Day 61: Great Basin National Park, NV to Cedar City, UT

We wake up at 7am and have breakfast. A half hour later, we are out and hiking the Alpine Lakes trail, a 3 mile-loop to Stella and Teresa Lakes. Nevada is not the place where we expect to see the fall coloration, but at this elevation, the colors are very bright, especially the yellow from the birch and quaking aspen. We surprise some mule deer eating in the grassy meadows, and come across the gnarled and twisted Bristle Cone Pines, some of them being several thousand years old. Wheeler Peak is in the background, bathing in the sun.

Back to the car, we start the steep drive down. We stop at viewpoints to let the car rest, but when we arrive at Lehman Cave Visitor Center, the wheels are smoking hot. As we still have more than 1,500 feet to descend, Yellow waters the wheels, and they steam heavily. We depart from the Visitor Center an hour later.

Back in the valley, we stop at Baker, NV, to get some gas. The next town 6 miles further, Garrison, is in Utah, which means that we enter Mountain Time Zone. The next 76 miles driving south-east on UT-21 are the loneliest and most desolate so far, more than “the Loneliest Road”. We cross vast valleys and large mountain ranges, driving up and down between 4,500 and 6,500 feet. A straight line in the valley and a steep, strenuous road over the pass.

 

We stop for lunch at a picnic place. Looking around, we realize that we find ourselves at Old Frisco Mining Town, another one of those booming mining towns ending up as a ghost town. We were wondering about it, as we observed signs of heavy mining at the base of the San Francisco Mountains.

Born in 1875 after discovering some silver, the Frisco mining town sprang up in a matter of weeks and became the west’s toughest mining camp. Murders were a daily occurrence, and history claims that an average of 12 men per night were killed. This could only explain why the Frisco Cemetery was the biggest in the state at the time.

Frisco grew to an estimated population of over 6,000 people. There were 21 saloons, hotels, gambling halls and a red light district that would have rivaled many towns in the west. Today the charcoal kilns and many of the old buildings still stand. Some of the old mining equipment can still be seen rusting away on the desert floor.

 

Going down the mountain parallel to what used to be a railroad, we get back to civilization in Milford, UT. The real civilization with the green grass lawns in the front yard. The valley is quite developed until Minersville, UT. But the drive to our destination, Cedar City, goes through a desolate landscape again.

Arrived to destination, we settle down at Country Aire RV Park and get some showers, well deserved since the last time in Reno, NV. The rest of the day is busy with studying, cooking, cleaning and taking care of our future after the honeymoon. Yes, the honeymoon will stop one day.

Day 60: Illipah Reservoir to Great Basin National Park, NV

We wake up to a very chilly morning in the middle of nothing. Our fridge, on the contrary, is not very cold, even warmer than the temperature inside the motorhome. Not good!

 

The sun is rising slowly in a cloudless sky, warming everything very fast. We are enjoying a delicious breakfast featuring blueberry pancakes. It is very calm around us. Some people are already on their boat fishing in the reservoir. All around us are sagebrush fields, with some horses, may be wild, roaming. In the back, rugged mountains are covering the horizon in every direction. The area is rich in ghost towns, with the most famous of them being Hamilton. Unfortunately, the dirt road to get to the town remains is too rough for Bertha. But let us tell you more about this town.

Late one night in July 1867, A. J. Leathers was sleeping in his cabin high up on White Pine Mountain, when he was awakened by some strange noises. He got up from his bunk and found an Indian eating some leftover beans he had for dinner. Leathers kicked the Indian out of the cabin. A couple of days later, the Indian came back, this time with a piece of silver ore for payment of the beans he had eaten. Leathers then convinced the Indian to lead him to the spot where the ore was found.

Two years later, the nearby town of Hamilton had a population of around 25,000 and boasted of having some 22 lawyers, 101 saloons, 59 general stores, churches, banks, a soda factory, breweries, a stage station and a morning newspaper by the name of the Daily Inland Empire along with many other businesses.

But the ore deposits proved shallow and by 1870 the region was already in decline as many residents left as quickly as they had come. After two disastrous fires in 1873 and 1885, the county seat was moved to Ely and pretty soon, nobody was around anymore.

 

We leave in the middle of the morning and drive toward Ely, the next town. At a higher elevation, the landscape is less desolate, with sparse forests.

Ely is a sprawling community – with a population of 4,255 in 2010 – at the intersection of US-6, US-50, and US-93. Ely's mining boom came later than the other towns along US 50, with the discovery of copper in 1906. But what a great discovery that led to the massive Kennecott-owned Liberty Pit copper mines, Nevada’s largest and longest-lived mining venture, which produced over a billion dollars worth of ore while employing nearly 10,000 people at its peak during the 1950s. The town survived with some gold mining until recently, with the dramatic increase in demand for copper in the last 10 years, making Ely a mining boomtown again.

 

We stop downtown to take some pictures. That’s when Yellow randomly meets an old man originally from Belgian, working in the gold mining industry. Nevada being the third “country” in the world for gold production, he tells him that there are lots of opportunities for gold prospection. Always good to know! Later, we take advantage of the free wifi at McDonald’s again and, after getting some gas, we leave Ely in the middle of the afternoon.

The route east of Ely toward Great Basin National Park is an official “scenic route,” rolling across sagebrush plains and climbing over the Schell Creek and Snake mountain ranges through dense groves of pine and juniper.

 

Arriving at Great Basin National Park, we first stop at the visitor center. The park is notable for its groves of ancient bristlecone pines, and for the Lehman Caves at the base of 13,063-foot (3,982 m) Wheeler Peak. We drive up the second highest point in Nevada to get to Wheeler Peak campground, where we are going to spend the night, at an elevation of 10,000 ft. The road is very steep, and we pass through every type of vegetation, from desert to beautiful fall-colored forests at the campground. The vistas of the peaks and over Great Basin are impressive.

 

We arrive at the campground at dusk and have dinner, before spending part of the evening playing card games. After watching an episode of our favorite TV show, we go to bed before 10pm and sleep at the highest overnight point of our trip.

Day 59: Reno, NV to Illipah Reservoir, NV

We wake up around 8am after a difficult night challenged by a heavy digestion. We take a shower, pack and leave the room. A long day driving awaits us.

Back to the RV, Red notices, disbelieving, that the gas cap is missing. Again. The problem is that it is probably missing since last time we got gas, which was in Susanville, CA. There is no way we can get that gas cap back. Not knowing exactly what to do, we call Joe the Mechanic. It seems that it shouldn’t be any problem to get a new gas cap. And it’s true. We get one at O’Reilly’s, on our way out of town.

We stop at a nearby McDonald’s so Red can have her caffeine intake for the day. Meanwhile, Yellow is exploring the parking lot, and looking at a pick-up truck and a trailer tuned up with a bunch of recycled items, transformed into very artistic pieces. A old woman with a ton of make-up stops by the trailer and starts talking to Yellow about the artist, a homeless guy that might be dead, as nobody heard from him for a couple of days. The police left him a notification telling to move his vehicle. May be he is in the trailer actually, the door is open, and it is a total mess inside. We’re not really motivated to look inside. Red has her coffee, so we got out of there.

 

 

 

And pretty fast, we’re back in a desolate area. We make sure to get some gas each time we see a gas station, because today, after reaching Fallon, we’re driving east on US-50 – “The Loneliest Road in America”.

 

The route crosses mostly desolate terrain in the journey across Nevada: a succession of mountain ranges and large desert valleys or basins. To crest some of the passes requires navigating steep and winding roads through pine forests to reach altitudes of over 7,000 feet. In the stretch of interest between Fallon and Delta, Utah, a span of 409 miles (658 km), there are only three small towns, Austin, Eureka and Ely. And a couple of ghost towns here and there. The route was constructed over a historic corridor, first used for the Pony Express.

 

 

The first experience we have on US-50 is being passes by a car filled with guys that flipped us off once in front of us, throwing some cans out of the window. No wonder there is so much litter on the side of the road. Something else that is on the side of that road, at least at the beginning, is a bunch of names and other things written with rocks and they go on for miles. In the sky, being in the midst of a U.S. Navy target range, supersonic fighters play electronic war games across the alkali flats. We encounter a sand dune on the left side, called Sand Mountain. But soon there is nothing more than some historical plaques marking Pony Express stations. And the arid wilderness, cut in two by long stretches of straight road.

 

 

Austin lies 110 miles (180 km) east of Fallon. The city, founded by Pony Express riders that discovered silver, was a mining boomtown that now describes itself as a living ghost town. In 1862, at the peak of the silver boom, Austin had a population of 10,000 people. Today, about 300 residents remain. We stop there for gas, and move on.

 

Passing Austin, we encounter hairpin turns and steep grades in the ascent up Austin Summit in the Toiyabe Range. We’re going to be at an elevation higher than 6,000 ft for the next 24 hours. Which is not surprising, as Nevada’s average elevation is 5,500 ft.

 

The next town is Eureka, which bills itself as the "Friendliest Town on the Loneliest Road in America". Eureka was similarly founded as a mining boomtown. The population boomed, reaching also a high of 10,000 by 1878, but shrank as decreasing mine production and changing market conditions led to the closing of mines. Mining still remains a large component of the community – 610 residents – and its economy. The centerpiece of the historical district of downtown Eureka is the Eureka Opera House, built in 1880.

We stop for gas again, and take a couple of pictures. We try to get some internet, but it’s not successful. So we get back on the road again. Mountain ranges covered with forests, due to the high elevation, alternate again with large basins. Sunset is beautiful behind us, but we have to be careful about elk running around. The rest of the drive is under the moon, almost full. And nothing else around as the darkness takes over what the moonlight can’t.

 

It is in the middle of this nothingness that we arrive at Illipah Reservoir, somewhere between Eureka and Ely, Nevada. We first miss the access dirt road before driving to the free campground managed by the Bureau of Land Management. Several RVs are around, and somebody from Las Vegas spending the week fishing crawfish at the Reservoir helps us with the campground.

 

We settle down at a somewhat leveled site, nicely furnished with a protected picnic table and a grill. Fortunately, the wind is not very strong. The night is chilly though, and we warm ourselves with some yellow split pea soup for dinner.

We go to bed around 10pm to the sound of howling coyotes.

Day 58: Almanor Lake, CA to Reno, NV

It is very chilly this morning as we get up. We warm up with a coffee for Red and a hot chocolate for Yellow along with breakfast. The sun takes care of the rest as it rises higher and higher. Red studies and Yellow takes care of Bertha during the rest of this relaxing morning.

We leave the campground at the end of the morning, driving toward the southeast. After driving through a mountain range again, the road winds down rapidly and we find ourselves in the downtown area of Sunsanville, CA, where we stop for gas and groceries.

We are now on the edge of the Great Basin, a vast plateau featuring large basins and high mountain ranges, which is going to be our setting until we reach Utah. In fact, we are probably not going to be at an elevation lower than 5,000 ft for a while. Plus we are in transition to desert-like areas, and we can already feel it. The air is dry, and it is clearly hot here this afternoon.

The rest of the drive feels like we are finally in the Wild West, driving around a dry lake and over dry rivers, without any forest and barely any vegetation around. It is arid and desolate. Cattle ranches seem to be the only way to use the land.

We arrive in Reno, NV, in the middle of the afternoon, and check in at Sands Regency Casino & Hotel, for a room that is cheaper than most of our RV sites. We spend some time studying and planning the next days from a room situated on the 16^th floor, overlooking the western part of town.

 

In the evening, we take a walk downtown – mostly made up of casinos – and have dinner at The Buffet in the Eldorado Casino, supposed to be the best one. The food is OK – like usual all-you-can-eat buffet food – but our stomachs are full: the real American food experience!

 

 

We walk back to the hotel, annoyed by the first signs of a challenging digestion, and spend the evening planning and watching TV.

Day 57: Lassen Volcanic National Park

After a very restful night, we get up around 8am and have breakfast with some of the fresh loaf of bread made yesterday evening. We take advantage of the campground internet, before cleaning, packing and leaving before noon.

We start driving up to Lassen Volcanic National Park. The dominant feature of the park is Lassen Peak, southernmost volcano in the Cascade Range. Between 1914 and 1921, creating a new crater, and releasing lave and a great deal of ash. The area surrounding Lassen Peak is still active, as we will discover later.

After stopping at the visitor center, we start discovering this national park. We explore Devastated Area, which features – as described by its name – an area devastated after the eruption. It is there that Yellow is using for the first time the new camera, taking Mt. Lassen in picture.

 

We eat lunch at Summit Lake and drive toward the summit. The elevation of the road is once again higher than 8,000 ft. Poor Bertha. Right after starting to go down, we park at Bumpass Hell’s trailhead parking lot. Bumpass Hell is the largest hydrothermal area in the park, and was named after an early settler who severly burned a leg after falling into a boiling pool.

 

The trail is the most popular of the park, and it is pretty flat until the 100 ft drop into the thermally active basin. The area can be seen – and especially smelled! – from far away. It is a wide basin filled with various steaming pools and unusual multi-colored soils, stained orange, brown, yellow and green by sulphur and other minerals. Interesting fact: the steam temperature of Big Boiler, the largest fumarole in the park, has been measured as high as 322°F (161°C), making it one of the hottest fumaroles in the world. World’s best, once again!

 

Back in the RV after the 3 mile hike, we drive down and stop shortly at Sulphur Works, an easily accessed hydrothermal area features boiling mudpots and steam vents. We leave Lassen Volcanic NP at the end of the afternoon, and drive down to Almanor Lake.

 

We arrive at our destination for the night, Almanor campground, an hour later. The campground is beautiful, freshly paved with full hook-up sites. Unfortunately, we were looking for some cheaper sites indicated by the website. We check online to see if there are other campgrounds in the area, but we don’t find any. We finally decide to stay at this campground. Yellow decide to go pay for the campground with his bike, so he can browse around to the lake, which he does after slipping the envelop with the money in the payment box. And what does he discover? That's right close to the campground where we are now installed, which is Almanor Legacy campground, is the cheaper, less fancy Almanor campground. Too late.

Red studies for a good part of the evening, while Yellow cooks some yellow split pea soup, which takes forever as the pressure cooker is almost full. We finally have dinner at 8pm. After cleaning and sorting pictures, we watch an episode of The Big Bang Theory and go to bed.

Day 56: Lava Beds NM to Old Station, CA

We wake up to some metallic noises around 5am this morning. Yellow unplugs his ears and Red is looking for the light. The mouse is probably the cause of this trouble. Red turns the bed light on and we look around. Suddenly, we see the mouse hanging around the kitchen counter. With great agility, the mouse jumps to the seat close to the bed, and down to the ground. Probably, it went up to the counter that way too. This mouse can jump up to 2 ft high! Well, with great agility, Yellow jumps out of the bed and start chasing the mouse while Red is keeping the beam of the flash light directly on it. The mouse chose to flee to the bathroom, and then, under pressure, to run close to the side door, closing himself in. Yellow finally catches it under a plastic container. The mouse is now trapped. Yellow places a piece of cardboard under the plastic container, and flips it over. Then, very carefully, he brings the container top to top of the container and closes it. Done!

The mouse is still fighting though, and jumping to the top of its jail. Yellow shakes the container until the mouse doesn’t react. The mouse is knocked out. We go back to bed but Red doesn’t want the mouse in the motorhome anymore. So we go the campground's women’s restrooms. We carefully open the plastic container and we see the mouse, probably some kind of gerbil, lying down on its poop. We take a couple of pictures and dump the rodent in the toilet. We flush. Gone, the mouse is finally gone!

The sun is starting to rise so we stay up and continue our day. We check the fridge and it seems that the drop noises were coming from there yesterday: there is a small puddle at the bottom of the fridge. The gas light is low, but it doesn’t shut off. The fridge is not cold enough but it seems the freezer is still doing its job. We don’t really understand that fridge anyway, so we focus on cleaning and disinfecting the motorhome now that the mouse is out of here.

It is 7:45am when we leave that morning, and we drive to Merril Cave to hike on the Whitney Butte trail. Unfortunately, it is too hazy to see Mt. Shasta today. Similar to Mt. Baker or Mt. Rainier, Mt. Shasta is a volcanic mountain overlooking its surroundings, as one of the highest points in California. We get back to the motorhome and check out the other curiosities of the area, like Fleener Chimneys.

Around the Visitor Center and all over the parks, lava tubes are one of the main attractions. We chose to visit Mushpot Cave, the only lava tube that has lights. 

Then we leave Lava Beds NM and drive back to Tulelake to avoid dirt roads. The sun is bright and it is pretty hot. The lands are very dry on the 4,000 ft plateau, even desolate when they are not irrigated. Then, we go through large forests, probably at a higher elevation. Cattle ranches are occupying most of the land otherwise. The few towns we pass look like trailer parks. As we get closer to Lassen Volcanic NP, the forests get denser.

 

We arrive at Hat Creek Resort & RV Park in Old Station, CA, in the middle of the afternoon. It seems that one of the big bumps encountered during the drive made the fridge work better. Who knows? After a cold beer, we get a well-deserved shower after a couple of days without one. Red studies for a bit and then we prepare a cold soba noodle salad and some bread for breakfast. At dusk, we have to walk closer to the office to be able to get on the internet. And at 9:30pm, we are in bed after a tough day.

Day 55: Crater Lake National Park, OR to Lava Beds National Monument, CA, with a new RVmate

The morning is cold, and we wake up slowly. Red opens her eyes and says:

“ Man, you made a mess in the bathroom during the night!
- What do you mean?
- There are a bunch of tiny pieces of toilet paper on the ground…”

Yellow knows right away what she is talking about. Of course, he didn’t make a mess. And here he sees it, still messing around the toilet paper: a freaking mouse! We have goose bumps writing about it right now. Slowly, Yellow tries to go toward the mouse, but the rodent runs, jumps very nimbly to an opening and hides in the bottom space of a cabinet, between the bath tub and the stove. There, we discover that the mouse started to nest with the toilet paper. We figure out rapidly that it came through the space under the bath tub, as there is an opening from there to the nesting space. Yellow, cleans the nest area and block the access to the bath tub – and the outside – with some plastic bags. At least, we can hear something if the mouse starts to dig through. But hopefully, the mouse got scared and left the motorhome.

We try to get warm with breakfast, and get out of here. We stop for gas and drive back to Crater Lake. There are no rivers flowing into or out of the lake; the evaporation is compensated for by rain and snowfall. On the basis of maximum depth, Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the US, the second deepest in North America, after Great Slave Lake in Canada.

We stop at Cloudcap Overlook, and hike for a bit to check out the Pinnacles. It is sunny but chilly with the blowing wind. The road is very bumpy.

We stop at several viewpoints along the east rim, when Red realizes that the gas cap is missing. Yellow probably forgot to put it back at the gas station. It is not the first time it happens, but it is the first time that we haven't noticed before we left the gas station. Anyway, Mazama Village is on the way out, so we stop there, find the gas cap where it was forgotten and drive away from Crater Lake NP on the Volcano Legacy Scenic Byway.

On the way to Klamath Falls, OR, we drive across flat, large valleys. The fields are filled with stumps and the dry, scarce grass doesn’t prevent cattle ranching.

We finally arrive in Klamath Falls, county seat of Klamath County, in Oregon, named after the first known inhabitants of the area, the Klamath tribe. There, on this high desert plateau at an elevation of 4,000 feet, we get back on US-97, that we shortly used to cross the Columbia River. There, we stop for a couple of hours to go to our favorite Northwest spot – Fred Meyer and McDonald’s – and buy a new camera at another road trip favorite, Walmart. We were just planning to check out some cameras, but, as Oregon has no sales tax, we end up buying a new Panasonic camera. Before buying it, of course, we checked online to see if it was worth it. It seems so, but we will see in the long run.

Back on the road, we leave Oregon and enter California. The area is very arid, with lots of potato and onion fields in the irrigated areas. We arrive in Tulelake, CA, and get a little bit lost looking for the visitor center in this small town. After seeing some signs and looking for more information on Wikipedia, we learn that Tulelake happened to have two World War II internment camps in the area: the Tulelake camp was an Italian and German prisoner-of-war camp to the east. The other internment camp housed nearly 18,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese alien residents and was in operation from May 1942 to March 1946. The Tule Lake War Relocation Center, renamed Tule Lake Segregation Center in 1943, was the largest and most controversial of the ten Japanese internment camps in the United States.

Tulelake, nowadays, seems to have a high percentage of Hispanic people, probably working in the surrounding potato fields. From there, we drive on the edge of Tule Lake National Wildlife Reserve, part of the larger Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge Complex, supporting diverse and abundant populations of resident and migratory wildlife. Historically, the Klamath Basin was dominated by shallow lakes and freshwater marshes. 75% of these extensive wetlands have been converted to agricultural lands since 1905.

South of the NWR is Lava Beds National Monument. Driving across the desert landscape with lava fields and other weird basaltic landscapes is beautiful with the sunset. Wild wild west it really is, with nobody around except a warm breeze.

We arrive at the campground in the evening, and have dinner in this very enjoyable environment. That is until we go to bed. We hear noises. Noises of the wind playing with the trees. Noises of dripping water, may be from the fridge. Noises from the mouse trying to get through the plastic bag wall. Yellow, hopeless, builds an aluminum barricade with duck tape. And we try to get to sleep with or without ear plugs. Around midnight, we are finally asleep. For how long? Wait until next blog entry.