I found the northern Nevada landscape very interesting on my first time through. Particularly the salt flats and mountains.
It doesn't support population density outside of Reno.
We started off behind schedule. So to make up time we drove farther and spent the night at some BLM land.
In most of the western US there is BLM (Bureau of Land Management) or National Forest Service land that you can just find a spot and camp on without any fee. There are no facilities (water, outhouse), so you need to come prepared for that. This is know as dispersed camping.
We stayed in the Copper Basin of Battle Mountain. Our view out of the basin was to the east which still afforded a beautiful sunset. The first thing we noticed after getting out of our car was complete silence. We had the entire basin to ourselves. Normally even when dispersed camping there are at least the sounds of birds, but here it was nothing, and there were no cars driving on the nearby highway to generate some kind of background noise. It was a silence that at first rung in our ears until our hearing adjusted.
The dusty land afforded few animals. I awoke to see a few cattle across the road (much of BLM land is leased for grazing). In the night we briefly heard coyotes howl. However, the creature that clearly owned the land was a large cricket which could be seen from any spot just by looking around a little bit.
Because we were arriving late we pitched our tent at the first clear flat spot we found near a road. The next day we walked to a spot by a creek which clearly seemed to be nicer and provided shelter from the harsh sun. However, there were so many crickets there that they jumped away from you every time you take a step!
The crickets were not much on an annoyance but they did try to climb and jump on our things on occasion. But on the drive out we quickly noticed a cricket hitchiker!
Unfortunately we were behind schedule and weren't able to spend much time in Nevada.
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