April 30, 2014
Utah never disappoints. Just driving through on I-70, the fastest
East-West route, provides spectacular scenery. Red rock canyons and
reefs, rugged cliffs, distant snow capped mountains, high passes,
forests, amazing blue skies, and a safe highway to be able have a
good look at all of them without fearing for your safety while
rounding hairpin turns!
We spent Wednesday crossing Utah after leaving Rabbit Valley in
western Colorado. The campground there was a great find, in a remote
area close to the interstate and free. We drove far enough in to
avoid the traffic noise, and had spectacular scenery from a campsite
on a bluff. The next morning, after a short drive on a dirt road, we
were sailing west again.
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| Typical Colorado Plateau Landscape along I-70 in Utah |
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| Tilted sandstones of the San Rafael Reef, which are the transition from flat-lying Colorado Plateau rocks to the deformed rocks of the San Rafael Swell |
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| Eagle Canyon Overlook |
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| The eastern edge of the Basin and Range Province |
Our destination for the night was the area around Great Basin
National Park, just over the line on Route 50 in Nevada. Crossing the
most easterly of the north-south trending ranges of the Basin and
Range region, we entered our first basin and traversed the flat
desert again, passing Sevier Lake which is a dry lake bed that forms
a huge salt flat. All my internet research was also coming up dry in
my search for a boondocking spot for the night. The Forest Service
campgrounds were still closed for the season, or for refurbishing,
and we couldn't find information about dispersed camping, outside the
established campgrounds. We decided to go into the national park, to
the one campground open all year, and pay for a site with no
amenities. Even the water is still turned off this time of year.
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| Sevier Dry Lake |
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| Wheeler Peak above Great Basin National Park |
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| Rancher's WHOA sign where he got tired of fixing his fence. |
Just before the park we saw a BLM (Bureau of Land Management) sign
for the Baker Archeological Site. A short ride down a dirt road took
us to an area of a dig finished in 1994 of a settlement of the
Fremont peoples, a group that lived at the same time as the better
known Anasazi, who inhabited Mesa Verde. The nice gravel parking lot
looked like a perfect boondocking spot on BLM land, so we stayed. We
hiked to the ruins and then settled in for the night. We had a broad
flat plain around us with a small town in the distance, and a few
small farms, and a spectacular view of Wheeler Peak in the national
park.
Thursday morning we drove into the park and hiked up the Lehman
Creek trail. Time to get our sluggish bodies moving again after our
time back East! It was a beautiful spring morning. A great time for a
hike in the woods, but the over 7,000' altitude really kicked our
derrieres. We hiked up part of the trail, found the remains of the
Oceola Ditch where miners had flumed water many miles from the creek
to their mine, and got a good look at Lehman Creek. Coming down was
easier, and we saw numerous butterflies, and a wild turkey.
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| Wheeler Peak, again |
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| Lehman Creek trail, snow free only three days. |
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| Lehman Creek still had a lot of ice in it. |
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| Osceola Ditch - dug to divert stream water to a gold mine 18 miles away. |
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| Moss in bloom |
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| Looking down from Upper Lehman Campground |
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| Heading across Nevada |
We drove to the visitors center and filled up some water jugs and
continued west across Nevada. We were amazed at the scenery as we
continued to cross basins and ranges on our move west. The ranges are
still snow covered and the peaks are mostly 10,000' to over 11,000'.
We had no idea that Nevada has this kind of diverse terrain and
beauty. Most of America thinks that Nevada is just Las Vegas and
deserts. With so many other spectacular, easier to reach and
therefore more popular places in the West, there isn't time to
include Nevada on traveler's itineraries.
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| Turbines catching the prevailing wind coming down the basin. |
Traveling southwest from Ely on Route 6, we found ourselves in a
more barren, desert area, but still within the Basin and Range. We
were aiming for the desolate rest area on Route 6 we overnighted in a
free Forest Service camp a few months ago after leaving Lake Mead.
Our Benchmark Atlas of Nevada, (love those guides!), showed the Lunar
Crater National Natural Landmark coming up. It is on BLM land, so we
were fairly certain we could boondock there for the night. After a
false start on a dirt road that got too rough, we found the better
dirt road into the area and drove 6 miles through a barren volcanic
landscape to Lunar Crater. We had to wait for the open range cows and
calves to get up from their spots lying in the warm sand on the road,
and put up with some bad wash-boarded road to get there.
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| We had no room to go around, so we waited for the babies to get up and walk away. |
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| Six miles in to Lunar Crater |
The journey was so worth it! We spent last night in a small gravel
parking lot perched on the rim of a huge 500' deep crater at 7,000'
elevation. Before dark we took a short walk along the rim. We are
surrounded by old cinder cones and craters. The only signs of human
life are the sign that simply says Lunar Crater, and some graffiti on
a few rocks. Guess we aren't the first to find this spot! Last night
was the quietest and darkest place we have ever been. The stars were
brilliant and we had a sliver of the moon until it set early. There
were no lights anywhere in the distance.
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| This volcanic caldera is about 3,000 feet across and 500 feet deep. |
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| Looking west toward US 6 |
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| Lichen |
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| Looking along the rim |
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| The view from our windshield |
Before sundown we could see and hear jets high above us streaking
toward San Francisco. The nightime quiet was surreal. Greg went
outside and had two large bats fly close to him to check him out!
This morning a few birds began to stir. The sky is cloudless and the
sun is heating the day up quickly. Greg decided that this geology
deserved a morning hike, so he is off to explore while I write. When
he returns we will continue on Route 6 to Bishop, California on the
eastern side of the Sierra-Nevada range. We have no phone or internet
here, nada, so we will post when we get back to civilization!
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| Fierce Wildlife |
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| Ryolite ash (light gray) trapped under the last lava flow |
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| The RV is the small dot on the rim near the center of the picture |
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| Horned Lizard, so well camouflaged that he is hard to see even though Greg had the camera a few inches away. |
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| View from the highest knob on the rim across to the RV and the road back out. |
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| RV on the rim! |
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| One of the other Cinder Cones in the area |
