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Another roadside attraction : The old woman who lived in a shoe RV .
bush , the vivid greens of greasewood and wild sage . Outside Fallon I stop to view rock art , evidence of the first human habitation , 8,000 years old . A retired carpenter walking his poodle among the petroglyphs explains the nature of the surrounding basin : “ The water that falls here does not escape . It is absorbed or retaken by the sun as evaporation .” He points to the horizon . “ This whole area used to be under 700 feet of water . Lake Lahontan covered most of Nevada . Those wavy lines and ledges over there ,” indicating marks on the distant hills , “ were the high-water marks . At the end of the last ice age , 9,000 years ago , the whole thing evaporated .” Now that ’ s global warming .
I am riding the route of the Pony Express . Near Sand Mountain the ruins of a Pony Express station resisting being overrun by a white dune are all that remains of Lake Lahontan ’ s beaches , swept into this corner by eons of wind .
It is stunning how the Express fires our imagination . I pass Pony Express car lots , Pony Express RV campgrounds , Pony Express diners . The Pony Express lasted all of 18 months before it went out of business , cut short by the completion of the transcontinental telegraph . Here are the numbers : Eighty hand-picked riders ( 40 headed east , 40 headed west ) made the 1,996-mile run from St . Joseph to Sacramento . The trip averaged between seven and nine days . The Express charged $ 5 a letter ( about $ 152