Tonopah

Leaving Walker Lake, our next stop was Beatty, Nevada. Beatty is the proclaimed “Gateway to Death Valley”. Along the way there, we passed through Tonopah which is an old mining town built into the hills. We stopped to check out the town because it looked cool and they had a brewery.

The Tonopah Brewing Company looked like a well renovated building and seemed fairly new. We ate some lunch then went in to try some of their beer. They had a decent selection of beer varieties. We started off with a Stinkeye Porter and a Mucker Irish Red. The Porter was good, but not anything mind blowing. The Mucker Red was really good. Not too many breweries do reds or browns anymore since everyone seems to want massive hops in everything. This one was a very good and malty red ale. After that we tried a M&M Imperial Stout which was ok. I was expecting a sweet and heavy beer, but it tasted very much like a traditional stout. It drank really light for the 11.6abv it claimed. They also had an IPA infused with ghost pepper, which was interesting but not really my thing. Definitely worth stopping and checking out if you ever pass through there.

After our beers, we walked around town for a while. There were some really cool old buildings and an old mining museum. We also discovered an old cemetery located next to an old rundown clown themed motel. It was kind of weird with the clown motel on one side, a mobile home park on the other, and an empty business that has turned into a small junk yard in front. The cemetery was where a lot of the original settlers and miners were buried up til 1910. We walked around looking at the headstones. It seemed like most of the deceased died fairly young of some sort of mining accident or an illness.

Tonopah pictures

After walking around Tonopah we left for the final push to Beatty. We found a nice primitive camp spot just outside of town. The plan is to hang out in Beatty for a few days exploring the area around here before heading down into Death Valley for the next few weeks.