So. I didn't inform Blogger that I was going on a trip to Ely, because it was kinda last minute. I mean like, I had to call and ask for the day off of work because I would have no time to pack otherwise. It was really random, and there had been no mention of it until a couple of days before it happened.
We left on Thursday (I think?) and got back this afternoon. James and I have been together for nearly three years, and yet I still hadn't met his grandfather on his mother's side (where his two middle names come from) who had only been mentioned in conversations before. James had told me that he was a cowboy.
And seriously, he was. Like not a guy who has horseshoes and bronco pictures in his house and owns a few ordinary trail horses. This guy was a legit ranch cowboy. He has ten acres up in Ely, and we stayed there for three nights with James' mother, father, older sister, his two adopted brothers and sister, his sister's two daughters, and his aunt. A whole bunch of people. It wasn't a bad drive, most of it was in the dark, but we got to see the pretty Nevada scenery and mountains during the sunset. I am the biggest sucker for the sunsets here. I am completely convinced that you have not lived fully until you have seen a Nevadan sunset with the clouds and purple mountains and just ugh gosh they are pretty. ANYWAY.
We arrived in Ely super late at night so stuff was actually closed, and we went straight to the ranch. You have to pass through these two mountains to get there, a place called Hercules' Gap. It was actually kind of terrifying at night. But during the day it just looks pretty. His grandmother was there and we all said hi to her, then his grandpa woke up and gave us a short tour because he and James were going to pitch a tent for all of the younger kids to sleep in. I could barely see in the dark, but James and I ended up sleeping in the storage area of one of his bigger horse trailers, in the little tack room area. It was pretty comfy, but the weather there gets to be around like 65 degrees at night, which is freezing when you're used to it being over 100 degrees after midnight and well into the morning. We slept inside for the next two days.
Friday morning, we all went to McDonalds and got a quick breakfast, got some water for the house, and went back to hang out with the animals. There were a whole bunch of cows, chickens, ducks, and horses. He had a gorgeous chestnut mare and a paint stallion, and his aunt had brought her palomino Texas Walking Horse down to get him trained, so he was there too, along with a mule, and a bunch of other cows we could see form the freeway grazing on BLM land. After a while we all went down to the lake on the other side of town, which was full of real actual water. The kids were trying to catch things but I had a really bad stomachache for some reason, so I sat on the bank and James tried to teach me how to skip rocks, which I cannot do to save my life. We left early with his dad, and got some apples and watermelons at the store. Then we went out to the hills behind the ranch and set the fruit away from us, and shot at it with the AR-15. I really, really love that gun. His dad went through a lot of trouble to buy the silencer so that we could go around without ear protection, and James was the one to take the first shot only to find out that it wasn't put back on all the way after he had cleaned it. His shot grazed the top of the watermelon, but the silencer popped off and flew about twenty feet away, and James got ht in the face by the gun. We reattached it and kept shooting, and we vaporized some apples. There was just nothing left of them. I shot the watermelon in a way that made the inside jelly-like. It was jiggly to the touch. It was glorious.
We went back and hung out with the dogs, Sporty and Eager, and then had a sort of messed up bar-b-que. His grandfather had a fire pit, so we put a peice of metal over it, stuck some wood underneath, and grilled burgers on top. It actually came out super delicious, and we all had smores later on. We all talked so much and it was so funny, hanging out with his family. They're always hilarious, with the kids doing stuff that makes everyone laugh, and all the stories they have of James' childhood. It was just really fun. We stayed out talking by the grill until pretty late at night, and then went to sleep after I tried getting on the computer in a stupid attempt to start editing Invictus to make it present-tense.
Saturday morning, we went with James' aunt to take her horse Johnny to two people who train them in Ely. It had bucked her off, so she wanted to get him trained and reliable. We chilled at McDonalds (which was like, our choice place for eating breakfast over the course of this trip) and then visited their ranch. They had a ton of horses, and a really pretty pond and small stream by their barn. We watched them do groundwork with a bay paint they called Bullseye, and then went back to the house. All of the kids had gone back to the lake to go fishing, and some people were going to go to the rodeo happening in Lund, but James and I decided to stay because it was getting pretty hot. I had a really bad connection, so I could really only use Twitter to talk to myself as I continued to try and edit the stupid novel again, and I couldn't get on Tumblr to load my dash or anything. Don't want to waste dat 3G.
When the girls got back from the rodeo, we went down the street to this Mexican restaurant and Crystal and I both got some really good chicken nachos. We talked about more hilarious stuff, from pets being killed in unfortunate ways to people proposing in unfortunate ways (a guy at the rodeo had proposed to his girlfriend by falling off of a bull and pretending to be horribly wounded until she ran out onto the dirt and found him crouched over holding a ring for her) and other odd stuff. After that, we headed back to the house, messed around outside some more with the animals and the cats, and went to sleep after all of the kids began passing out on the living room floor to the TV. I really wanted to take one of the orange tabby cats they had home with us, they were all so friendly and cute.And, this morning, we all packed up and left pretty early, in order to get a headstart toward home. Most of Nevada's highways are just these winding two-lane deals that are terrible in the dark, so it was good and bright when we left. The trip home was fairly short, and I wasn't in charge o the music that time around, so I just kind of dozed and listened to a lot of music.
But, it was so much fun. I love his family, and the animals, and the weird rural-ness of Ely. We saw downtown, and we saw all sorts of little houses and stores and stuff. There were so many funny things said (mostly by James' nieces, "I have ten thousand boyfriends 'cuz I'm a cheater!") and other odd stuff. The fish they caught and fed to the cats. The dogs getting off their chains and running wild. The kids riding on the mule. The cozily crowded house, the nice cool nights where you could hear coyotes howling outside. It was just awesome. I hope we get to go back sometime soon~ <3
The title of the post came from his grandfather, who was talking about the land beyond their farms. While most of the rest of the country is fenced, this part of the state isn't and he told us that you could just take a horse and ride forever and ever, and it would feel like you went back in time by two centuries, that it was the last true land of the old west.
Here, have more pictures~! :D
