Crossing Utah, the Basin and Range, and Another Crater!

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.

Typical Colorado Plateau Landscape along I-70 in Utah

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

Eagle Canyon Overlook

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.

Sevier Dry Lake

Wheeler Peak above Great Basin National Park

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.

Wheeler Peak, again

Lehman Creek trail, snow free only three days.

Lehman Creek still had a lot of ice in it.

Osceola Ditch - dug to divert stream water to a gold mine 18 miles away.

Moss in bloom

Looking down from Upper Lehman Campground

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.

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.

We had no room to go around, so we waited for the babies to get up and walk away.

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.

This volcanic caldera is about 3,000 feet across and 500 feet deep.

Looking west toward US 6

Lichen

Looking along the rim

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!

Fierce Wildlife

Ryolite ash (light gray) trapped under the last lava flow

The RV is the small dot on the rim near the center of the picture

Horned Lizard, so well camouflaged that he is hard to see even though Greg had the camera a few inches away.

View from the highest knob on the rim across to the RV and the road back out.

RV on the rim!

One of the other Cinder Cones in the area