Nevada Teardrop Camping: Desatoya Range

We live in Northern Nevada, but tend to take the teardrop out to neighboring states: California, Oregon, Utah and Arizona. This year, we've decided to go exploring in our own state and find places we've never been to—or even expected. Nevada is a huge state, so many of these places could take up to a day to get to, but the Sunflower is up to the challenge.

From a tip, we took a few days and headed off into the Nevada desert on the Loneliest Road in America. Highway 50 runs across the central part of the state and was given its desolate name by Life magazine in 1986. It deters a lot of people from driving on it, but many people love the wide open spaces and lack of traffic.

Near the miniature town of Middlegate, we turned onto Highway 722 and down a dirt hunting and cattle track that took us to the beautiful Desatoya Mountain Range and some rustic, but free Bureau of Land Management campsites. On this February weekend, no one was there, and we still saw no other people for the next few days. The place had tons of trees (unusual for this area), a stunning gorge, a creek, wild horses and cactus. We fell in love with the area right away.

We've marked a few more places on our map and will be teardrop camping across our state this year. I would love to hear about how you teardrop camp in your own state, and what new places you've found while exploring your own backyard.