a combination of the two. Sitting atop a mesa and concealed by various mountain ranged, Nellis measures hundreds of square miles and is accessible only by dirt roads angling upwards at rather scary grades.

The high desert town itself is at an altitude of 5,000 feet, surrounded by mountain ranges in all directions. We were told it gets a couple inches per year of precipitation, staying doggedly sunny and warm even when the adjacent mountains are covered in snow.

Tiny – with at least half the population seeming to live in the RV park where we slept - the town has no groceries, drugstore, gas station, fire brigade, medical services (a local girl had gone to a hospital well over 100 miles away in Las Vegas to have a baby) or police force. Asked whether townfolk had to resort to vigilante law enforcement, the response was that EVERYONE had guns, lots of them.

“We all have guns - this place is full of large antelope and deer, carnivorous jackrabbits, tarantulas, coyotes, mountain lions, bobcats, wild horses…” we lost track there.

So don’t mess with the people of Rachel.

That said, they seem to be law-abiding people. The previous night, the bartender wouldn’t let me have a much-needed drink until I showed her an ID (the local customers looked me up and down and decided I didn’t look old enough). With both girls in my arms and Daniel busy setting up the trailer for a night’s sleep, she eventually took pity on me, handing me an icy – and potent – ‘Area 51’ (named for the most secret of the government’s rumored testing areas). Daniel had an even more lethal ‘Beam Me Up, Scotty’, which had bourbon, scotch and Seven-Up.

Cathedral Gorge State Park

This stop, not a famous place at all, was our one of our best ones yet.
We read about Cathedral Gorge State Park, which is on the eastern edge of Nevada just over the border from Utah, in the excellent ‘Road Trip USA: Cross-Country Adventures on America’s Two-Lane Highways’, by Jamie Jensen.

www.roadtripusa.com

When we arrived, the sky was cool, very overcast, moving quickly into evening and filled with Air Force jet fighters practicing their routes. Having driven around the campsite twice to check out the other inhabitants – about four of the twenty or so sites were occupied - we decided that the $14-with-shower price tag made it worth staying.
We invited our tent-residing neighbors – God bless those hardy souls! - over to the trailer for a beer and peanuts – our first night entertaining!
Pam and Phil from Arizona, and Dave from Sacramento, stopped by for a couple of hours, time to tell us a bit about themselves and share some tips on avoiding snow and cold over the winter months.
Happily, it didn’t feel too cramped in the trailer – they all had enough room to sit, Sophia had space for her games, and we were able to squeeze Lulu and her new travel highchair in as well.
Phil divvied out some smoked salmon he had bought in Oregon on to sturdy crackers, also bringing along some Samuel Smith - English beer, in honor of Daniel.

But back to the gorge.

Cathedral Gorge is the remains of a huge, mineral-heavy lake that dried up, leaving its sediment-laden floor exposed to erosion. Paleontologists must have a field day there, reading into the multicolored rings of silt and pebbles lining the formations.

Well within view of the campsite are hundreds of bunches of mudstone spires, all a faded coppery-taupe kind of color, rising up out of the ground and coming together to form caves. Against the backdrop of blonde grasses, papery corn-colored sagebrush flowers, beige sand-soil, and the campsite’s imported silvery Russian olive trees and neatly sienna-d gravel plots – all backlit by faraway tonal blue mountains and the following day’s flawless azure sky, the landscape was a veritable muted symphony.

Following twisting paths among the spire sets, we were led through narrower and narrower passageways terminating in cool, damp, exit-less spaces, from which the only view was a small, towering window straight up into the sky – making us feel like victims in a particularly scenic movie chase-scene. Noticing messes of feathers and droppings in the caves, we wondered whether these birds had been prey or predator.

Having accustomed ourselves to the desert and isolation, we ended up staying two nights, finally dragging ourselves away one mid-afternoon after a fresh-air lunch.