PAGE 37 www. FavoriteRidesAndDestinations. com | ridermagazine. com
SPRING 2017 ISSUE 01 / VOL. 02
Gerlach, Nevada. Once again, what a day. A hundred miles of gravel road, some of the roughest we’ ve encountered, between Winnemucca, where the Applegate Trail begins on the banks of the Humboldt River, and the old railroad town of Gerlach situated on the edge of The Black Rock Desert. Gerlach is essentially a one-man town. Bruno Selmi, he’ s 85 now, took a boat over from Lucca, Italy, after World War II and ended up here on the moon working his tail off at the U. S. Gypsum drywall plant a few miles down the highway in the company town of Empire. He figured if he was going to work that hard he might as well build something for himself, so it wasn’ t long afterward he established what is today known as Bruno’ s Country Club, the only casino, café, saloon, motel, gas station in town. In 1950, Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift, Arthur Miller( then still Marilyn’ s brilliant suffering husband), John Huston and the rest of the crew showed up to make“ The Misfits” on the playa of the Black Rock Desert. Ask Bruno about this and he’ ll tell you about Lucille, a Reno woman who left her husband for a tough Gerlach cowboy, a rodeo guy, and that Miller based Marilyn’ s character in“ The Misfits” screenplay on guess who. Bruno’ s accent is still serious goomba and Dominic has family in Lucca, speaks the language passably and swears Bruno is a dead ringer for his grandfather, so you can imagine the repartee. It’ s just this wonderful evening and the specialty of the house that night is chicken parmesan, sauce by Bruno. In the morning I blurt,“ Hey Bruno, how about prosciutto and eggs for breakfast?” He says,“ I got prosciutto.” Let me just say this: Breakfast, heck, the whole Gerlach deal turns out to be one of the most truly memorable occasions I’ ve ever experienced on the road.
Pausing on the highway to Winnemucca.
Eagleville, California. Back in Surprise Valley in this idyllic quiet old ranch town where soaring heights of the South Warner Wilderness form a stunning mountainous backdrop, the loop is closing toward finale. Earlier a few miles north of Gerlach we postponed it for a while with a visit to John Bogard’ s Planet X compound, where his mastery of ceramic art is displayed in dioramas of the ethereal beauty of this remote region of the Great Basin. At home we’ ll inscribe our journey on a map and realize there are 209,000 square miles out there we still need to ride. We’ ll be back.