09-24-21 Friday Mt. Rushmore Trip Day 24 Sawdust Alpaca Farm Fallon, NV
09-24-21
Sawdust Alapaca Farm Fallon, NV
Fallon, NV
Harvest Host
Jeeps in Campground: ---
Drive Time: 4 hours
Miles: 258
We left Ely before 11AM this morning. We drove the Pony Express Trail (US-50) from Ely, Nevada to Fallon. It's also known as US-50, At times the stretch of the road is straight and goes on forever. No wonder it's also called, "The Loneliest Road in America." If you search Wikipedia for US-50 you'll see this road has quite a history.
Barry says we passed through 6 mountain ranges today and the highest peaks ranged from 7,700 to about 4,400....up and down and up and down.
Fallon is the home of the Naval Air Station Fallon-the Top Gun Navy Training Facility. We did see three military jets flying a formation then they each broke off as we entered the city of Fallon. The Sawdust Alpaca Farm is about 5 miles off US-50. Seemed like we were never going to get there.
When we arrived, Glen the owner, waved us up the driveway and had us follow the gravel road around their house to the other side. They have 2 nice areas for Harvest Host guests. There was a guest in the other area. We could see the alpacas from the front window of our coach which was really cool. We parked, got settled, grab a cold beverage and met him outside.
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| Our spot for the night |
He gave us an awesome tour of the place. He let us into the corrals, talked about how they shear them, about the differences in their fleece, showed us each different alpaca breed and the differences in the faces. He told us they can be skittish and not to pet them on their head but they do like having their neck scratched. We also met Abby, their Pyrenees Alpaca guard dog. She stays in the corrals with the alpacas. She loves to play with them and it was fun to see the interaction between them.
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| Abby and she loves laying in a hole. |
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| This is Thunder |
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| Thunder giving Barry a look! |
At one point we were in the barn and Glen was showing us the shearing equipment, bags of fleece and the genealogy book he uses to keep track of breeding. The barn has an opening on both sides and as we were standing there listening to Glen I see an alpaca stick it's head through the open door, then another and another. The next thing is they were all coming into the barn and looking to see what we were doing. It was so funny.
An alpaca is pregnant for 11 1/2 months. Can you imagine!? The babies are called crias and they are so adorable. They way between 15 - 18 lbs when born. Their business consists of alpaca sales, breeding services, products and farm tours. You can tell that Glen loves his alpacas and he knows them all by name. They are a small farm and have about 50 at a time.
Carolyn is in charge of their small store. She does knit some of the products but most items are directly from Peru. They mainly sell their fleece to a mill in Pennsylvania. May is shearing month and they have two travelling people that come and help with the shearing. They also have about 10 other people that come and help with the process. I would love to participate and maybe next May I can talk Barry into it. Keeping my fingers crossed.
Did some major shopping in the store and loved all the stuff Carolyn has. The sweaters are gorgeous and all the products are so soft. The colors are beautiful.
We had leftovers from the Jailhouse Cell Block Steakhouse that was even tastier than the night before. After dinner Barry wrote in his journal and I worked on blog postings. Good night all and sweet dreams of crias! Web site for Sawdust Alpacas - https://www.sawdustalpacas.com/
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