calm
The big rig had kicked up a rock that impacted hard on the windshield. (This and the following pictures were taken from Hawthorne where we stopped a few miles later to recoup and assess the damage.) This is what it looked like from the inside.
This is the driver's-eye view. I guess I'm lucky that it didn't hit right in the center of my vision. Had I flinched just a bit more, it might have missed entirely, but if I'd done that, I might have gone off the road, which would have been worse.
This is what it looked like from the outside. Thank goodness for safety glass.
At Hawthorne, we stopped, Lisa put on a pair of gloves, and I got out so that she could dust me off. Safety glass or not, I was showered with a lot of fine bits of glass.
The park in Hawthorne is across the street from the Mineral County Museum. It was almost closing time, but we went and had a look around briefly. We'll see if we can find time for a little longer visit to look through their interesting collection of local artifacts.
After cleaning up the glass bits from me and from the inside of the minivan, we continued on toward Tonopah. After a while, I realized that there were still more bits of glass that had landed inside my shirt, so we had to stop again.
Coaldale is a ghost town located at the junction of US-95 and US-6. These derelict buildings look more decrepit now than the last time we stopped here to help some people who had run out of gas trying to stretch the trip to Tonopah and not realizing how few places one can refuel between Fernley and Tonopah.
The sky was pretty, though.
I shook the last of the glass bits out of my shirt and we left the doubtful sanctuary of Coaldale for Tonopah with no further disruptions.
The smack in the windshield is pretty bad, but it's not in my field of vision, and the options for repair here in Tonopah are limited anyway. We're hoping that things will hold together until we can get home and then we'll get it repaired in Fernley or Reno/Sparks next week. This is (as I recall) the third windshield I've had on the Astro, and this one has always had a problem with a bit of leakage, so we'll find some place other than where I went to get this one installed.
