Remnantology

Speeding through the ACA Western Express Bicycle Route

After yesterday’s long and hot, but by no means unpleasant return to the Carson City greater metropolitan area, we settled in the Dayton State Park for a night’s sleep, again under cottonwoods. Dayton is the site of Nevada’s first gold strike–roughly at the same time as Sutter Creek’s in California. Today, it is a small suburb of Carson City with a few older buildings on the side, some new and fairly uniform subdivisions, shopping malls, and of course, 

Harris, the celebrated Redheaded Tweaker down by the river of whom we learned earlier. The state park with its brush and trees is also down by the river, but largely free of meth production. The park is an understandable  Dayton highlight. 

We pulled in and were immediately thwarted by the park’s incomprehensible fee structure. It is presented as a set of unclear options from which campers are suppose to select the one, or ones, that best apply to their visit, and then deposit the correct fee in the box, or risk facing the advertised $200 pick pocketing for failing so to to do. Take a look at the sign, and take your best guess at what was the correct fee per bicycle. Take your best guess now, before you read on, so that you can relish your choice before my big reveal later on. I will say this dear reader–there is like zero chance you will get it right. We sure didn’t. One read of the sign could mean we each needed to fork over one dollar. We have bikes, one buck per bike, five bikes, five bucks total. Simple. Or–maybe we are “campers” (abliet sans “vehicles”) and that would require 17 dollars per human camper (still sans “vehicle”) for a grand total of 85 dollars–a bit steep it seemed. But maybe we are both bicycles AND campers–that would mean the 17 dollar fee PLUS the one dollar bike fee for a total of 90 dollars. But we are also “entering” the park, and that seems to cost 7 dollars–a total of 35! Should that be added onto the 5? Or maybe the 85? Or maybe the 90? Who can master this chaos? In the end, we opted for a simple five dollars each and stuck the envelope in the slot and rode on. There are some simple rules to follow in these situations. If the people creating the fee structure cannot be bothered to make it clear, then they probably do not care all that much about people getting it right in the first place–or they are used to people getting it wrong. If you don’t care, I don’t care. 

Our camp was lovely and we slept fine. At 6am though a ranger came over to tell us we had to move since the sprinklers were going to start in 15 minutes and we were not in the camping area in the first place. Fair enough on the sprinkles–the grass did seem a bit too oddly golf course-ish to be a natural occurance. But not in the camping place? How’s that? In his view, the camping spots were near the front of the park–while we were in the back. There is a sign he said; they are marked he said. Really? We saw nothing at all to support his view. Were we talking about the same park? He might as well have said “you are only allowed to camp near the herd of elephants,” or “camping only under the rollercoaster”–also things of which there was no indication at the crucial moment of park entry. We hastily moved and all was fine. Oh, and how much did you guess was the correct fee? Well–the ranger told us it was actually 10 dollars per bicycle–a sum the park decided to make public through a clever game of numerical absence. I am thinking of a number between one and five and I list them as 1, 2, 4, 5. In my list, 3 is noticabale in its absence. That is the way the Dayton State Park assesses its fees–by not listing the sum of 10 dollars (and also by shrewdly not answering its phone during office hours) they have in fact highlighted it by ommision, and so obviously, 10 dollars is the fee. Simple!

The other joy of the morning was discovering that someone had stollen Xander’s riding shoes in the night. I wonder if the theif paid the park single entry fee of  5 dollars if he or she was a local, or 7 dollars if he or she traveled a long distance to steal the shoes. 

At any rate, we got our Slingshot conveyance, replaced the missing shoes and we are now in full slingshot.