Ely is a small, isolated city in eastern Nevada, sitting almost exactly at the midpoint of US Route 50, the two-lane highway nicknamed the Loneliest Road in America for the vast stretches of high desert it crosses between towns. A rental car is essential rather than optional here, since Ely has no meaningful public transit and the surrounding attractions - Great Basin National Park, the old mining architecture of the historic district, and the long desert approaches from either direction - are only reachable by road. Ely does have local service through its own small airport, but scheduled flights are limited, so many visitors instead pick up a car in Las Vegas, Salt Lake City or Reno and drive the remaining hours in, treating Ely as a waypoint rather than a rental origin.
Once on the road, distances are the defining fact of driving around Ely. Heading west toward Reno along US-50 runs through several hours of open basin-and-range country with towns spaced far apart, while east toward Great Basin National Park and the Utah border covers roughly ninety minutes of similarly sparse terrain. Fuel stations exist in Ely and a handful of small towns along the route, but stretches of seventy or eighty miles without services are common, so topping up whenever a station appears, rather than waiting for the tank to run low, is standard practice out here.
Driving is on the right throughout the United States, and the highway itself is typically a well-paved two-lane road with light traffic, though open-range livestock, deer and pronghorn are real hazards, especially around dawn and dusk. Winters bring genuine high-desert cold and occasional snow at Ely's elevation above six thousand feet, so a vehicle with sound tires, a full tank and a charged phone matter more on this remote stretch of Nevada than they would on a busier interstate closer to a city.