First, I was woken around 4am, as Jim got up in the room next door, once again wanting to get an early start rather than wait for the group to depart around 6am. I managed to snooze on until around 5am, when I got up, and then went to help Jim pick his bike up (it had fallen over when he got on it, probably because it's still very heavily loaded) and then fix a minor electrical fault caused when it fell. Once Jim had gone, I loaded my own bike and rode round to the front of the hotel to join the main group. When all assembled, we rode off in convoy for the first time since leaving Anchorage, a total of 14 bikes all riding in formation back across the Mable Platform and on towards Fairbanks. We...

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That feeling is palpable at the Iron Horse RV Resort, where Ron and Judy Fletcher have been parked in Lot 70 for more than a year, ever since Ron's company told him: Move to Elko. With the price of gold in the stratosphere, the mine-chiseled corner of northeastern Nevada is scrambling to fill thousands of jobs, while newcomers to the barren region beg for somewhere to sleep. This far-flung capital of Nevada's Gold Belt is booming - very, very reluctantly. Only a decade ago, tanking gold prices saddled the region with abandoned homes and shredded dreams. Nevada is stippled with so many mining camp ruins - more than 100 in Elko County alone, locals say - that "ghost-towning" is a weekend pastime here. , to this mountain-ringed swath of cattle, alfalfa and cowboy poetry enthusiasts. Why buy a home here if the gold rush could vanish tomorrow. Nevada churns out more gold than all but four nations. But you'll find little of the gold-rush euphoria that has long defined the American West here. Now the Elko city government is mostly socking away cash and putting off hiring, even for a police force strained by a transient population.

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