Category Archives: Vacations

Small town happenings

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After spending the day at Great Basin, I was beat and didn’t feel like cooking so after cleaning up I decided to try the local Chinese restaurant which was recommended by one of the campground staff.

For all you inquiring minds, I had the Kung Pao Combination with shrimp, chicken and beef.  It was tasty!

Before heading back to the campground I decided to take a drive through Ely, just to see what kind of town it is.  It’s a town of about 5,000 including the surrounding areas.  As you can imagine, my drive through town took all of about 10 minutes.

As I was passing through downtown I noticed a big white truck with two guys playing music – one on guitar and the other on an electric fiddle.  They were playing “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” so I decided to stop and listen.  Turns out, it was a rally for Jack Carter for US Senate.  If you’re wondering if there’s any relation to that other Carter, you’re right, he’s Jimmy Carter’s oldest son.  There were only about 30-40 people there.  His wife wanted to give me a “Vote for Jack” sticker, but I told here I was from out of state.  Of course, she said they were going to be in Minnesota for a rally…  He seems like a good guy though – even if he is a Democrat.

Anyway, getting back to the music, the guy on the fiddle was fantastic and the other guy was pretty good too.  Jack even got up and played guitar on a couple of numbers.  The fiddler is Barry Van Wie if anyone’s interested.  http://www.barryvanwie.com/

I think they cut the music a bit short after Jack’s speech as it looked like some nasty weather was coming in.  I headed back to camp and am now hunkered in my tent.  The wind is blowing pretty good, but I don’t think we’re going to see any rain.

Day 9 – Great Basin NP

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I spent the day at Great Basin NP.  This area, known as the Basin and Range, is really quite interesting and the Park is fantastic.

If you’re wondering what the name Great Basin refers to, its a geographic region which encompases nearly all of Nevada and parts of all the surrounding states.  Basically it’s a region comprised of elevated mountains or mountain ranges with desert valleys separating them.  What makes the basin area interesting is that all of the preciptiation that falls here, stays here, because of the mountain ranges.  It doesn’t run ultimately to the ocean like everywhere else.

The elevation differences in Great Basin NP make for some prety dramatic views of the surrounding areas.  There is something like an 8,000 ft difference from the summit of Wheeler Peak to the surrounding deserts.  Pictures don’t do it justice, you really have to see it first hand.

As I was only spending the one day here, I wasn’t able to do the summit hike of Wheeler Peak as that’s an all day thing and you really have to be off the summit before noon in order to avoid the routine afternoon thunderstorm.  Instead, I took the scenic drive up to the campground at 10,000 ft and took the Alpine Lakes hike.  It was about a 3 mile hike which offered lots of great views of Wheeler peak and it’s neighbor, Jeff Davis Peak. Wheeler peak at 13,063 ft is the second highest in Nevada (sorry, but I don’t know the first).  The lakes on this hike were really more like ponds, but it was still worth the effort.

After that, I went back down to the visitor center and took the tour of Lehman Cave.  Lots of really cool cave stuff including the most “shields” of any cave in the world.  Shields are a rare cave formation where water under pressure exits through a crack or weak point in the cave.  Because the water is under pressure, the shields can form at all sorts of angles.

I’ll have to come back here someday and take the Wheeler summit hike, the view has got to be amazing.  I’d stay in the park the next time – I drove through the campground at the trailhead to the summit hike and it’s really nice!

Day 8 – From Utah to Nevada

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Today was slated as a driving day, and that’s what I did.  I drove from Vernal, UT to Ely, NV which is a distance of 410 miles.

Driving west out of Vernal, the landscape slowly changes from the desolation of the scrub-land to the desolation of the the mountains.  Actually the mountain views leading up to Salt Lake City are really nice, unfortunately there are no places to safely pull aside as it’s just a two lane highway, so I wasn’t able to take many pictures here.  The only opportunity I had was to get a couple of shots of Wasatch Mountain near Daniels, UT.

After rolling through Park City, UT – where a lot of the 2002 Winter Olympic events were held the next stop was the Great Salt Lake. There’s actually not much to see from the road, but that’s OK.

My route took me close to the Bonneville Salt Flats and there is a rest stop conveniently located right along the southern edge.  I stopped there and snapped a few more photos.

From there it was a short hop over the border into Nevada and then it really got desolate. Today’s picture of the day shows pretty much what the drive down US93 from Wendover to Ely is like.  The views are actually pretty nice.

Lots of pictures to be posted soon.

Day 7

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I spent Saturday at Dinosaur National Monument, which straddles the Colorado/Utah border.  The landscape here is absolutely incredible.  I took tons of pictures and hope to get some posted later tonight.

Unfortunately, the main attraction at Dinosaur, an active fossil quarry, was closed indefinitely on July 12, due to safety issues.  Apparently the building that houses the quarry was built on an unstable area of ground and has had problems ever since it opened back in the 50’s.  They were conducting some sort of inspection and determined that it was simply not safe to operate at this time.  So, I was a bit bummed not being able to see that, but the scenic drives and hikes were worth coming here by themselves.  Simply amazing.

That took up pretty much the entire day – I got back to my campsite about 4:30 and after having been out in the 95 to 100 degree heat all day I couldn’t just sit at my campsite.  If I had some shade I maybe could have managed it, but without any shade it was simply unbearable.  So, I went to another movie “You, Me and Dupree”.  It was a so-so movie, but the AC was wonderful and by the time the movie let out, it was nice and cool again.

Day 6

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I rolled out of my tent about 6:30 this morning.  It had sprinkled a little bit during the night and so I had to pack up my tent wet – that’s always fun.

Today was pretty uneventful, just driving from Estes Park, CO to Vernal, UT.  Tomorrow, I’m going to Dinosaur National Monument.  I stopped for a few pictures on my way out of Rocky Mountain NP, but the western side doesn’t offer quite as many nice mountain views, so I didn’t stop that often.

I thought driving across the Dakotas and Nebraska can be desolate, but that was until I drove through northwestern Colorado today.  Talk about empty apparently worthless land. The landscape is interesting, but there’s absolutely nothing between Steamboat Springs and the Utah border and that’s close to 200 miles.  There was one stretch of 57 between towns that even had gas stations.  There were a couple of little “towns” in between but they were little more than a couple of run down buildings and maybe a house.

I got to Verrnal, UT and it was a blistering 97 degrees.  I set the tent up and then couldn’t take it.  I grabbed a bite to eat in town and then went to see the movie “The Lady in the Water”.  It was another of those off the wall M. Night Shyamalan (sp?) movies.  All in all it was pretty good and when the movie was over it had cooled down quite nicely outside.  It’s now in the low 80s with a light breeze and the temp should drop into the 60s – perfect!