Great Basin National Park

Great Basin National Park, created in 1986, is on the Utah-Nevada border along US 50.  Lehman Cave, within the park, became a National Monument in 1922.  There are multiple caves within the park.  Our guide, a seasonal ranger who retired from the California Parks System, and had always loved these caves and who now lives in Bend, led a fascinating tour of this amazing cave.  It isn't very large (2 miles total), but its features are absolutely amazing.  The cave was "discovered" by Absalom Lehman in 1885 and he quickly began to charge people $1 to tour the cavern.  It is a live cave.


Lehman Cave is famous for its speleothems, particularly its shields.  Speleothems are the general term for stalactites, stalagmites, columns, draperies, flowstone, soda straws, cave bacon, shields and helicites.  These structures, pictured to the left are thin growths that go in all sorts of directions because the water is oozing out so slowly that they don't form just straight down or up.  The grey is shadow on the wall.  They look a lot like coral growths.










The most famous things in Lehman Cave are the discs.  They occur in all sorts of positions and are created when water is ejected under pressure.  There are always two discs that grow at the same rate, separated by a very thin crack where the water comes out.  The water that manages to get out of the disc will create draperies, popcorn or other growths on the outside of the discs.  At times one of the discs will fall off the ceiling.  No one knows why Lehman Cave has so many discs.











More amazing pictures.













Can you find all the discs?































The most famous discs in the cave.  They are called the parachute, but our guide said a child had described them as an elephant stepping on a piece of bubblegum.

































                   Thursday morning we woke up very early to drive up the road to Wheeler Peak to walk to the bristlecone pine forest and to avoid the wind.  On the way we passed through different vegetation levels, including juniper, pinon pine, Douglas Fir, curly leaf mahogony, Lehman Pine, spruce, etc.  We also passed the Osceola Ditch, an 18-mile long flume to divert water from Lehman Creek on the east side of the park to the mines of Osceola on the west side where they engaged in placer mining.  The tiny glacier on Wheeler Peak is the southernmost glacier in North America and consists mainly of ice frozen in the rock debris, which when it melts lubricates the rocks which move like a glacier.


We hiked to the bristlecone pine forest at timberline.  On the trail we met a BYU biologist who was studying flies during a bioblitz organized by the park over three days.  The ranges in the basin and range area are like islands and species remain and develop in isolated islands because they cannot cross the desert.  It is for this reason that there are no bears in Great Basin N.P.








                 
                 
The Pinnacle in the distance.













Bristlecone Pines are the oldest living creatures on the planet.  They regularly live more than 3,000 years and survive by only keeping small portions of the tree alive.  In this photo there are two strips of bark that are feeding those few branches that have bristles.  The wood is extremely dense and resinous and is polished by the wind and the snow.  Adversity seems to make them thrive and their needles can last more than 40 years.

























This bristlecone pine has been dated by core samples at more than 3,200 years old.  They are truly majestic things.
















We headed east around 10:30 a.m. across Utah 21 through completely desolate territory until we hit Beaver on I-15.  From there we took I-70 to Green River, where we camped for the night.  This is a view from a roadside overlook on I-70 into the red rock canyon areas in southeastern Utah.

US 50 in Nevada

We hit US 50 in Austin, NV, the county seat until it was moved to Battle Mountain (now on I-70) in 1979.  Austin is the site of Stokes Castle, built in 1897 for Anson Phelps Stokes, an eastern financier who had a lot of mines in the area.  The castle, an exact replica of a tower outside of Rome, was built out of local granite and using railway ties as the floor joists and balconies.  It is now in ruins.  Austin was the site of silver mines that played out very quickly.  We left Austin, stopped at Spencer Hot Springs, and then had a flat tire on Snoopy.  It's a good thing US 50 is a lonely road as we were stopped on the pavement, learning how to remove the spare from under Snoopy and changing the tire.  A couple guys stopped and asked if we needed help, but we managed on our own.  The next stop was Eureka, NV (pictured above), where silver was discovered in 1864 (the first important lead-silver discovery in the US).  This photo shows the opera house.  Numerous immigrants arrived to work in the mines and prepare charcoal.  They included people from Italy, China, and German Jews.  There were ultimately 16 smelters in Eureka, poluting the air with lead and soot.  We drove on to Ely.
Before we headed for Great Basin National Park, we stopped at the Nevada Northern Railway Museum, an amazing museum created from the railroad that had been built from the copper mine in Ruth (6 miles from Ely) to the SP mainline in Cobre.  The railroad closed in 1983 and everything was given to the city.  At the time they were working on refurbishing some wheels for the locomotive and they are still in the vises.  The upstairs of the East Ely depot (the city didn't want to have the depot) has original offices for the superintendent.  At its height 44 trains a day went through.  Some of them carried miners to the mines.  The locomotive was extremely fast (almost 100 mph).  There are the usual train rides (which we didn't take), but if you are a real railroad fan, you can drive either the diesel or steam locomotive yourself (with or without passenger cars).  The mine in Ruth used to be a copper mine, but now they are using cyanide heap leach mining to remove gold from the tailings.  It's a boom and bust economy for the employees and ownership of the mine has changed multiple times (it's now owned by a Polish company).
Here is a snow plow that was clearly put in front of the engine.  It had a blade on either side that could be extended along with the blade in front.











The engine barn (note the soot over the doors).













This fully-restored vacuum was used to clean the passenger cars.


















Our first view of Wheeler Peak, 13, 063', from the pass to the north.

SE Oregon

 We left Milo McIver State Park around 1:30 p.m. on Sunday on our way to Kah-ne-Tah Resort (a place neither Bob nor I had ever been to).  We drove in from US 26 across wild open range, through small towns showing the poverty of many Native Americans, to this "Las Vegas-style" resort.  Kah-ne-tah's hot pools were lovely for a swim (particularly in the deep end where the kids were not swimming).  The one negative factor was the distance to the bathrooms.  I was not yet in the Travels with Snoopy mode and asking to have a site near the bathrooms.  The RV area was all equipped with sanitary sewer hook-ups.

The next morning we got up to drive to Page Springs Campground in the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, stopping along the way at various helpful RV stores to try and replace the plastic cover for our fan.  At one place we got the cover and Bob installed it.  At another place we got advice and purchased a couple of items we had forgotten.
 Page Springs C.G. is gorgeous, though buggy.  We set up Snoopy, went for a hike to the top of the bluff (note the happy travellers).











While we ate dinner we saw five deer come down to drink at the spring and this big Great Horned Owl roost on a ledge in the rocks.















We headed south from Frenchglen to Winnemucca, NV, got onto I-80 for a short distance and then headed off into the basin and range country on US 50, billed as the loneliest road in America.  In Austin, NV we turned east on US 50 and started going up and down over the basins and ranges.  The basin and range country was created when the crust bulged up and thinned.  As it sank, cracks were created, which are the steep sides of each range.  It is gorgeous, wild, uninhabited country.  We stopped at Spencer Hot Springs, about 10 miles off US 50.  It involved a 5 mile drive on a dirt road to an old mining site and these wonderful hot springs, replete with a wooden deck, bench, and carpet to step out onto.  The water was a perfect temperature and the view amazing and we were totally alone.  Perfection.

The Voyage Begins

While Bob was practicing and watching the pros play on Friday, I joined Ann Goetcheus and her friend Judith for a walking epicurian tour of Portland.  It was a lot of fun.  We started at Chocolat, where we tasted drinking chocolate, and learned that Hershey's dark premium chocolate is only 18% chocolate.  From there we went to Flying Elephant Delicatessen (which has 70% of the catering market in Portland) and is famous for its tomatoe orange soup (the recipe is on their website and is delicious).  On to The Gaufre Gourmet (one of Portland's numerous food trucks) which makes Belgian waffles from Liege (an eggy, yeasty waffle with chunks of sugar in them).  Our guide, an actor from Boston who is appearing in Penelope, likes to go to lots of places and eat only a little at each one.  He was very high on Currier Coffee (a coffee roaster that delivers its coffee by bicycle within Portland).  They have one retail outlet which is organized like a bar; you go up, pay and get your coffee, instead of waiting in line.  They roast their coffee fresh and say you shouldn't keep your coffee after three weeks.  The trend in coffee roasting now is for lighter roasts (it's like a good steak; you don't want to burn it because it all tastes the same).  They made a great machiato.  On to The Pearl Bakery whose head baker led an American team in 2001 to win the world Boulangerie contest with an amazing roll with fennel seeds in it.  Julia Child had their bagette and announced that they were perfect.  From there we walked to the City of Portland Sustainability Offices where Hot Lips Pizza heats all the hot water off their oven vents and which used to be a train station which burned six times.  It was built with old growth timber which doesn't burn, so there are lots of singed beams and stringers.  We had a pizza with cilantro pesto, corn, black beans and queso fresco.  Lastly to Cool Moon Ice Cream which makes American-style ice cream in small batches.  We had thai iced tea and cinnamon and I tried a hot thai peanut ice cream.  Lastly to a store where we could taste olive oils and vinegars.  Each of these tours is different and goes to different places.

After picking up some more underwear for Bob we headed to the Zimbabwe Art Project, some of whose art was exhibited in the Gerding Theater.  They have wonderful painted fabric, embroidery, fabric art and painted trays with great stories.  Each artist writes out what s/he is representing and the story goes with the art.
 

On Friday Bob started his competition and I went for a hike.  I checked in with the Ranger Station to find out the Bull of the Woods was still pretty snowed in.  Instead I took an 8.2 mile hike along the Upper Clackamas River (seen in the photo above).  It was lovely.  There were few people, not many cars and the river was so clear.
 

View in the forest.  There were several areas of old growth pine and cedar.  I ate lunch on a gravel bar with a family of kids who were throwing rocks in the water. 

An interesting aggregate boulder in the middle of the river.  After finishing the hike I realized I didn't have the cord to download photos from the camera to the computer, so off to Oregon City I went to pick up a replacement.
 

This morning I watched Bob play the first three holes of the Beaver State Fling with his foursome in Senior Grand Masters.  He didn't do too well on the holes I watched (I don't know if I was bad luck or not).  Here he is throwing.  He came in second out of four, but collected $60 in scrip. Can you find the basket in the photo below?  After lunch we packed up and headed for Kah-Ne-Ta Resort and Hot Springs.  We had a lovely swim in the pool and a shower and are enjoying the dry, windy, sunny weather.  The wi-fi and phone coverage is sketchy.
 

Getting Ready to Go

We leave tomorrow for our annual trek to the East Coast.  We will return in early October.  Stops on our way will likely include:

Milo McIver State Park for the Beaver State Fling
Lafayette and Lyons, CO to visit Goldi and Gail
Cincinnati to visit Andrew, Julia and Elsa and in September the new baby
Chicago area to visit Bob's aunt Florence and cousin Chuck
Saugatuck, MI to visit Paul and Carolyn Jarvis (Julia's parents)
Louisville, KY to visit Bob's old friends the Mankes
Charlotte, NC for the World Disc Golf Competition
Tunkhannock, PA to work on the Cottage with Markus for the month of August and to spend time with my mother
Wellfleet, MA to visit my Aunt Hanni and cousin Patrick
Unknown parts in between

It's been a little crazy getting ready this time as I came back from Guatemala and immediately went to work full time in a temporary position in the Oregon University System's General Counsel Office.  I'm sure we will leave something behind (but it will be different from what we left behind last time).  We are again simplifying our lives to live in Snoopy's 72 square feet.  This year I have renamed the blog since we are not travelling with Darwin who is buried in Tunkhannock.  I will be posting pictures and blogs erratically as time, wi-fi availability and inspiration permit.