A Lake, A Cell, A Basin and a Break(s)

May 15, 2021

Saturday, May 15 for Thursday and Friday, March 13 & 14, 2021

A rough-and-tumble couple days, with lots of different places and many pictures.

On Thursday morning, we set out from our motel in Truckee, CA and drove into Incline Village, Nevada. If you ever heard of these two, you know we were near Lake Tahoe (the Lake in the title of this entry).

Props to Randy for these pictures. I was driving, and the scenes of the Lake were out the passenger window. Randy took many of these while whizzing by at 45 or so.

We stopped for a rest break at Eureka, NV.

We ended up in Ely, NV, almost all the way across Nevada from where we started. (It was fairly boring, you can tell by lack of pictures! We stayed Thursday night in the Jailhouse Motel and Casino. We had to check in at the Casino desk, and got out of there as soon as we could, it was a smoking section. Yuck!

Our room shows why I put Cell in the title of the entry. There was an annual Road Rally going on in that town, so our motel and others in the town were filled with participants and Team members. There were a couple nice cars to see, some rather ordinary. I took the pictures of one right next to the door, and it belonged to John, who was in Cell 107!

Even if you enjoy cars, you're probably asking "What IS that?" It is a one-off, custom designed and made model. I think it looked like a Lamborghini, but John said it was specifically made for him. It had a "stock" Chevy 502 engine, and he said the fastest he has driven it was 150, "but it may have more in it."

Friday we left Ely early, because we expected a full day.

We were heading to Baker, NV, and Great Basin National Park. It is near the Utah border. (The Basin in my title.)

If you are a fan and know a LOT about our National Parks, you may have heard of this one. We had not, and only found it by accident of looking over the NPS app and seeing it was the only Park in Nevada. It turned out quite nice to visit. As Randy says, they made it a National Park for a reason.

That is my foot next to a pile of snow at about 8500 feet.

The mountain in the background is Wheeler Peak. We could not get to the top, at 13,063 feet, but we made the long and winding drive as close as they would let us -- which is where this picture was taken.

The following pictures were taken on the way up and down, and as we were leaving the Park. Notice there was snow all over the place at altitude.

As we left the area of the Park and Baker, we passed Hinckley, and Milford.

I asked Randy to take the picture of this lonely little tree to tell a story. When we were kids, traveling east from Ohio to Pennsylvania or New York, our Dad would think of things to keep us occupied. He might say, guess how long it will take to catch up to that truck, or how far do you think that mountain or church or some other object was. So I told Randy from that point, I figured the tree was about 3/4 of a mile ahead, and tracked it by the odometer. It was a mile even. I must not have learned much!

In the Milford area, there were many "open range" cattle. We had seen those signs all over the West, but had never seen cattle so close to the road -- or IN the road. We saw a lot of carcasses on the side of the road, probably from being hit by cars. If one was driving this road at night -- and a black cow walked out into the road -- you'd never see it.

We were headed to the Cedar City area, to a place called Brian Head.

We checked into our hotel, which was a Best Western Premier (a first for us), which was normally a ski lodge. Since we are obviously out-of-season, we got a favorable rate. And we were very close to --

(The Break(s) in my title.) Randy found this one, which is a National Monument rather than Park, using the app again.

This Monument had a driving trail with about 12 potential stops, but most of them were trail heads or campgrounds, and most of those were closed for the season. (Many will open in the next few weeks, we found at ALL the Parks.) We found four overlooks.

The Parks Service had us on the first overlook. We said this is more of what we expected at the Grand Canyon. In some respects, this was better than the Grand Canyon, not is scope or size, but in the immediacy of the viewer to the scene. We looked right down into the canyon.

We really hope we aren't wearing you out with so many pictures, it was just so spectacular. If anyone reading ever hopes to visit western National Parks, I would add this one to your list.

What you have looked at are really the same canyon, but all from different sides and slightly different elevations. Your perspective changes, the lighting changes, the way you see the texture of the land changes.

The picture of Randy at the top is also from Point Supreme.

You might think we should be done, but while back at our hotel, we spoke with another guest, and he told Randy -- you have got to go back to the first overlook at sunset (about 8:45 P Mountain Time). So we did!