Worried about the law in a Nevada ghost town

I see cops.

See us sticking out into the road?

And I immediately think they plan to ticket us for parking out into the road.

Our fifth-wheel is a monster when it comes to parking on downtown city streets. And even though Goldfield, NV., population 204, isn’t a real city, it does have a downtown and we are hogging the street, trying to park to the side so I can walk down the sidewalk and take pictures (some below).

This is a ghost town, even though people still live here. It was born and went bust during the glory days of the gold rush. In its prime, there were more than 30,000 people here. A few left town millionaires. Stories place Wyatt Earp and his brother Virgil here.

But today it’s a collection of dusty and rusting artifacts of yesterday. I see art in that dust everywhere. A building covered in road signs. Cars decorated with found items, even other cars. A shadow of a phone-texting man cleverly placed to show him near the shadow of a real stop sign. 

This town is worth so much more than the mere minutes I’ve been here, snapping a few dozen pictures or brokeness-turned-lovely, art out of ashes.  But I’m worried about the cops. So I tun to race back to the fifth-wheel (puffing hard in this 6,000-foot altitude), to get it out of the street.

But I see no cops. They must have moved on. They must be used to tourists like us. Tourists who hog the street and take snapshots of the past.

But, wait. Cops? In a ghost town?

Where do they get the water in a desert?

Clever shadow art.

I could shop here all day.

Less government.

Beetles reign!

Pure art.