When Al and Carol Drayton built their dream house in Nevada's Railroad Valley, they expected peace and quiet. And why not, they were 75 miles from the nearest town and their closest neighbors were 20 miles away.
There are no power lines, no telephone lines and cell phones don't work here.
"I went ten years without a phone. That wasn't easy," Carol said. Eventually they got phone service through a special wireless system. Generators supply the power to the house.
 Al & Carol Drayton live and work in-between a 167 mile stretch between Ely and Tonopah, NV. They retired on this secluded stretch of road to get away from everything, but due to all the vehicles running out of gas and breakdowns, they decided to open up Black Rock Station to service all the stranded travelers.
It seemed like the perfect spot for people who like solitude.
But life's full of surprises. Before the Drayton's new house was completed, a stranger came knocking on their door. He was out of gas.
That was just the beginning. Stranded drivers showed up on Al and Carol's doorstep so often they kept spare cans of gas at the house.
"You have to help them out, otherwise they'll be living with you," said Al, a retired oil field consultant.
Al and Carol decided it would be easier to install a gas pump. So they opened Black Rock Station, a little convenience store attached to their house with one gas pump. They stay open seven days a week because they know people will need the gas.
It's a pretty informal operation. You enter the store and Al or Carol walk in from their living room, perhaps in their stocking feet. If you want coffee, you have to wait because there aren't enough customers to keep a pot brewing. Or maybe they'll serve you from the pot in their kitchen.
The store gets pretty busy in summer, but in winter there are days with just a few customers.
"Those are the good days," Al said.
Don't let Al's comments fool you. The Draytons are friendly folks. They've boarded people their spare room when their cars broke down on the 150-mile stretch of Route 6 between Tonopah and Ely.
Many of their customers are Europeans traveling the back roads to get a taste of America.
A group of Czech students slept in sleeping bags in the yard for a few nights while their car was being repaired - by Al. They insisted on doing something to repay the Draytons, so they pulled weeds.
"They were terrific workers," said Carol, who grew up in Springfield, Mass and rarely traveled as a child. At 18, she visited a relative in Long Beach, CA and fell in love with Al, a sailor.
 The Lunar Crater National Landmark is located 75 miles east of Tonopah, NV. Formed by violent eruptions in a volcanic zone, it is about 430 feet deep and 4,000 feet across. It more closely resembles a meteor-impact crater than a volcanic cinder cone that fell in on itself.
Her parents were not pleased. But Al and Carol have been married more than 40 years.
They found this place when Al was working at an oil field in Railroad Valley.
"I love the isolation - away from the red lights, the asphalt, the gang killings," he said.
But now the little house in the middle of nowhere has become the hub of Railroad Valley - and no one's more surprised than Al and Carol.
ELY
Once upon a time, Ely was the shining star of Nevada's mountain country. It still is, but the star isn't as bright.
 Neon lights light up the Hotel Nevada located in Ely, NV. The 6-story Hotel Nevada opened in 1929 was the tallest building in the state offering visitors rooms, booze and gambling even during the prohibition. Over the decades many big name celebrities have stayed and entertained at this historic hotel.
Walk into the downtown Hotel Nevada or the Jailhouse Casino and you can play scores of slot machines for penny or a nickel. People sit there for hours and lose only a few bucks.
But there's a lot more than slots. If you want a taste of the old west you can eat in a cell at the Jailhouse restaurant. Or you can check out the stuffed snakes and other desert animals at the Nevada, where the corridors are lined with mining and ranching tools.
The six-story Nevada was the tallest building in the state when it opened in 1929. Now it's a symbol of Ely, a boom-or-bust mining town that was once a major stop for cross-country travelers.
Roam through the hotel's corridors and you'll find the names famous guests on the doors.
Stephen King, Ingrid Bergman, Vikki Carr, Gary Cooper, Mickey Rooney, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Lyndon Johnson, John Schneider and gangster Pretty Boy Floyd all stayed here.
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Wayne Newton's singing career started at the Nevada.
Jimmy Stewart's room was just two doors away from ours, so I peeked in. It was bigger and there were teddy bears on the bed.
Before the interstate highway system, Route 6 and the Lincoln Highway, the two major east-west roads, met in Ely. Route 50, the old Lincoln Highway, still runs through the center of town.
"People would go through here on the Lincoln Highway, then head south on Route 6 to reach Los Angeles," said Evie Pinneo executive director of the County Chamber of Commerce.
The influx of travelers, along with local gold, copper and lead mines made Ely a bustling small city.
But now the interstates are more than 100 miles from Ely. When Kennicott closed its copper mines in the 1970s the boom was over.
People in central Nevada live and die with the mines. Travel though the valleys and mountains here and you'll find the remnants towns that disappeared when the mines closed.
"Today a lot of these old ghost towns are just sites. People go out and expect an old town like a Hollywood set. They find maybe an old shed. There are no bar rooms with swinging doors," said Don Hickman, a history buff who lives in Ely.
Some of the towns burned down, others were dismantled when miners moved on to the next boomtown.
"Wood was scarce back then. When people left, they took the wood with them," said Hickman, who claims he was once the youngest dealer in the largest casino in Las Vegas.
After a number of casino jobs in Vegas, Don longed for a quieter life and opened the Ely car rental service with his brother, Jim.
Ely, with 4,000 people, is bigger than most of the boomtowns, so it survives the busts. Now the price of copper is up again and a Canadian company is opening a mine that will bring 300 new jobs to town.
Cheryl Geary, whose husband Chuck is the mine manager, said she's already getting used to the relaxed life style in Ely.
"People here will speak to you in the super market. They may not know you, but they'll tell you about things like the doctors and the dentists," she said.
And she had some good news for local workers.
"Chuck is very excited about this. He thinks the mine will be in full production for a long time," she said.
SNOW
I walked more 3,000 across the nation, starting in March in New England and never saw more than a few flakes of snow - until Nevada.
What a surprise! Travis, the photographer-driver, and I expected a hot, flat desert like Las Vegas. We got mountains, valleys and winter in October. A month ago, we were talking about shipping our winter clothes back home.
 An October snowstorm covered brush and trees atop of Currant Summit on the Grant Range in Central Nevada. Currant Summit is one of more than a dozen high passes on Route 6 between Ely and Tonopah, NV.
There was snow on the mountains east of Ely. But that was nothing compared to the winter storm we hit a few days later as we headed on our 150-mile trek from Ely to Tonopah.
A cold, slushy rain was falling when I started walking on a Wednesday morning about 20 miles west of Ely. I thought it would get warmer during the day.
It got colder. Soon I was walking in a storm, Travis was back in Ely and cell phones don't work out here.
I was dressed warmly enough and a plastic poncho kept me toasty - except for my feet. By noon, I was caked with snow, and state plow drivers were greeting me with waves and beeps. One of them stopped to make sure I was ok.
In hindsight, I probably should have worn gloves instead of old socks (which make great mittens) on my hands.
The socks worked fine, but the few drivers who passed by were convinced I was hopelessly unprepared. They stopped and offered help. Some of them just wouldn't believe I was ok.
"Are you sure?" they'd say, before reminding me there were no towns or much of anything along the road. They offered, rides, food, clothes and, finally, good wishes before driving off, shaking their heads. Many of these drivers were from the Western Shoshone reservation at Duckwater, about 20 north of Route 6.
I was more worried about Travis. Would he be able to cross Murry Summit (7,316 ft), the high pass just west of Ely. If he couldn't make it, what would I do?
By early afternoon, I was no longer worried. I knew someone would stop and help me. The snow-covered mountains were beautiful - but not as beautiful as all those folks who stopped to offer help.
 Daniel Braddock a resident of McGill, NV makes a soda at the McGill Historical Drug Store and Company, which opened up in the early 1900's and closed in 1979. Now reopened as a museum, this unique store has plenty of original products still on the shelves, some as far back as 1915.
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