For a few months now I’ve been looking at home prices in Pahrump Nevada. Why Pahrump? Well, it has the cleanest year-round air, no risk of flooding, and no sever weather (unless you count heat). So for my first vacation this year we decided to head to Pahrump and look at the housing market there.

Rather than drive from our home all the way to Pahrump in one shot, a 9+ hour drive, we decided to break it up into 2 days. We stayed the first night at a Harvest Hosts location at the Tehachapi Winery. It’s free to stay but you are encouraged to patronize the host. It ended up costing us more that one night than any one night at both of the other RV resorts we stayed at. Still, it was a beautiful, peaceful place to stop over and break up the trip.

After a peaceful night off the beaten track in Tehachapi we began the drive down to Baker, CA and then on to Pahrump. Our route was Highway 99 to Bakersfield, then Hwy 58 to Tehachapi and on to Barstow. Highway 58 used to be single lane with stop lights through Boron and Kramer Junction. It’s now a 4 lane highway all the way to Barstow. We jumped on I-15 north towards Las Vegas until we got to Baker, CA where we got onto Hwy 127 which took us to Shoshone where we hung a right onto Hwy 178 and then all the way into Pahrump.

I should point out here that I got the best mileage ever while towing on this trip heading out to Pahrump. For most of the trip we either had a quartering tailwind or a full tailwind. I was seeing MPGs of anywhere from 18-22 MPG! I usually get about 12 when towing the trailer. It was all fun and games until I got to a rock formation called the Charlie Brown Outcrop where the 35mph tailwind I had been enjoying turned into a direct cross wind when I rounded a curve. That was mildly exciting but nothing the truck couldn’t handle. Woke me up for sure. After that it was an easy trip down into Pahrump.

Here is a pro-tip for travellers to Pahrump: DRIVE THE POSTED SPEED LIMIT. We were told by the realtor that Pahrump and Nye County make a lot of money from traffic violations and if the other drivers in town are any indication, they have a zero tolerance policy for exceeding the speed limit. Not even the internationally accepted standard of driving 5mph over the posted speed limit!

Now, sadly we didn’t take any pictures of the RV park but you can find many online. The name of the park was Wine Ridge RV Resort and Cottages. It was clean, quiet, and had a hot tub; everything I require of an RV park. We rested the first day and spent the next two days looking at area homes that were for sale. The first day was with a realtor and her adult realtor son. She guided us around to about 5 houses. Some were nice, others were not quite as nice. One home was absolutely beautiful but it was in a trashy area and smelled heavily of cigar smoke. The second day we drove around Pahrump on our own so we could see the neighborhoods at our own pace.

Biggest takeaway from Pahrump is that the city is very spread out. Lots of space between homes and neighborhoods. There is no centralized shopping district unless you count Hwy 160 which runs between Las Vegas and I-95 to the north. Lots of casinos, fast food, and a few supermarkets including Walmart. The city is about 10 miles across as the crow flies which is pretty big for a relatively sleepy desert town. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Pahrump has two brothels on the extreme southern border of town. With a landing strip between them. We didn’t make it down to that part of town but Google Maps showed all we needed to see. Also, we were there in the Spring which is a windy time for Pahrump so windy and dry did not do well with our skin. That was the only major detractor we found.

On Wednesday we drove down to Las Vegas. The reason for the trip was to visit Red Rocks National Conservation Area and also to drop in on a vendor of mine from work to see his new home near Red Rocks. This is an absolutely stunning and underrated area on the southwest side of Las Vegas. We spent some time hiking in Calico Basin which is literally a desert oasis. Red Spring feeds a small meadow of grass and trees in the middle of the barren rocks.

Probably the best view of Red Rocks NCA is on the Hwy 160, also known as Pahrump Valley Highway as it comes into the Red Rocks area.

After our hike we drove to the visitors center and then drove the scenic loop around the canyon. Those puffy clouds you see in the above photos turned into a rain storm along the hills. But it stayed along the hills. All the rainfall in the mountains must be what feed the springs around Las Vegas.

After visiting Red Rocks we drove over to get some lunch at La Madre Canyon Grille. Lunch was delicious and since I hadn’t had my coffee yet that day their Cinnamon Roll Latte really hit the spot for a dessert. Then we headed over to my vendor’s house and was given the grand tour of his home and visited for a while. He and I really didn’t get along very well when I first started my job at San Joaquin General Hospital but we’ve since become good friends. Commiserating about the state of politics and Extreme Networks, the products he sells, helped us build a common bond over the years. Afterwards Cristy did some decompression shopping at Summerlin Downtown, a shopping plaza design to look like a downtown shopping area. Then we headed back to Pahrump.

The only item on the agenda for the next day was to hang around town and relax after all the driving I’d done lately. I did want to tick one more item off my list for Pahrump; to visit the Art Bell Memorial. If you’ve never heard of Art Bell, he was an AM radio personality who had the dubious distinction of having a radio show that played from midnight to 6am in many markets. I began listening to Art Bell on KGO as I commuted from our home in Modesto to my workplace at Lockheed in Sunnyvale at 3:30am. His show was always about UFOs, Sasquatch, chupacabra sightings, paranormal stuff. Think X-Files. It was “out there” but it helped keep me awake on my commute. We found his memorial at a park in Pahrump called the Calvada Eye (because it’s looks like an eye from above). The other pleasantly unexpected surprise at this park was the horse that came galloping into the park while we were there. I’m still not sure if they were wild horses or just abandoned horses. The western romantic in my wants to think they were wild horses descended from the ponies the conquistadors let loose many years ago.

After a few more restful days just hanging around the park and stocking up at Walmart it was time to head back home. The wind had picked back up in the night and it made me a little nervous about what the wind would do the next day but it actually died down a bit. It also had switched directions so we again had a tailwind on the way back to Tehachapi. However, long before we got to Tehachapi, we got caught in the middle of the 34th Annual Baker 2 Vegas relay race. Apparently it’s a big deal in the law enforcement community. A local friend of mine is a police lieutenant has even wanted to run in it. All I know is that it generated a ton of traffic and our only white-knuckle moments as we were driving back. Let’s just say cops generally don’t believe the rules of the road apply to them and leave it at that. Most were well-behaved though. Each runner was followed by a car and they had “stages” of the race they were assigned to run and then hand off the baton. Luckily they were all running the opposite direction. Much to the chagrin of non-participating traffic trying to get to Pahrump.

We finally made it through the races and back over the hill into Bakersfield were we decided to stop for the night at Orange Grove RV Park. The next day we headed home and called an end to our week-long Pahrump adventure. Will we be back to Pahrump, maybe. Will we move there, probably not. The biggest takeaway of the trip was how much we loved travelling. It’s funny, it’s hard to get ourselves to leave home but once we do, it’s even harder to go back. Don’t get me wrong, we love our home and family, but we just want to travel and see more things. Until next time…