Day 3: Fallon, NV to Great Basin Nation Park

Stops:

Austin, NV

Hickinson Petroglyph Recreation Area, 

Ely, NV

Quite a difference in temperature today.  Woke up to 62 degrees vs 27 degrees yesterday.  Wal-mart is a great location for parking your vehicle overnight.  I even have an app on my iPhone to locate Wal-marts that are open 24 hours and allow overnight parking.

This is a Super Wal-Mart, which is great, because that means we can restock on food and supplies.  Since we are heading to Great Basin NP and  Southern Utah, we decided to get enough food to last a week because we are going to be in the parks most of the time.

Onward across Nevada, heading East to West on Hwy 50, known as the loneliest  highway in America.  It is quite true as the there is almost nothing on this road.  No billboards, no gas stations, no nothing except for sand, dirt, shrubs, and mountains.  While it may be the loneliest highway, it is by no means, a boring highway.  The scenery changes enough to keep it interesting.  Sand dunes, flat light-tinted dirt for as long as the eye can see in all directions, then mountains with snow, and then mountains with pretty yellow flowers, and even parts of the Pony Express Trail.

In some parts, you can see the mirages of the infamous desert oasis.  Off in the distance, you can see little dots moving up and down a large pile of sand resting against a mountain, known as Sand Mountain.  The little dots, as you get closer, are people riding on their ATV's.

Every once in awhile, you see little buildings with air conditioning and large pipes coming out of the ground, reminiscent of secret military underground bases hiding UFO's and alien bodies.  I bet Groom Lake looks like this?  Hmmm....maybe I've been watching too many movies?

We did come across a man jogging alongside the highway with a walkie-talkie in his hand.  I thought he might be in trouble because I wouldn't expect someone to just be jogging along in the middle of the loneliest highway in America, but then over the hill, we came across an RV and man videotaping the guy that was jogging.  On the side of the RV bus, there was a banner that said Stevesrun.com.  I'll have to check it out later. I'm curious how far this guy is running and why.  I'm also glad I didn't stop and ask the man if he needed any help because I'm not sure if that would have screwed up his run?

Along the way, we encountered our first little town, Austin, NV.  A gold miner's town, you can see old mining cars and even a gold miners museum, and oddly enough, a bar owned by Serbians who proudly display it is a Serbian bar.

Continuing onward, we saw a small little recreation area called, Hickison Petryglyph Recreation Area.  It has a small 1/2 mile trail where you can see some petroglyphs of animals and people.  Every once in awhile, you run across small lizards too.  It is a shame though that some people can't respect history and have to etch their own initials next to the petroglyphs.  

There is also a campground here which is completely free.  It offers covered picnic tables which remind me of covered wagons, and a fire bit and grill.  I recommend this place if you aren't here in the middle of summer.

One last town before getting to Great Basin NP.  Ely, NV ( pronounced E-lee)  has a great railroad museum for all you train fans.  You can even ride on a steam locomotive with the engineer.  I highly recommend a visit if you a ever nearby.

After a beautiful drive through the Eastern Nevada countryside, we encountered an interesting gate made of horns.  Www.horns-a-plenty.com, hmmmmm. I'm kinda scared to look at what else they make out of horns.

Finally, we arrived at Great Basin NP as the sun was beginning to set.  We did see two more unexpected roadside attractions, a train coach car converted into a house and a dead cow driving a very old car.

We faced our next disappointment.  Even though the campsites said there were spots available, we could not find any, not even in the offroad campsites.  We did see that the Lehman Caves Visitors Center had an astronomy program going on at 8 pm so we knew there would be a park ranger there.

Ranger Kelly was really nice and told us that if there were no spots available, we could any road outside of the park property because it is owned by the Bureau of Land Management and they allow people to camp anywhere.  He also told us about looking for a place on Home Farm Road.

We hung around and watch a fabulous astronomy program and even got to see Saturn, two galaxies, and the Hercules start cluster.  The skies above GBNP are some of the darkest in the US, making this the perfect place to see the stars.

We learned that the moon was made from a collision of another planet it the earth and the particles that where in the gravitational pull of the earth joined together in one month to form the moon.  We also learned the GBNP has the oldest living thing in the world, the Bristlecone Pine trees, dating to some 4500 years ago.  Finally, we learned that the Big Dipper actually has 8 stars in it and learned out the constellation called Cygnus which contained two stars close to each other.  We spotted several satellites moving through the sky. We also learned that the meteor showers we see in the night sky are really just the size of a grain of sand.  It was so much fun! 

We headed out to Home Farm Road which was all gravel and just parked Moby there. It was in such a remote spot that were didn't even bother pulling the curtains down for privacy.  We just went to bed and watching the beautiful, almost full moon light up the surroundings and the sound of the indigenous animals that came out at night.