That day stands out as the worst experience of the trip. We went fifty miles without seeing a living creature except jack-rabbits and one coyote. The coyote ran across the trail and stopped fifty feet away, watching us drive by. The sand was deeper and the chuck-holes, even with the most careful driving, seemed to rack the car to pieces. If we had had an accident, the outlook would have been decidedly vague for us. Not a car or a telegraph pole in sight. By ten o’clock that morning the sun scorched our skin through our clothing. But we had one good laugh. Over a deep chuck-hole there had been built a stone bridge. On one end, in large black letters, was “San Francisco” (the first sign we had seen with that welcome name) and on the other end was “New York”! The incongruity struck us as being so absurd that we roared with laughter. Here in this God-forsaken desert, a “thousand miles from anywhere,” to see that sign! It took _some_ joker to conceive of that. By noon we were in sight of the railroad, feeling as if we had found a long-lost friend. A freight station, some oil-tanks, a few shanties, and a lodging-house for the men, where we got some food--that was all. We filled up with water, and on we went. A wind had come up and the sand blew in eddies, almost blinding us. The Nevada roads were no improvement on Idaho, and the trail was obliterated many times by the swirling sand, making the going almost impossible. Before reaching Montello, a real desert sandstorm so covered us with sand that the car looked white; our clothes and our eyes and ears were full of it. We thought the top was coming off, or the car would turn over, and it was difficult to see the road, much less to keep in the trail. By crawling, we reached the town and stopped in front of the first building and got out. We were blown off our feet. We staggered and waded through the sand, hardly seeing where we were going, until we reached a door; then we were blown in! After we recovered our breath and had shaken off a little of the sand, we watched the storm, which by this time was a howling gale and the sand so dense that you could hardly see fifty feet. “Just suppose this had happened out there?” pointing back of us. “Don’t think of it. Come and get some ice cream.” I had not noticed that we were in a small café, with drinks, ice cream and cakes, etc., for sale. The ice cream washed down the sand and cooled our dry throats. A nice little woman ran the place, and she gave us this information: There was a Southern Pacific railroad hotel in the town, but, owing to hundreds of men being idle on account of the strike, the place was full, and it was the only place to get lodgings. It was a hundred miles and more to Elko, where the next hotel could be reached. We inquired if the way to that town was as bad as the roads we had come over that day. “Worse,” was the reply; “you are foolish to attempt it.”