byways – Page 3 – The MoHo and Other Traveling Tales

September 30 The Loneliest Road in America

In July of 1986, Life Magazine described Nevada’s Highway 50 from Ely to Fernley as the “Loneliest Road in America”. Life said that there were no attractions or points of interest along the 287 mile stretch of road and recommended that drivers have “survival skills” to travel the route.

Things have changed a bit, but not much. The biggest change is in the vehicles we drive along these roads rather than the roads themselves. I remember desert driving and the days of vapor lock, overheated engines, flat tires, and no air conditioning. Cars seem to be made better these days, and we cruise along at 70 miles per hour without a thought about our survival. There really is quite a lot to see in Ely, and we plan to return, especially to visit the Great Basin National Park on the eastern edge of Nevada. We also want to come back to check out Ely’s treasure: The Nevada Northern Railway Museum, touted by the Smithsonian as the most complete authentic railroad complex in the country.

That is what we are doing today, cruising along, covering the distance on US 50 instead of I-80, enjoying the eyeball stretching vistas of the high Nevada desert. There are a couple of towns between Ely and Fernley where we will turn north toward the Black Rock Desert. Eureka and Austin are both historic mining towns from the heyday of Nevada history in the late 19th century. We will stop and take photos, enjoy the stories, and the time travel provided at these outposts before moving on down the road. At Gerlach, we will pass the sandy roads leading to the Black Rock Desert where the wild ones have their Burning Man festival every year.

Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, we saw a large group of road bikers pedaling up the long grades, supported by a couple of vans in pursuit. At the same time, we saw a lonely man walking in the opposite direction up another grade with some sort of walk.com sign on his back. Then nothing again but low sage and rabbitbrush and the distant hills. The air again is smoky, not in the concentrated way that it was yesterday in Utah, but high hazy widespread smoke that extends as far west and north as we can see, even from the summits. We are traveling west again through basin and range, so the MoHo is climbing the ranges and dropping into the basins repeatedly shifting gears as we go up, then down, then up, then more down. Glad I am not on a bike!

This morning in our full hookup park, I took the time to cook a good breakfast and clean the house a bit. In the process of cleaning the toilet, adding extra water to help with the black water flush to come, I suddenly dropped the large cleaning washcloth right down into the holding tank. Ugh! I freaked out, but Mo patiently bent a hanger, fished around in there, and got the thing out of the tank before anything got terribly clogged up. Kind of amazing that we actually had one simple wire hangar in the closet among all the fancy lightweight things I have for our clothes. I got all teary and realized that the stress of dropping a washcloth into the sewage holding tank shouldn’t be THAT bad, and thought, gee, maybe I am sad about the trip coming to a close.

Today and tomorrow we will continue our trek across the deserts and over the Warners into the Klamath Basin, to the base of the Cascade Mountains. Home. I am sure it will take a bit of settling in to really appreciate being there and not here, traveling along some highway with ever changing views out the windows.

There are a some more photos for this day linked here>

September 29 To the basins and ranges of Nevada

I woke this morning to the amazing smell of aspen leaves that are sending out their last breath before they fall. Sweetened by high mountain air and spruce it was one of the better fragrances on the planet, maybe only surpassed by rain on dry dust in the desert. As we drove west, however, the skies were darkened by smoke from the huge fires in the mountains of central Utah.

Today was another travel day, as the rest of the trip will be until we are back in Rocky Point on Friday. Again we took back road, avoiding the major interstates and trying to manage a blue dotted road at every opportunity. Our route today took us through Cedar City and rather than the fast route north on I 15, we went farther west to the Scenic Highway 93.

The landscape of Nevada and several other states is the west is dominated by alternating basins and ranges formed by tectonic processes that trend generally northwest. When traveling directly west, as we did a few years ago when returning to California from Utah, the road was a continuous grade, either up or down, with just a bit of basin between the mountain ranges. These Nevada mountains aren’t small, either, and the grades can be dramatic.

Highway 93, however, follows a dominantly northern track through the state, and as a result the grades are few because the road usually follows the edge of the basins. We took time to stop and enjoy a surprise state park, Cathedral Gorge, and met some interesting travelers from England who have traveled 49 states in our country, and were showing the west to another couple from England. We took a side road to explore the historic mining hamlet of Pioche, sitting high on a fan above the wide open basin.

We reached Ely in early afternoon, partly due to the change to Pacific time, gaining an extra hour. We decided that electricity was on the list of desires for this night with the possibility of cable seductive enough to pay a ridiculous high price for the Ely KOA. Our pull- through site was too short to keep the baby car hooked up and still reach the utilities, but once I quite grumbling, and we settled inside with the air going, I felt better about it.

Before supper we took a little tour of the area, checking out the Ward Charcoal Ovens about 18 miles southwest of Ely on a long gravel road. It was worth the trip, and the ovens are some of the best preserved we have seen. The story of converting huge amounts off local wood to charcoal is interesting. It took 35 cords of wood to fill each huge oven, and then it was burned for 12 days to provide charcoal for the smelters in the nearby mining towns. Until the coming of the railroad and the availability of coke for smelting, the surrounding hills were nearly completely denuded of timber.

Once back home, I poached a chicken breast in spices and chilis, and made quesadillas for supper. Yum. I was happy for unlimited water for cooking and dishes, and the thought of a hot shower this evening is enticing. Boondocking and dry camping are great, but it’s fun to hook up and forget about conserving every little drop of water for a night here and there.

The rest of the photos for this day are linked here>

September 28 Highway 12

A LOT of photos for this day of traveling Highway 12 are linked here>

Today was a driving day. We weren’t sure where we would end up, and only knew that the route would follow Scenic Highway 12, one of the most dramatically beautiful drives in the west. I have traveled this route before, on other trips, but each time it is a new experience. Each time the aspens on Boulder Mountain are a different shade of green or yellow, the canyons varying shades of clarity, red or hazy. Today there was a lot of haze and smoke and I wondered if possibly there were forest fires going on somewhere. We haven’t watched TV or listened to a radio in many days now, so I really have no idea what is going on out there.

When we left Torrey this morning it was windy and chilly enough for long pants and sweatshirts. Gasoline cost a staggering 3.29 per gallon, with the advertised 3.09 per gallon only for 85 octane ethanol, not something we want to put in the MoHo. We never would have made it up all those grades!

The road is two lane, very rough along much of the way, with many steep grades and curves, including the hair-raising 14 percent downgrade off the hogback. We thought we might like to hike Calf Creek Falls, both the Upper Falls and the Lower Falls have trailheads not far south of Boulder. But it was hot, much too hot to leave the cat in the MoHo without air conditioning even if we could take the dog. The white hot heat made hiking seem much less attractive to us anyway, so we decided instead to make it a looking and driving day instead of a hiking day.

Bryce Canyon National Park is on this route as well, a few miles south of the highway ,and we decided against braving the crowds to be tourists at the overlooks. We both have hiked Bryce in the past, and most of the trails are steep and hot, even though gorgeous. Even outside the park, however, the colors of the hoodoos are every possible shade of orange sherbet, pink, cream, white, and red. It’s pretty to look at, but not inviting to hike because the rocks are soft red claystone, crumbly and shifting underfoot. My soul love is slickrock, and solid cliffs of Wingate, so I am content to enjoy the colors and the hoodoos and move on.

I spent part of the drive reading aloud to Mo about 90 different hikes in Canyon Country in the WOW hiking guidebook I bought back at the Capital Reef Inn. So many of the truly great hikes in this part of the plateau involve many miles of rough driving down the Hole in the Rock Road just north of Escalante. The road is the gateway for many famous slot canyons and the canyons of the Escalante River, but they will have to wait for another time for us. I read about backpacking the 38 miles through Pariah Canyon and wondered if I have a trip like that still in me. It’s all downhill, mostly on the canyon floor wading in the river, with slots so narrow you have to carry your pack in front of you to slide through. Maybe someday. It could be a lifetime trip like my Cataract Canyon raft trip turned out to be. Who knows. But today, driving highway 12, I added it to my bucket list.

After a short break and walk at Red Canyon, we turned south on Utah 89 toward Kanab, and then turned west on Highway 14 toward Cedar Breaks National Monument and Cedar City. At the top of the pass, again at 10,000 feet of so, is the lovely Navajo Lake where I camped a bazillion years ago when my kids were just little. It was a different time of year, with the green aspen I remember so clearly all now fiery yellow, gold, red, and peach. We stopped for the night at Duck Creek Campground in the Dixie National Forest since the Navajo Lakes camps were closed for the season. Tonight we had our last campfire in the mountains to accompany a card game before we watched the night sky darken.

I am amazed at how quickly the landscape shifts as we travel. It often isn’t a gradual change, suddenly we are in desert, then in spruce aspen high mountains, back to sage, red rocks to cream and buff clays, and back again. Tomorrow we will leave the mountains behind as we enter the Great Basin landscape of the west. Once over this last mountain, the basin and range will meet us on the way through Nevada and finally home to Klamath Falls where Basin and Range meets the Cascade Range.

A favorite book in my library is “Basin and Range’ by John McPhee. It’s the Sand Creek Almanac of the west, only better. If you ever read it, the wild spaces of Nevada will never bore you.

September 26 Blanding to Torrey, the scenic route

The rest of the photos for this day are linked here>

After gassing up in Blanding, to the tune of 3.09 per gallon, our route led us across one of the most scenic roads in America. Highway 95 crosses the great canyons of the Colorado River dropping to Lake Powell at Hite Crossing, and rising again on the east side of the Henry Mountains to Hanksville, Utah. We took our time, stopping along the way for photos, and I cooked breakfast for us while we parked in a wide spot at a canyon trailhead. Again, one of my favorite parts of MoHo travel, the ability to stop and rest, or cook, or eat, just about anywhere we want to do so.

I first drove this road on a wintry February day after traveling to Santa Fe in 1991 alone in my little red Ranger. I fell in love with Canyon Country then and have loved it ever since. In 1993 I spent six days in a small paddleboat with five other women and two river guides rafting Cataract Canyon of the Colorado River.

Today we crossed Hite Bridge at Lake Powell and I remembered how it felt to see that bridge rise up into view after so many days in the canyons. It was where we put out and then flew back to Moab in less than 30 minutes. It was a trip of a lifetime. I stood above Hite today, and thought again with amazement about John Wesley Powell, who adventured through these wild unknown canyons in a wooden dory, all the way to the Gulf of California.

It was a perfect day and a gorgeous drive, and after leaving Hanksville on route 24 we stopped along the Fremont River in Capital Reef National Park so that Abby could go for a swim. The park was busy with fall visitors, and we decided to bypass the visitor center altogether and go directly to our campsite at the Sand Creek RV Campground.

Sand Creek is an unassuming little place, a bit tattered, but the proprietress is a sweetheart and had saved number 11 for us. We are at the end of the park, with nothing to obstruct our view of the red mountains north of us except a bit of debris and some old ramshackle outbuildings. Twenty bucks with full hookups and the quiet and privacy make this a better choice for us than the fancy and more crowded Ten Thousand Lakes RV Resort just half a mile down the road.

September 21 The Santa Fe Trail to Las Animas, CO

The rest of the photos for today are linked here>

I saw a different picture of the west today, and now I have added William Bent to my list of western heroes. I learned about his life and his story today as we toured Bent’s Old Fort this afternoon. This morning as we continued west from Kansas into Colorado, I kept seeing signs for the “Santa Fe Trail”. What we hadn’t known before is that we were traveling along the route, now an official National Historic Trail administered by the National Park Service, with a history that predates Coronado’s historic search for the Cities of Gold in 1540.

In the small town of Lamar, Colorado, we stopped at the excellent Colorado Visitor Center to get information on the trail, the history, and the towns along the way. Once again, the visitor center was staffed with a great volunteer, who gave me all sorts of brochures about the Trail, and suggestions of what would be the best way to spend our time today. In addition, with the simple exchange of my email address to the state of Colorado, I became the proud owner of a “colorful Colorado” baseball cap. I know, I know, but I can always delete the email when it comes in, telling me all the great things about visiting Colorado.

Our campsite destination was another state park, the John Martin Reservoir SP, built by the Corps of Engineers in conjunction with the dam, but now operated by the state. We drove in to an almost completely empty, very large and open campground, situated below the dam among huge old cottonwoods and locust trees, with half a football field between sites along the small overflow lake. Electric, but no water or sewer, but a dump station and a threaded water spigot nearby made it just fine. We settled Abby into her crate, safe in the MoHo with the air conditioner going and set out to explore.

Just 30 miles to the west was the site of Old Bent’s Fort, the highlight of the day. The actual fort burned down in 1849, was carefully excavated and reconstructed by the National Park Service in 1976 based on original drawings, historical accounts, and archeological evidence and is a faithful reproduction. The fort sits alone on a terrace above the Arkansas River, surrounded by natural grasslands and wetlands, and framed by the winding course of the cottonwoods along the river. It feels silent, and as we walked from the parking lot on the 1/4 mile trail to the fort, I felt as if I had stepped back in time. This spot was a significant center of fur trade in the 1840’s on the Santa Fe Trail, influencing economies around the world. It was a trade fort, not an army fort, and William Bent married a Cheyenne woman and was considered part of the tribe.

The fort in 1840 was constructed with adobe bricks, when William Bent brought in 150 Mexican workers because he so admired the adobe buildings he had seen in the Mexican Territories. The reconstruction in 1976 was built exactly the same way. We walked through the fort gates into the dusty courtyard, surrounded with rooms cooled by the thick adobe walls. It was quiet except for a very few visitors. I felt the era so thoroughly in this place, it was an amazing experience. The National Park Service is to be commended for this treasure.

After our visit, we continued to the town of La Junta, also on the trail, and then home through Las Animas to our campsite on the lake. Our travel time was short enough that even after our road tour, we had time to unload the kayaks for a spin on the lake. There were white pelicans, reminding me of home, and at least ten blue herons on the shoreline as we paddled by. The moon was rising, nearly full, in the early evening sunset, and the breeze was just enough to keep us refreshed. Perfect way to end a perfect travel day.