Wednesday June 4, 5.2mi/8.4km

Paymaster Canyon Rd (717.7/5520ft) to Tonopah (722.9/5990ft) (NV)

I’m usually excited to get up early on a town day, but I stayed up an hour later than usual last night watching some Netflix, so I didn’t leave camp until 6:30am. It was an easy and gradual uphill roadwalk to Tonopah.

Walking uphill to town is quite unusual, and I can’t think of another example trail town where this happens. I was in town at 8:30, but nothing was really open yet so I killed some time being a tourist and taking photos.

It’s a cool old Main Street and a historic mining town.

Some fancy artwork.

I stopped into a hardware store to ask about buying a fuel canister, they didn’t have it but suggested this place down the street.

A-bar-L Western store carried a little bit of everything, it basically looked like a general store but modernized and had Wi-Fi. The owner Paul was super nice, and even though the store didn’t sell fuel canisters, he called his wife at home to bring me one of his personal ones which I bought off of him. Amazing. He also gave me an extra cardboard box, which I needed to ship my ice ax and micro spikes back since I don’t need them anymore. I went to the post office next door and shipped those items away, and having done all my chores in this section of town, I walked to the southern end where my motel and the restaurants are. I was pretty sure the hotel wouldn’t let me check in to my room at 10 am, so I went directly to the Tonopah Station Casino, which had a cafe.

The decor was very old-timey, and it’s Nevada so of course you had to walk through the slot machine room to get to the restaurant.

I ordered a nice big breakfast, it was a small little diner type place with one waitress.

I was still hungry so I ordered more food.
This is what happens when you order a sundae at breakfast and the diner waitress only works the breakfast shift, and has no idea how many scoops to use.

It was a ridiculous amount of ice cream and I felt like that was my big win for the day! Strangely, the only laundromat in town is also in the casino, and the machines are ridiculously cheap only $2. So I hung out for an hour there doing my laundry, and then walked next door to the Raley’s supermarket to resupply. The cashier put my groceries in these old-timey flimsy plastic bags which I haven’t seen in a few years now, so I had to take a photo for novelty purposes.

I finally left that shopping center after noon, and they had a cool map by the front door.

Tonopah is located at my finger, and I’m eventually hiking up to the green section in the upper right corner of Nevada. I walked 5 minutes down the street to the Dream Inn motel, which was the cheapest in town and also quite modern. I had been too warm for most of the past week, so it felt good to just turn the AC on full power and see how cold I could get the room. After a shower I went back out and got another meal, and then spent the rest of the day relaxing watching shows and doing some trail planning.