Nevada – The MoHo and Other Traveling Tales

02-11-2018 Leaving Tucson Heading North

Remember that if you click on a photo, (except for maps and internet photos) it will take you to the larger version on my SmugMug site, where you can also see more photos in that gallery.

When Sunday morning arrived, the gorgeous clear skies over Tucson were showing a bit of gray. Clouds were coming in. We didn’t know at the time that there was a lot of rain heading towards the big city in the desert, and as the days passed with extended weather reports from friends and news sites, we knew how lucky we had been. Our entire time so far had been gorgeous. Sunny, warm, temperatures much above normal, no wind. Who could ask for more?!

Leaving Tucson, we knew the best way out of town was on the interstate. To our delight, I-10 at 9 on a Sunday morning was beautifully quiet. Note to self, always leave big cities which require freeway travel on Sunday morning. I was driving so we missed photographs of all the amazing freeway overpasses and bridges between Tucson and Phoenix. Even the fences are covered with gorgeous sculptures, some in cement, some in rusted metal. We enjoyed all the art along the highways, both in Arizona and in Nevada. Next time I’ll have Mo drive this section so I can get some photos.

(The two photos here were taken from the internet just so you get the idea.)

I have noticed this trend growing in many places where we travel. Made me wonder what it must be like to be a freeway graphic artist and to see your designs bigger than life in such a public venue. Almost as much fun as the mural craze that seems to be everywhere as well.

We were still not absolutely sure about our route home. I had checked the weather going north along Highway 395 in California, and it looked a bit iffy. The fastest route would be to take Highway 95 directly north from Las Vegas to Reno, but geez that part can be boring. We thought maybe we could boondock in the Alabama Hills if we could get through Death Valley. Both of us remembered some of the climbs in and out of the valley.

The route we traveled from Tucson to Minden, Nevada

We decided to head for Phoenix, and then north, with no real idea of how far we could or wanted to go and where we might end up that night. Beatty, Nevada was the goal, and then Stovepipe Wells in Death Valley, but who knew the timing.

I used the freecampsites.net website and found quite a few boondock sites north of Kingman. I couldn’t believe how big Kingman was, and as we passed through, the boondock sites didn’t look all that welcoming. We continued north, thinking we could find something. Once again, freecampsites.net led the way. We saw a big parking lot available across the street from the Hoover Dam Casino, just east of Boulder City and set a beeline for a free night spot that shouldn’t be terribly crowded.

Turned out to be a perfect place, and we never even bothered to cross the highway to visit the casino. Dinner was once again some excellent leftovers from the freezer while we watched the sunset and settled in for the evening. A few rigs rolled in during the night, but they weren’t terribly loud. By morning there were a few trailers, and some car and tent campers scattered around the edges of the big space.

Our plan was to continue north and then cross Death Valley, with a stay at Stovepipe Wells, but the weather had other plans. It was COLD, and when we drove into Beatty I think the daytime temperatures were in the low 40’s, with a hard freeze predicted for the night. I called Stovepipe Wells, where we were told all sites were taken, and we did a quick rethink. We had passed a decent looking park on the way into Beatty, so gave them a quick call, and sure enough there was a space, full hookups. Death Valley Inn RV Park was a good choice.

It was still early in the day, and as we thought about our options, it seemed like a good thing to relax early and spend some time playing and exploring. We have been to Death Valley a few times, and the things we would see there are sights we have enjoyed in the past. Something different would be fun.

We headed for the tiny Visitor center in town, next to the cheapest gas in town, and gathered up some brochures on local interesting things to see and do. Rhyolite is a ghost town that is fun to explore, but we had already done that a few years ago. We decided to explore some of the back 4 wheel drive roads, and found an interesting loop that meandered past old mining cabins, through “Secret Pass”, south to the desert, and back via the highway.

We explored the old Flourspar Cabin at a mining site before continuing up the road

The 8 miles to Secret Pass was challenging, but that is why we were out there. I was a bit of a wreck actually, as Mo crawled over the big, pointy rocks, with me jumping out now and then to move some especially big ones. Once we were past the bad part, it didn’t seem so bad. I think for me it was the unknown factor of whether the road actually continued through. I didn’t like the idea of having to back up and out over those rocks and ditches and eroded dry streambeds.

When we got to an easier part, I started taking photos, and Mo asked why in the world we didn’t get photos of the scary parts? I was too busy holding on and gasping!

Of course, we didn’t have a good local map, and the phone map quit working about half way through. We just kept going, and following our noses, found our way out of the mountains and across the desert back to the highway. It was fun, and something we love to do when in the desert. No flat tires, no getting stuck in sand or creekbeds, and beautiful views.

We had seen Big Dune on the way north to Beatty, and our dirt road intercepted the highway just a few miles north of the road to the sands. We traveled the washboard gravel just 6 miles with the dunes looming in the distance. This dune is incredible, a star dune out in the middle of the flat desert, and I loved it much more than the dunes in Death Valley. Maybe because it rises all alone from the surrounding space, or maybe because it isn’t overrun with people, or at least it wasn’t when we were there. Unprotected the way the Death Valley dunes are protected, it was covered with 4 wheeler tracks, but when we were there on this mid week afternoon, there wasn’t a soul around.

Mattie had more fun than she has had in a long time. Something about soft sand makes her completely joyously crazy, and she ran around like a wild thing in the wind.

She does the same thing at ocean beaches, and in big soft grass as well. The dune was lit from the west with the late afternoon sun and the backdrop of dark clouds was a photographer’s dream. Gorgeous!

On our way back, along Highway 95, we finally spotted the wild burros that were touted in the brochure. All along our route we had seen burro apples, but no burros, so we were glad to finally see them.

A great mural in Beatty along the main road into town

The next morning was cold, so we took our time heading west toward Death Valley. Stovepipe Wells was busy with tourists, and I stopped in at the Visitor Center and General Store hoping for a really good sweatshirt to add to the one I found at Chaco Canyon 4 years ago. No luck. I am pretty specific in what I want, and I guess my current version will have to suffice.

I was glad we didn’t stay there, with all the people, visiting all the beautiful sights we have seen before. It was enough to pass through this part of the valley and to save wandering around in the back country for another trip.

Look closely to see the MoHo winding down the grade toward Panamint Springs

We knew about the long grade up from Stovepipe Wells, and then back down to Panamint Springs, not horrible, but definitely long. We decided to unhook early on rather than waiting for the really big hill west of Panamint Springs. Mo went ahead in the MoHo and I followed in the Tracker, making it much easier to stop along the way for photos.

We negotiated the really steep hill up from Death Valley toward Lone Pine without any mishaps, and stopped at the top for lunch and a walk with the dog. The sun was warm coming through the windows, but the wind was really cold!

As we approached the intersection with Highway 395, I was again enthralled with the magnificent view of the eastern face of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Often at this time of year, the highways are snow covered, but this year the snowpack in the Sierra’s is extremely low. It was our window in time to travel one of our favorite highways without being worried about the storms and snows. We have been in serious snow storms with chains required on this road as late as Memorial Day!

We didn’t stop along the way, passing places we have visited in the past, reminiscing about good food, beautiful hikes, historic sites. Many good memories along this route for us, and it was fine that on this trip we simply passed through viewing the incredible scenery. We were heading home, and no matter how long we are out, when it gets close to home time, we tend to move along fairly quickly.

There is just so much to see and do along this highway, the list is huge. It deserves a month, preferably in warmer weather, not just a day. We will return.

Our destination for the night was Minden, Nevada, where we had stayed at a new park back in 2014 on our way home from Florida. At that time, it snowed on us, April 1, and we were happy for hookups. This time the prediction was for temperatures in the teens, and once again we were happy for hookups. I called ahead, and was glad I did since Silver City Resort seems to have developed into a very popular place in the last 4 years. Most of the people there are in for long term visits. That surprised me because it can be cold in this area south of Reno.

When we woke up the next morning, the temperature was 12 degrees F, the Tracker was covered in thick frost, and even the MoHo had frost on the lower sides. We had turned on our tank heaters for the first time in a long time.

It was time to figure out our home route, and we cooked a nice breakfast while debating whether to take our chances over the northern mountains or give up and cross the Sierra’s over Donner Pass and travel home via I-5. Decisions, decisions!

Oh What to DO?

Current Location: Tulare, CA, sunny and 96 degrees F

Settled down for the evening in hot, dry, sunny Tulare, California. We began our day in Lee Vining, on the east side of the Sierras, and treated ourselves to an early dawn crossing of Tioga Pass, through Yosemite and down the mountain to the Great Central Valley.

A family event called Mo to this area and Abby and I are comfortable in the MoHo at Sun and Fun RV Park, with our Passport America discount, air conditioner going full blast. Ahh…yes…time to process photos and write. Trying to come up with something to do in Tulare, California isn’t very high on the agenda, at least not on my agenda. I am looking forward to our journey back north tomorrow morning.

In the mean time, I’ll go back and think of all the things to do in Great Basin National Park. We barely touched the surface in our four days we spent this week, but we did manage the highlights.

Visit Lehman Caves

From what I have read, it seems that the Lehman Caves are the major draw to this area for people who are not avid hikers. There are two cave tours, a 45 minute tour and the full Grand Palace Tour that lasts approximately 90 minutes. With our senior passes we only paid $5.00 each for the grand tour.

Did I mention that there is no park entry fee at GBNP? We had our passes ready, but never used them except for the cave tour and to gain half price discounts for our campsite. With the pass, we only paid $6.00 per night for our site.

Lehman Caves are actually only one cave, known for centuries by local tribes but “discovered” by Absolom Lehman in 1885. There are interesting old photographs of the original ladder entrance, and large groups of people in dresses and shirts and ties lounging around on the formations. Needless to say, there is not of that today. Visitors are screened for any possibility of carrying disease fatal to the bats, and are told to not touch anything.

I visited Carlsbad Caverns a few years ago, and was awed by the formations, but felt very uncomfortable in that cave. It felt like a place below the earth that was not for human visitation. I felt no such esoteric weirdness at Lehman Caves, enjoying especially the narrow walkways, and the subdued natural lighting in some areas.

The cave has some rare formations called “shields” that occur rarely in other caverns. Our guide was from Tennessee, and it was obvious that she loved the cave. The groups are limited to 20 people and on this day there were sixteen attending the tour. The constant 50 degree temperature inside the caves made our light jackets feel good. The caves are open year round, so I can imagine it would be a delight to visit on a cold winter day.

Explore the night sky

As mentioned in a previous post, we secured our passes for the Full Moon Hike previously. Many years ago I read an interesting book that suggested walking in the dark of night, or by the light of the moon. It has been at least a couple of decades since I tried it consciously. I looked forward to this walk, thankful that we would be in the presence of a ranger and some other folks as well.

Mo wasn’t as enamored of the night hiking as I was. I enjoyed every single moment. We left from the Summit Trailhead at twilight as the moon was rising over Wheeler Peak, but as we hiked toward Stella Lake, the moon was again obscured by the mountain. I decided to skip carrying the heavy camera, in favor of keeping my balance on the trail in the dark and not having to fiddle with settings and such.

Later, as we sat at Stella Lake waiting for the moon to again appear over the crest of the peak, I was sorry I hadn’t taken the good camera. I have only these fuzzy iPhone photos to remind me of that magical moment.

The hike was an easy 2.2 miles through aspen groves and open meadows. The trail was a bit rocky, with roots here and there, but in the moonlight, it was easy to navigate. I was still quite happy to have two walking sticks, one to share with Mo for the trip. I kept thinking how happy I was that there were no bears in this park as we walked through the night forest!

Take a back country drive up Snake Creek

Mo and I both decided that this remote section of the park was our favorite. Snake Creek flows from the high peaks down to the tiny ranching community of Gunnison and beyond. The road is graveled for several miles and then turns to rocky dirt, but is never extremely difficult.

We did drop the Tracker into 4-wheel drive, but could have managed without it. High clearance was needed, however, for some stretches, especially toward the Johnson Peak trailhead at the end of the road.

Part of the route traverses the boundary between BLM land and National Park land, following Snake Creek up the canyon. There are several campsites located along the road, several of them are on BLM land, and an additional 4 camps are in the park before the road ends at the trailhead.

We thought about hiking the Johnson Peak trail, knowing full well that 7.5 miles round trip and the extreme elevation gain of that particular trail was more than we wanted to tackle that afternoon. Instead, we decided to attempt to reach Dead Lake, another obscure trail just south of the main Johnson Peak trail.

We enjoyed ourselves, in spite of the fact that we were hiking without benefit of GPS, telephone, or even a paper map in our possession. I was navigating from the memory of the sign at the Johnson Peak trailhead. Pretty dumb, but geez, there are no bears here so what did we have to fear?!

The trail we chose went up and up and up, without benefit of ridge or landing to break the climb. There was a bit of a view back down the canyon, and then looking at a particularly steep section ahead of us we looked at each other, and said, “Why?”. It was a great point to turn around.

Back to the Tracker, we followed Snake Creek to an incredible campsite along some natural swimming holes where Abby jumped in to cool herself and we enjoyed lunch at the picnic table. For once, we actually remembered to pack a lunch before we took off exploring and the tuna sandwiches and corn chips tasted wonderful.

Johnson Lake is the location of an old mining camp, and we did find an old dredge down along the creek. The other fascinating thing about the creek is that it disappears completely underground for a considerable distance. I was watching the dry creek bed as Mo drove, and then suddenly heard a roaring sound. The water emerges from this pipe at least a mile east of where it disappears underground. Would love to know the story behind this.

I did find out that Snake Creek Cave is a “wild cave”, undeveloped, that is in the vicinity of where we had lunch. With an entrance high on the slope above us, my theory of an underground cave sucking up the water, doesn’t hold water.

Hike to a Bristlecone grove

Can you believe we didn’t manage this one? Our hike up at the end of Snake Creek Canyon wore us out. We had planned to drive the long steep road to the trailhead in late afternoon, hoping to leave Abby in the rig while we hiked. I wrote a bit while Mo napped, and the winds started rising once again as time for our departure came close. Looking at each other once again, we said, “Nope”. The bristlecone grove will have to wait for another visit.

Hike the many trails

Hiking trails in Great Basin National Park

There are more than a dozen hikes listed in the park brochure, with difficulty, distance and other information. I would have loved to hike the alpine lakes loop, a moderate 3 mile hike. Not so much the summit hike to Wheeler Peak, with rock scrambles at the top over 13,000 feet elevation. The brochure insists this should be an early morning start to miss the winds and thunderstorms that often rise in late afternoon.

The trail to Lexington Arch, a magnificent limestone arch that was probably at one time a cave room that has been uplifted, is the only dog friendly trail in the park. We weren’t able to hike this trail due to a recent fire and the resultant road closure. We won’t tell anyone that we took Abby on our unmarked Dead Lake trail. It was actually an old road where they say dogs are allowed, and as I mentioned before, there wasn’t a soul around to know or care. Abby did well, without huffing and puffing any more than we did.

Camp and relax in a beautiful spot with gorgeous views, fresh air, no crowds and dark night skies

It is good to know that there are places to go and roads to explore in this beautiful park that we have yet to find. I am sure we will return.

Great Basin Love

Current Location: Lee Vining, CA cloudy and 67 degrees F

In crazy love. Remember that feeling? Somehow that crazy feeling of youth has been replaced with a crazy ecstasy at what the Earth can do. I have spent the last few days catching my breath in wonder at the view around the bend, the next flower I never knew before this week.

I am completely enamored, entranced, and fascinated with the Great Basin, the entire thing. Although describing the “entire thing” takes a bit of learning. At the moment, I think I am most in love with the brilliant scarlet firecracker penstemon that lines the roads along Snake Creek in the Great Basin NP. This flower was completely new to me on this trip, as well as the incredibly fragrant pale pink scented penstemon.

Traveling is so great, there is always something new out there, and the Great Basin visitor center in Baker finally showed with elegant visual displays what the term “Great Basin” actually meant. I had an idea, but the boundaries were sketchy in my mind. I learned why.

The term was first coined by John C Fremont in the mid 1800’s for the vast sink of the American West between the Sierra Nevada Range of California to the west, the Wasatch Range of Utah to the east, the Mojave Desert to the south, and the Snake River Plain of Idaho to the north.

I know it is hard to see in these photos I took of maps in the visitor center, but in person, these maps and descriptions helped me to at last understood the Great Basin that I knew from John McPhee’s great book, “Basin and Range”.

I learned that this vague thing called the Great Basin, has a few different boundaries, depending on which aspect of the landscape one is viewing.

There is the hydrographic view, based on water, and the boundary where all water within the basin stays in the basin, with none escaping to any ocean. The rivers grow and die quietly in the desert, in the giant sink.

There is the Great Basin as defined by the plant and animal communities, being the largest of the four great American Deserts. Bounded on the south by the Mojave, the Great Basin desert has been called “the sagebrush ocean”.

This last definition of the Great Basin is based on the geomorphology and landscape itself, defined by the folding and faulting that created between 150 to 300 mountain ranges (depending on how you define a separate mountain range) that lie within the great sink, high above the desert basins below.

If you look closely at this map, you will see that my home in Klamath Falls, at Rocky Point, is at the western and northern edge of this great basin of the west. This close up view also shows the northeast/southwest alignment of the great ranges, like stretch marks in the skin of the earth, created from the extension of continental plates.

No matter how it is defined, no matter where you might draw an arbitrary boundary, the Great Basin is a great American treasure. More than 2,000 individual species of flowering plants occur within this often dry and barren landscape, and the elevation includes some of the highest peaks in the country, rivaled only by the “fourteener’s” in Colorado and California on the eastern and western edges of the basin.

I don’t believe there is another part of our country that is as isolated, as empty, as vast. At first glance, it seems so empty, so daunting. But a few days in one of the magnificent island arc mountain ranges high above the desert changes everything. I love the vistas, the ups and the downs, the mountains and the desert, and the way you can see one from the other.

The geology of the place alone is enough to create endless searches into what exactly happened here? Great seas of sediments converted to limestone, uplifted and folded, and then covered with every form of volcanic activity, and a few meteor craters thrown in for interest. Then there are the hot creeks, the hot springs, the cold springs, the rivers that flow underground and emerge somewhere else.

There are two ways to view this land, it goes forever, it can be daunting to cross the hundreds of miles between towns and civilization. The better way is to take the time to delve into its secrets, to explore the hidden places, to go slowly enough to find the treasures. We didn’t really go as slow as I might have liked, but then we can always go back for more. I am sure that we will.

Next: Lehman Caves and a Full Moon Hike to Stella Lake

No Bears! Great Basin National Park

Current Location: Lower Lehman Creek Campground GBNP sunny and 78F predicted high today

I worked in the mountains of the west for a bazillion years. I lived in the mountains of the west for a bazillion years. Mountains and bears seem synonymous to me. Imagine my surprise when we arrived at Great Basin National Park and there are shabby tin garbage cans, and not a bear warning anywhere. There are no bears here! I couldn’t figure it out for the longest time. I came up with all sorts of reasons, maybe they were hunted out and the great deserts that lie between the mountain islands kept them from coming back.

Well, the last bear was here about 30,000 years ago, and not only are there no bears in Great Basin National Park, there are no bears anywhere in the Great Basin! Looking at a map of black bear distribution in the US, even the historic range of the black bear leaves a giant conspicuous hole in the map of the US encompassing almost all of Nevada and all of the Great Basin.

When our June calendar showed no plans for a camping trip, we knew something must be done. Where to go. June is often full of mosquitos in our local mountains, and our home place is so convenient to kayaking and hiking, but we wanted to be sure to get somewhere new. That is getting more and more difficult it seems.

Great Basin National Park came to mind. We have traveled in the vicinity several times, looking up at the great mountains of the Snake Range and thinking, “We need to get there someday”. We came really close on our way home last March from our three month trip east, but storms and wind and snow convinced us to reroute south toward the Mojave instead of north into the wilds of Nevada.

The trip to Great Basin NP requires commitment. It isn’t near anything or on the way to anywhere. We traveled a gorgeous route down 395 taking an easy day and spending our first night out at the Desert Rose RV Park in Fernley. It is a nice little Passport America park, clean and tidy, with “the best TV east of the Mississippi”. All that has changed, however, with the advent of Charter Cable requirements for individual receiver boxes for each site, and the owner said, Nope, no more TV here. We had our little satellite, but TV wasn’t high on the agenda for only one night, so we didn’t bother to set it up.

The next morning we headed west on Highway 50, and once beyond Fallon, the route lived up to its reputation as the “Loneliest Road in America”. That title was a bit more apt when it was first declared a few decades ago, but it still is one of the few places in the country where you can drive for miles without seeing another vehicle. Actually, the stretch between Alturas and Susanville on 395 was almost as empty of traffic. Daughter Deanna warned me when we left that school was out, vacationers were on the road, and traffic was completely crazy. Not in the world we have traveled this week. Lucky us.

We decided to take the old Route 50 between White Rock Springs and Austin, a beautiful route with some serious curves and climbs but nothing too difficult, and again, no traffic.

By the time we reached the park, it was mid afternoon, early enough to hopefully find a campsite in the first come/first serve campgrounds. There are four listed campgrounds in the park, and another couple of locations for what they call “overflow camping”, with picnic tables and fire grills but no water. The camp at the lowest elevation, just a couple of miles from the Lehman Caves Visitor Center, is Lower Lehman Creek, with a few pull-through sites, water in the campground, and pit toilets.

With most sites filled, we opted for the remaining pull through site #3, in spite of the fact that it was listed on the camp information sign as ‘extremely unlevel’. Most sites were listed as ‘unlevel’ except for the one accessible site at the entrance to the campground. No biggy, at least I thought so until I tried to sleep that first night with my head down from my feet in spite of all our work at leveling as much as possible.

We spent the first evening enjoying the sound of the creek, and I took a walk up the trail toward the Upper Lehman Creek campground to check things out. I got a serious reality check trying to hike up the steep trail at 7500 feet elevation. I have obviously been sitting around too much for the last couple of months. My lungs were aching after just a mile or so. sheesh! I am glad we gave ourselves a couple of days to acclimate to the elevation before trying the main park hikes that all start at the Wheeler Peak campground at about 10,000 feet elevation.

The next morning we decided to seek out a lead on a young woman who might watch Abby for us while hiking, but as we were leaving, site 3 came open, and we nixed all plans and moved across the road to a lovely, almost level site right by the creek, with an open sky for the satellite. Perfect. With a bit of jockeying, I had the rig leveled, Mo had the solar panel out and the TV hooked up. We can run the inverter for the TV, satellite, and Direct TV box without taxing our batteries too much. Each day we do run the generator for a couple of hours to charge things up, but so far all is good.

Did I mention no bears? It just seems crazy to be in the mountains and not have to worry about critters getting into your stuff. There aren’t even raccoons or skunks around here either.

Once we settled into the new spot, we decided to go to the visitor centers. There are two of them for this park, the Lehman Caves center is within the park boundary, and the Great Basin visitor center is down in Baker. We wanted to tour Lehman Caves, and the tours do sell out, so getting tickets was first on our agenda. Later we found Rachel in the T and D Café in Baker, who agreed to watch Abby for us so we could do the tour together. Lucky find, if a bit expensive at $10. per hour. Rachel’s husband is the IT person for the park, and heard us at the visitor center asking about dog care in the vicinity. Rachel was a sweetheart and Abby enjoyed her two hour stay at her home with her two dogs.

A slogan for Great Basin NP is that “half the park is after dark”. They have great night sky programs, and as one of the ten darkest night sky locations in the US, there is much to see. It would be great to be here during the dark of the moon, with views of the Milky Way that many of us only remember from childhood.

Instead, we were here during the full moon, another perfect time, because the park has ranger guided full moon hikes each month during the season unless weather interferes. Free tickets for the hike are passed out only on the day of the full moon, beginning at 8 in the morning. The location of the hike is kept secret, and you are requested to bring your hiking shoes for inspection when signing up. In spite of the hard core rules about tough boots with ankle support, we saw several folks in tennis shoes, and Mo’s Keen sandals passed without a problem. We were afraid she might be denied a ticket at first, but it seems that the only real problem would be open toed sandals or flip flops.

Both our Cave Tour and Full Moon hike were scheduled for Thursday, so we spent Wednesday exploring the area a bit in the Tracker. We explored the Baker Creek Road, and the other campgrounds in the vicinity of Pole Creek and the Grey Cliffs. The road was steep, graveled, but without a serious washboard problem at least, so in a pinch, we could have managed a campsite along Baker Creek at a few locations.

By the time we visited the Great Basin Visitor Center, the sun was high and hot and Mo and I took turns going inside. As is usually the case, the visitor center was wonderful, with beautiful exhibits and I learned not only about Great Basin National Park, but the Great Basin in general. The term “Great Basin” was coined by one of my favorite guys, John C Fremont, the Pathfinder, back in the mid 1800’s. I’ll write more about that in my next post.

We also traveled back through Baker and north to the Baker Archaeological Site. Although there isn’t a lot to see at the site, there are great interpretive signs explaining about the major dig here in the mid 90’s that discovered a complex community of what is now called the Fremont Culture, estimated to have been around 1300 AD. The best part about the site is the vastness of the view, and the gorgeous skyline in the west dominated by the Snake Range and Wheeler Peak.

There are several dirt roads leading into the park, but the most traveled route is the paved Wheeler Peak Scenic Route that leads to the Summit Trailhead, and the trailheads for the Bristlecone Forest Hike, and several other high mountain hikes in that vicinity. The Wheeler Peak campground is gorgeous, but at 10,000 feet elevation, the weather up there was COLD. We saw folks in down coats and wool caps in the afternoon in their beautiful fir and aspen campsites. The campground was gorgeous, but the length limit for driving the road is 24 feet and we are 26. The level paved pads for camping were amazing, just too bad you can’t take a bigger rig up that road! Even so, it was nice to come back down the mountain to our warm campground.

Clouds were thick around Wheeler Peak on that first visit, but even with the cloud cover, the magnificence of the limestone mountains were evident. With more than 13 peaks over 11,000 feet high in the Snake Range that dominates most of the Great Basin National Park, there is no shortage of hiking opportunities for the hardy souls who can manage high elevation hiking.

I do actually have a Verizon signal here at the campground, not always fast, but it is much better than the weak “out of area” signal that I get on my ATT iPhone. Between TV and occasional internet, we haven’t been too far out of touch while camping here. More to come in the next post but it is time to go explore Snake Creek and the Johnson Lake trail.

Overnight camp south of I-80 Angel Creek

We are now at the Rock Springs, Wyoming KOA

With a short day of driving, we arrived at our planned night stop in Wells, Nevada rather early in the afternoon. The temperatures were still hot, and the parking lot at the Flying J, while big and fairly empty, left much to be desired in the way of ambience. Instead, we fired up the CampWhere app and discovered a couple of forest service campgrounds just 8 miles or so south of town.

It helps to see the area on google maps, and see if the road into the east side of the Ruby Mountains looked passable. It also helped that one of the campgrounds had a size limit for motorhomes of 45 feet. Surely with a limit that high, the road must be OK. The higher elevation campground at Angel Lake has a 30 foot limit and we discussed the possibility of trying that one out.

Driving the Angel Lake road was completely manageable as far as the Angel Creek Campground turnoff, and still a bit undecided we thought we would check out the campground before attempting to drive higher. I said, “Let’s just be safe and unhook before we go up this steep, winding road!” Mo agreed wholeheartedly as we looked up along the ridge to see something that looked like it might be the highway.

The campground was delightful, with 18 sites, some too short for even our rig, and yet a few here and there that were plenty long for even the biggest rigs. The camp hostess was a delightful young woman living in a tent shelter with a nice big German shepherd companion. When we asked her about the Angel Creek Road she said without hesitation that we probably didn’t want to take our motorhome up there.

We settled into our site, paid the half price fee of $6. with our senior pass, and unhooked the baby car for a trip up the mountain. Within a few hundred yards we were quite happy that we didn’t have the motorhome. The road is incredibly steep and the drop-offs to the valley below are hair-raising, at least for me, and even in the baby car I found myself leaning inward to supposedly avoid going over the edge.

On our way up the mountain, a huge cloud of smoke from some far distant fires darkened the skies and with the added storminess, the final view of the small lake itself was a bit of an anticlimax. It certainly didn’t make us want to pull off the kayaks and jump in. We didn’t even pay the parking fee to let Abby go swimming, since all seemed a bit dingy and uninviting. The Angel Lake campground was a big surprise, however, with several really big rigs tucked into low shrubs and uneven sites with no actual view of the tiny lake. Sometimes these really high elevation lakes don’t invite me that much, they seem harsh and barren and inhospitable.

In contrast, our little camp at Angel Creek seemed lovely even with the stormy clouds hovering and the smoke coming and going on the winds. Dinner was a simple quesadilla and a walk around the campground afterward made for a lovely ending to the day. We were in bed at a ridiculously early hour, with the wind blowing and rain spattering the roof now and then. With no hookups, but plenty of stored power from the day of driving, we were just fine for the second night of dry camping.

I was so happy that we found another quiet, dark, beautiful place to spend the night since the rest of this trip is fairly well planned. This morning when we woke, there were was still a bit of cloudiness, but by the time we got to Utah the skies were fresh and blue and clear. We stopped at a nice little rest stop for a short walk before traveling east toward Salt Lake.

My turn to drive, and once again the Garmin Girl proved her stuff, taking us along Route 201 to Salt Lake City rather than directly along 80 to I-15. I have driven through Salt Lake many times, and usually the traffic and congestion are horrendous. This time, however, it was a breeze, and we flew right through the southern end of the city and up the Park City grade without a bit of trouble. The grade was as long and steep as I remember, but the MoHo did just fine and traffic wasn’t terribly heavy so we were only slowed down once by trucks trying to keep moving in the two left lanes.

Once we were on I-84 we called brother Dan to see how the other 2/3rd’s of our caravan were doing. They were just an hour behind us, having spent the night at the friendly Walmart in Mountain Home where Don was once stationed when he was in the Air Force.

Mo and I arrived in Rock Springs in time to stop in at the local Walmart for some RV toilet supplies before we drove back to the KOA where we had reservations for all three rigs for the night. Within an hour Dan and Roger joined us and we all were set up in a row in three easy pull through sites with full hookups. We could have easily boondocked another night, but when planning the trip, we were unsure of the weather, and with others in the group everyone decided that a hookup night would be good. The Walmart here in Rock Springs already had some folks parked, and it seems that is one of the “ask to park” stores that welcomes RV’rs.

We had no campfire, but we all sat around the rug and caught up on our travels and already the family stories of kids growing up along the Columbia River in Oregon started making the rounds. I am sure that during the next few days we will hear many more of these kinds of stories, one of the more fun parts of family reunions.

One more great surprise was in store for me. Usually when Mo and I are on the road and my daughter Deanna is trucking somewhere we are one interstate off, or going the wrong way, or on the wrong side of the country. Yesterday morning I called Deanna and told her we were on I-80. She laughed and said,”Oh we are too, but we are way north of you”. They were heading west from Ohio, and going through Rock Springs ! I told her no matter what time it was to call me and she did. At midnight, we got the call, and Mo and I snuck out in the Tracker to drive 4 miles up the road to the Flying J where I got to have a two hour cup of coffee with my daughter before she took over the driving the rest of the way west.

Hmm…coffee at 1 am? We came home and I tried to go to sleep, but of course that was silly. After awhile I thought that maybe processing photos and trying to blog a bit was better than lying there in the dark with my mind spinning! Now it is after 5am, and soon we will be continuing our trek east toward Colorado. Something tells me that I may need to doze a bit today while Mo drives, ya think??

Miles driven today: 365