Nevada photo montage
 

Part 2:
13 days & 2657 miles / 4276 kilometers
in Nevada, Southeast Oregon & a Wee Bit of California

July 2018

disclaimer

Read Part One.

Continuing Day 5, Wednesday

We headed away from Ely, South and West on US Highways 50 and 6, baking along the way, and arriving at the beautiful Great Basin National Park visitor's center at last. I am always so happy to walk into a national park visitor's center: it's air conditioned and full of neat stuff and helpful people and info. We were talking to one of the park workers about camping and she said that the camp sites can fill up by 1:30 - and it was 12:30. All but one of the Great Basin campgrounds are first-come, first served. A guy nearby said he had just left his campsite in Upper Lehman Creek Campground, #9, and that people were already driving through looking for a place. We got back to the bikes and headed up. We got to Upper Lehman, which is on the side of a mountain - all uphill - and it looked full: almost every site had a piece of paper on it. And, sure enough, someone had JUST parked in #9. Damn!

We ended up camping in site #11, which doesn't have a drive way: we parked on the side of the driveway for the group parking next door to us. It turned out to be the perfect site: the tent was in the shade as of the evening and for the early morning, and an ever-babbling branch of Lehman Creek was close enough as to drown out most surrounding noise. It's a tent-only site - there's no place to park a camper. Not sure why they don't say that on the campsite post. We unloaded, Stefan put up the tent and I walked down to the information board and paid. I also noticed that most of the sites with a piece of paper were, in fact, available: the camp host hadn't collected the expired reservation notices. I always forget this lesson: when looking for a campsite, a piece of paper or sign on a campsite post does NOT mean the site is occupied. Look at the paper or sign to make sure the camper didn't leave that day or that the reservation isn't a few days from now. And I think the park ranger was wrong: Sunday through Wednesday nights, you can probably still get a campsite in Great Basin National Park until about 5 in the evening - maybe later.

We took off our shoes and put on our Teva sandles and waded into the creek. It felt AMAZING. I wanted to lay down in it.

Only thing we were worried about: the group site next to us was a sea of bags and trash thrown haphazardly everywhere. There was no one there at the moment, but whoever was staying there wasn't respecting the site nor the park. There were no signs warning of bears, but every national park campsite has critters, whether bears or marmots or chipmunks, and they get into things left around. Also, you may need to leave a campsite quickly, because of a fire or a flash flood - that's never happened to us, but I think about it, because it could (and if you keep reading this travelogue...). And, honestly, it's just about respect: you are a guest. You are paying pennies to camp, relatively speaking. You are paying far, far below the market value of what you are experiencing. Show your appreciation for public lands, which of all of our lands, and don't throw your crap everywhere.

We would love to have gone all the way up and camped at Wheeler Peak Campground, and if we had been on a trip where we would have done more hiking, we would have. But this way, we were closer to the caves and the visitors' center, and I didn't like the idea of going up that oh-so-high and curvy road at night after the astronomy presentation on Thursday night.

We had originally wanted to stay in a campground along Strawberry Creek, but it all of these were closed due to fire recovery effort. And it turned out that wouldn't have been a good option for us anyway: we had just one full day to enjoy Great Basin, and that would have put us far from all we wanted to do in that one day.

This, our half day, we used to go to Lehman Visitor's Center to sign up for a cave tour the next day and confirm that there would be an astronomy show on Thursday despite the full moon. Yes, a full moon... the entire reason I had wanted to visit Great Basin National Park was because of their perfect dark sky. I had wanted to look up and gasp at the sight of the Milky Way in such a setting. I've seen the Milky Way a lot, but there have been some times where I have seen a perfectly clear starry sky, and I longed to see that again, and the night sky of Great Basin was legendary. But we didn't to our homework and, so, here we were, with a full moon so bright it obliterated most of the night sky. Oh, well, the moon would be pretty...

We'd visited the Lehman Visitor's Center just passing through back in 2014 on our way from Utah. The big change now: the antique rifle on display. In November 2014, archaeologists discovered a 1873 rifle leaning against a juniper tree in Great Basin National Park. Just leaning there. They posted about it on Facebook and that post went viral, with a deluge of speculation about what happened to result in this gun standing there for so many years. Based on its condition, it's probably not been out there since 1873, but it has been out there for a long, long time: the cracked wood stock, weathered to grey, and the brown rusted barrel blended into the colors of the old juniper tree in a remote rocky outcrop, keeping the rifle hidden for many years. The imagination runs wild at what happened to the owner after he - probably he - set that gun up against that tree once upon a time.

We sign up for the last cave tour of the following day, figuring that the cool cave air would feel awesome in the height of the heat of the day. The ranger said we were the first to sign up, so we could decide if the tour would be the 60 minute or the 90 minute tour. 90 minutes, of course! Show it ALL to us, baby! I also got a compliment from a park worker on my Gram Parsons' t-shirt.

We watched the two videos in the center, and learned about a site we would love to visit: the ruins of the Johnson Lake Mine: a few log cabins, mining equipment, the vestiges of an aerial tramway and artifacts from miners and their families that lived there in the early 1900s. Yeah, not that old, but we love remote ghost towns. But Johnson Lake Historic Mining District cannot be reached by car. It is accessible by a strenuous 7.4 mile round trip hike that begins at 8,000 ft and climbs over 2,700 ft in elevation. We didn't have the time, the clothes, the shoes, my walking sticks nor the weather for such a hike. 

We also skipped the Baker Archaeological Site, which contains the remains of a Fremont Indian village occupied from approximately 1220 to 1295 AD. It's located outside the park - we had seen the sign on our way in. The site was excavated by Brigham Young University's Office of Public Archaeology in the 1990s, and all the recovered artifacts are stored at BYU's Museum of People and Cultures in Provo, Utah. The site was reburied with the dirt and the foundations of the village can no longer be seen on the surface. Given the weather and the lack of anything to see, we didn't think it was worth going to.

It rained at one point, and it was delightful. But that meant the group next to us came roaring back into their site in their van, throwing things into their van. They were loud. REALLY loud. It's my number one complaint about any campground, particularly ones in the forest or remote areas: noise. Please don't go to a campground if you cannot respect the quiet. Go stay in a KOA campground. 

We met the people in site #9 and teased them about "stealing" our site. They gave us all of the firewood that the previous camper had left - they said they weren't going to have a fire. Stefan went to Baker, the tiny town right outside the park, for ice and beer, and then I cooked supper and we had a nice evening just enjoying the cool of the evening and enjoying a small fire to get rid of the bugs. I was so freakin' tired, which I always am at the end of a day of riding, but we hadn't really ridden that far. I was more tired than I should have been, just as I had been far more anxious the day before than I should have been. I went into the tent to lay down at about 8 p.m. and fell deeply asleep. I woke up about 90 minutes later because the people next door were SO LOUD. Why do people not understand that voices carry in a campground? They did finally quiet down at 10:30 p.m. and I fell right back into that deep sleep. It cooled off in the night. It felt great.  

Day 6, Thursday

In the morning, despite it being cool, despite all those many hours of sleep, I wasn't feeling good. I'm always just a bit nauseous in the early mornings, but I was even more nauseous than usual on this trip, and once again, on that morning I couldn't finish my coffee. In fact, I couldn't even get more than a few sips down. I tried to eat some oatmeal, but couldn't finish. And when I went to the pit toilet, I opened the door and the smell - which really wasn't THAT bad - made me puke. Literally. I'm so glad no one saw and that there is a water pump right next to the bathroom. I was sick. I was sick on our only full day in Great Basin National Park. Did I mention this park visit was the primary purpose of our trip? I drank a lot of water and went to the bathroom a lot and felt a bit better after about an hour. We decided we would go ahead with our plans and just play the day by ear, slowly. We also decided not to wear our motorcycle pants - we'd wear our hiking pants instead. Yeah, I know - not ATGATT. But for just riding around the park and nearby town, we decided to chance it - the heat was just crazy and dangerous. I needed to NOT overheat. And thank goodness Stefan had bought a small bottle of Coke the night before and the night had been cool - that cold Coke that morning felt unbelievably good.

How hot had it been the last evening? After several hours of parking, my kickstand did this damage to the pavement.

It was a hot but beautiful day. We rode up to Wheeler Peak Campground. We could have gone two up on Stefan's motorcycle, but we did that back in 2014 when we were just passing through - I'd parked my bike at Lehman visitor's center, because I was still feeling tepid about winding roads after my Moab wreck. Now, four years later, I was determined to ride myself. And it's really not at all that hard - I've done much harder. It's paved the whole way and there are some sharp turns, but nothing too awful. There aren't a lot of places to pull over that aren't soft, thick, narrow gravel, however. Just after we started up, there was suddenly 10 cars behind me, so I stopped far over on the road to let them pass. When we got to the top, one of the passengers came over to thank me. The cars were all a part of the Las Vegas Hiking Club, and they were adorkable: all over 50, all full of vim and vigor and hilarious conversation.

I wasn't feeling great, but the ride had cooled me off, and I felt good enough to slowly stroll through Wheeler Peak Campground. It was all I could manage, unfortunately. It's a beautiful campground, but we had no regrets not camping there - it would have been a pain to run up and down that road two or three times a day, as we would have had to do for our one day in the park. We admired a Mercedes camper van and the owner generously let us look inside. Sooooo niiiiiice.... we also saw a deer, who wasn't looking for food from people but wasn't all that intimidated that we were nearby as she ate. Here's a video of her. Oh, and a couple of the pit toilets in the campground are, literally, brick shit houses.

We drove down the mountain, stopping a few times along the way, and then on to Baker for lunch - I was, at last, hungry. Famished, in fact. I had a quesadilla, which probably would have been mediocre on any other day but, at that moment, were the most delicious things I'd ever eaten. I was feeling way better after eating, as well as drinking cold soda. Wearing the lighter pants definitely helped. We bought a few items at the tiny store next door, including some peanut butter, which I planned to try to eat for breakfast the next day. This place looks interesting - it was across the street, but the restaurant wasn't open. 

We went back to the main visitor's center and looked around the gift shop, enjoying the air conditioning and talking to one of the park workers. I bought a t-shirt featuring the starry sky I had missed and a sticker for my panniers. Then we headed to the cafe at Lehman's Visitor's Center for more air conditioning and ice cream and for our late afternoon cave tour.

The original Lehman Caves tour in Great Basin National Park in Nevada was much longer than it is now. You see about half of these caves now - there is a narrow passage for tourists to the massive Talus room than is now too dangerous for regular visitors, and the tour guide says that, as a result of only researchers visiting this huge cave, some tiny wildlife - bugs and bug-sized - is returning to these caves. But I sure would like to see it...

There were easily 30 people on our tour - too many, IMO, but everyone was SO well-behaved, including the kids, that I really cannot complain. Our tour was lead by a teenager, a young lady who will enter her senior year of high school next year. We were blown away by her poise, her articulateness, her knowledge of the caves and her incredible enthusiasm to share the experience. I wanted her as my daughter. She was AMAZING. My Spanish also got a workout trying to translate some key points for a large Mexican family touring with us. The caves are completely coated in material that's been deposited by dripping water and have features unique among caves in the world (and you can probably guess what I said this looks like). And the caves were wonderfully cool - I was in a t-shirt and everyone else was in jackets and long-sleeved shirts. I'm very hot-natured and would have dressed that way anyway, but it was clear that I had a slight fever as well, and this cool climate was glorious. I walked the distance just fine and wasn't at all exhausted at the end of 90 minutes. We came out to a beautiful view.

Every cave tour makes me think of my first national park visit ever. I was about 8 or so, and my aunt Norma, visiting from Florida, took me, my brothers and her three children to Mammoth Cave National Park. I loved that trip. I thought the park ranger that lead our tour was the smartest, funniest human being ever. If someone had said, "You know, Jayne, you could study biology or wildlife management and, someday, you could be a park ranger," I would have TOTALLY DONE THAT. But I had no idea how people became whatever it was they became, and I didn't visit a national park again for almost two decades. Before our tour way back then in the 1970s, a picture was taken of our large group before our tour. I would love to have that photo.

We went back up to our camp site for a nap next to the creek. We put pulled out our air mattresses and put them almost right next to the creek behind our tent in the shade, then took off our shoes and laid down. I fell asleep. I don't know how long. But it felt wonderful. I always complain on our trips that we don't take a day to just hang out somewhere beautiful, to relax and read and do nothing. Just ONE day. I was sorry that it took me getting sick to force us to do it, but I loved it. And I would have been happy to do it for even longer, but the RV campers that were moving into the group site next door (the loud folks had left) couldn't get their massive huge stupid RV into the parking space unless we moved our motorcycles, so one of them came over to wake us up and tell us. Argh.

I don't remember if we cooked dinner or not. I think our big lunch was enough. But we had cold drinks, and drinking them felt marvelous. At 7:15, we headed back down to Lehman Visitor's Center for the astronomy show. We were WAY early, but there were already people that had set up their seats for the slide show, so we did too, using our panniers as seats. There were two huge telescopes already in place, each about $10,000 in value. I couldn't wait to look through them! I was giddy with excitement. I'm a nerd. About 80 people showed up and the slide show presentation began and... it was the first time in my life I have been disappointed in a Park Ranger presentation. She was very nice, but not a good compiler of information nor a good presenter of such. You are talking about the STARS and the MOON - how could anyone make that boring? She did. She obviously loves astronomy, but she doesn't understand how to talk about it to non-astronomers. Such a let down... and clouds were moving in and she rambled. I couldn't believe she wasn't wrapping up early to ensure everyone got to look through the telescopes before the clouds covered anything. I kept looking up at the sky and looking at her and thinking, end the presentation early. Don't deny this opportunity to everyone. STOP TALKING! But she rambled on, even presenting some slides twice. At last, we were told we could walk to the telescopes. I let some little kids go in front of me, because I didn't want them to miss this amazing opportunity, and I rushed my view of the moon because I knew not everyone was going to get to look, and I wanted as many people as possible to see it. And, indeed, halfway through the lines, the viewing was called off as clouds rolled over the entire sky, including that beautiful moon.

One helpful thing she did do was point out Mars, Jupiter and Venus, and for the rest of the trip, if there was a clear enough sky, I could find all three easily. Mars is closer to the Earth than it was in 2003 and is SO bright right now in the sky. I would loved to have seen it through that telescope...

We went back to the campground and I could not shake off my disappointment at not having my "wow!" moment. In fact, it felt like everything was going wrong: two flats, a wreck, no petroglyphs viewing, no ghost town touring, me being sick, a full moon and clouds ruining my much dreamed-of night sky viewing, a disappointing park ranger presentation, the horrible heat... maybe we should just go home... Stefan said if I was still feeling sick we could reserve our campsite for another night and while I rested all day Friday, he could ride to Ely, get the inntertube at Napa and come back - he'd be gone for a couple of hours or more. But I refused. What if the innertube wasn't there? What if something went wrong on his way there? We needed to stay together.

Looking back, I think my let down was more because of my illness than anything that did, or didn't, happen on the trip. Because as I look back on this trip, I'm so happy about it. As I write about it, I get excited about it.

Day 7, Friday

The next day, we got up early, about 6 a.m. I didn't even try to drink coffee. I drank milk (oh how I love Stefan's little cooler) and ate peanut butter and drank a lot of water. I was still nauseous, but not nearly as bad as the previous morning. We watched some wild turkeys mosey through the campground, packed up, and talked with the camp hosts, who were going through the campground cleaning up anything left behind (which they should NOT have to do if people were more respectful). We were heading out of the campground before 9 a.m., and almost got significantly delayed by a family in a rental RV trying to back into a camp site - it was Friday, and there were already people driving through the campground to snag anything available.

We were headed back to Ely and, on the way away from Great Basin, we once again passed the turnoff for Osceola - it's another place we would have visited had the weather been in the low 90s or lower and we'd known then what we know now. Osceloa is a ghost town, site of a mine where the largest gold nugget ever found in Nevada (for the time) was discovered May 1877. It was one of the first towns in Nevada to have electric lights and the first telephone in White Pine County. There are a few structures, but its the cemetery that's supposed to be particularly interesting, and great views of the valley below. The roads from US Highway 6 & 50, one three miles and one five miles (the road curves around the mountain where the town was located), are supposedly well maintained and not difficult to navigate.

We got back to Ely and went straight to Napa. And... the innertube hadn't come. The UPS truck had already made his deliveries that morning. The soonest we could expect it now was Monday. We were hot, hungry and super cranky. I asked them for a recommendation for breakfast - I felt like we needed to sit in air conditioning, eat a good meal and make decisions with a clear head. One guy recommended a Mexican restaurant at the Prospector Hotel and Casino. He was absolutely right on: the breakfast was amazing, the service was perfect, and we ate, calmed down, and did our best to think clearly.

We would be taking a terrible chance trying to complete this trip without a spare innertube. But there was no innertube in any town we would visit for the next three or four days. Since our furthest South goal was Rachel, Nevada, we decided we would continue to go south, camp at Cathedral Gorge State Park that evening, and the next day, drive all the way to Vegas to buy an innertube, and we would just stay in Vegas that night. Yuck. But it's all we could think of.

We got gas before we left Ely, and headed back South. It was a very hot but short ride - just 116 miles - to Cathedral Gorge State Park. We try to stop every 40 or 50 miles to hydrate and stretch our legs, but when there is no shade and no towns, this can be quite difficult. At last, I saw a tiny bit of shade on the shoulder of the road, at a mostly empty ranch, and we parked under it to hydrate. But, of course, a postal delivery person came along right at that moment and needed access to that mailbox blocked by my bike. The postal worker had a great sense of humor about it, thankfully, and said, absolutely, we should be there - it was just too hot not to rest.  We continued on and after another 30 or so miles, saw a rest stop with a wee bit of shade. When we would stop, I would drink lots of water and then dip my hand into Stefan's cooler and splash water on my face, head and neck. I was determined not to overheat.

We skipped stopping for lunch, since we had had such a big breakfast in Ely.  I was so worried: it was Friday and, even though it was early, even though it was really hot, the park might already be full. It's got a reputation for its amazing beauty and its hiking - it's not like most state parks, in that it DOES attract international travelers. Would we be too late?

We turned off at the sign for Cathedral Gorge State Park in Nevada and saw lots of dirt all over the road outside the visitor center, and crews working to clean it up. A layer of dirt covered parts of the road all the way to the campground - which was empty and roped off, though the road through it was still open. The dirt of the campground had been freshly raked, but the campground was empty - closed. On a Friday?
 
There were two RVs parked in the paved sites for people with disabilities, right next to the bathrooms, near the information sign where you pay your fee to stay. We rode over and started reading - still nothing at all that the campground was closed. One of the RV folks walked out to us and told us that there had been a flash flood the week before in the park - an emergency situation where the water had risen so quickly, some people had to leave their RVs behind and come back for them later, and get towed out. Evacuated campers had to sleep in a nearby school. It sounded terrifying. A newspaper article says heavy rains and winds, upwards of 60 mph, covered the valley with water that rushed down Highway 93. As the water rushed in all around them, campers called 911. A local volunteer fire department used one of its high clearance brush engines to drive through rising waters. One man in a minivan had water deep enough to be at the side windows of his van, but it didn’t sweep it away. Sections of the campground were under 3 to 4 feet of water (more than a meter).

Indeed, officially, the campground was closed, even though there were no signs saying so, but if we were staying just one night, the lady in the RV said that was probably fine and we should set up our tent over in the group activity area, which was still open. She and her husband were stranded waiting for a replacement windshield for their RV to arrive in a nearby town, and she was acting as an unofficial camp host.

So stay we did. We put the tent up right under the picnic shelter. Yes, it was oh-so-hot. But it was also beautiful, and I felt better than I had in a few days. We did laundry, washing underwear and socks in the collapsible sink fabric/plastic we bring on these trips for just such an occasion - there was a water pump just a few steps from where we were camping. Stefan blew up his air mattress, put it on top of one of the picnic tables and took a nap in the oh-so-hot afternoon. I sat at a table and updated my notes for the travelogue you, dear reader, are reading now, and paid the $5 for Internet access for the next 30 days at all Nevada State Parks and got caught up on email and social media messages and the news.

As I said, there were two RVs in the park, right next to each other. One was for the lady we talked to and her husband. They would be there for a few more days. The other was a stubborn family that had made reservations for that weekend and decided, by gosh, they were camping there no matter what. But there was someone else, a guy on a bicycle, over in the other group shelter. He was just sitting there, drinking out of a bicycle water bottle, facing the canyon. He didn't have much stuff, it seemed. We see long-distance bicycle travelers regularly on our trips - I cannot believe they pedal on the roads we ride - and you will recall I had met one a few days before, so I didn't really think much about this guy, in terms of being anything out of the ordinary. Maybe he was staying somewhere else and had biked here and was having a break before biking back. But after we had set up camp and Stefan was napping and I was writing and playing on the Internet - it was too hot to do anything else - I started glancing over as subtly as I could to watch him. I realized he wasn't a bicycle traveler: he was dressed entirely inappropriately for such, wearing a thick jacket, thick baggy pants and flip flops. He looked like he was in his 50s or 60s. He was standing up and doing something with a bag on his bike, but it didn't seem like he was doing anything with it, really, just trying to look like he was, I could see that his gear was a mishmash of plastic bags and bags that weren't designed for bicycle travel. I realized he was absolutely aware of us and was trying to decide if he should come over or not. Stefan woke up at last and I told him what I'd figured out. He agreed - the clothes were the giveaway for him. I said the guy would be coming over any minute to bum a cigarette or ask for money.

Rather than tell what happened in a regular narrative, I'll just share my tweets - I was trying to give him the cold shoulder and be intensely interested in my phone, hoping he would go away. It didn't work:

tweets1
tweets2

She did, eventually, take him away. No way she was his girlfriend - she was just someone who lived locally that he'd roped into helping him. Again. The other campers told me that he had been spinning tales and asking for things for the two days he had been there and one of the campers was about to call the police on him - she was DONE with him. He was also very drunk: the "mint tea" he was drinking after a bicycle bottle most definitely wasn't mint tea, and I didn't realize that until things were starting to get out of hand, when he was rambling and seemed to be leading up to something - I'll never know what. This is the first time this has ever happened to us, being approached at a campground by someone who is homeless and an addict. The reactions to this story have been interesting: some feel I was way, way too hard on the guy, others feel we should have told him to leave much earlier. My opinion? I was way, way too generous with him - he asked for a cigarette, Stefan looked at me and I said, "okay." He asked for the beer and I also relented - I don't know why. It was a stupid thing to do. I guess I was thinking, if he WAS a bicycle traveler, we would have given him a cigarette, and we would have offered the beer - he wouldn't have had to ask. And you know what? That's not an appropriate comparison. Addicts lie, they play the pity game to get what they want, they make decisions that hurt people, and they take and take and take. Been there, had that happen to me already, long before this, and I should not have tolerated for a second, especially when I'm camping, with no door to lock behind me when I sleep. 

Anyway....

State parks are so awesome in that, usually, they have flush toilets and sinks, as this one did. They also had showers! I took a shower. It was disappointing - hot water only! I wanted an absolutely cold shower, but I couldn't control the water temperature. It was a quarter for five minutes, which is a fair price. Large lizards had frolicked outside the bathrooms, dining on the bugs gathering around the lights.

It was so nice sit in the campsite with freshly-washed, wet hair. I cooked that night, but I don't remember what (something out of a can).

We sat and watched the colors change in the gorge as the sun set. Another person showed up to camp - she set up a single person tent just off the road, and that was it for the night. We were so happy when the sun went down. It didn't cool off nearly as much as we were hoping, but it was enough to sleep. The moon was big and beautiful but red behind the smoke. Our photos of it, without a tripod, aren't that great. It had felt luxurious to be camping and still so easily brush my teeth before bed, in a real sink, and then again when I woke up, without having to look for a waste water screen to spit into, to wash my hands whenever I wanted, etc. All amid a gorgeous setting of canyons. It ended up being a very nice, but warm, evening.

Day 8, Saturday

We'd heard coyotes yapping and howling in the night.

Set the alarm on the phone for 6 a.m. again, to beat the heat. I didn't eat oats - I'd given up on oats for this trip, because of my morning nausea. Instead, I had some peanut butter, a few crackers, and drank milk. I couldn't drink coffee - I was too worried what it would do to my innards. As we were packing up, Stefan found a scorpion on the ground near where our tent was. I was so glad we had always made sure the tent door was closed after we put the tent up and that Stefan had taken that nap on the picnic table rather than the ground. A desert may look dead, but the ground, and below the ground, is oh-so-alive with critters.

We were determined to do some exploring of Cathedral Gorge by foot, no matter how hot it was getting. The crevices that most people tour were visible from our campsite, and there's a trail from our site to the crevices, but we packed up and drove our motorcycles around to the site, so we could head out immediately when we were done. Stefan stumbled on the site when he toured the USA by himself in 2005 and he was really excited to return. I see why he was so entranced by the site. He loved going deep inside some of the crevices that were a challenge to get through. He didn't get any of my fabulous Picnic at Hanging Rock jokes, however. I would love to return to Cathedral Gorge in better weather, hike a lot, enjoy the stars... 

The sun was rising higher into the sky - it was time to push on. Our plan was to go all the way to Vegas, get the innertubes, find a hotel and stay there, and then on Sunday come back up the road and go to Rachel. We drove through Caliente and I was so sorry we didn't have time to have a closer look at its historic train station. We also had to miss the Oak Springs Trilobite Area - it's BLM land, and there's a sign for the area. I so wanted to stop but - say it with me now: it was just too hot. "Originally completely immersed with water 500-524 million years ago, the fossils to be explored at Oak Springs are the remains of animals that lived in this seabed. Most of which were comprised of the Olenellidae family, a sort of crustacean-looking creature with a shell similar to a horseshoe crab with jointed legs, and the ability to curl into a ball... by devoting an hour or so of time scouring the area, you’re almost sure to uncover a trace of a fossil. "

We stopped at the intersection of Nevada state highway 318, Nevada state highway 375 (the Extraterrestrial Highway) and US Highway 93 because there was a funky little shop there and nothing else, and, well, did I mention it looked funky? It has a fantastic alien-themed mural outside, as well as a warning about snakes. Inside was an air-conditioned store and a very friendly shop manager. We drank cold juice, ate some pre-packaged ice cream, looked over the kitschy alien-themed stuff for sale and heard stories from the manager about the strangest thing she's ever seen - which was a customer, not an alien. Like me, she's a non-believer, but finds alien conspiracy theorists fascinating (when they aren't scary) and, when they buy stuff, profitable.

We headed on US Highway 93 through Ash Springs, stopped for gas and a more proper lunch in Alamo at a very large convenience store - since I wasn't eating much in the early mornings, I was famished by 10:30 a.m. and ready for early lunches. We headed South and, for a while, the desert was somewhat interesting: there were Joshua trees (in the Yucca family) dotting the landscape. But then it got quite boring - just straight, with no variation. We stopped at the turnoff for Interstate 15 - 22 miles outside of Vegas, at a Love's Travel Stop. We went inside to cool off, get a cold drink and talk about next steps. We sat inside the section for Subway, got the directions to the motorcycle shop off the GPS, and then I started trying to find a hotel in Vegas via Booking.com. And I lost the ONE affordable room at a not-infested-by-cockroaches motel as I was reserving it - I didn't type fast enough. Suddenly, all the hotel rooms jumped to $250. I'm not even kidding. Had I done it even 30 minutes earlier, I would have gotten the room. 

I am an idiot. It was freakin' Saturday. SATURDAY. What was I thinking? Why had I not reserved the room the day before? I had started to suggest that at Cathedral Gorge, since I had Internet access, but then got the impression that Stefan hadn't picked the place where he was going to get the innertube, so I didn't want to pick a hotel that was across town from where we needed to go. But he had already picked a place - Motorcycle Tire Center. I blame the heat for both of our fuzzy thinking. No, of course there was no hotel room in Vegas on a Saturday by 10:30 a.m. Everyone knows that, idiot.

After some intense oh-shit-we-have-totally-screwed-up moments, I got an idea for what we should have done ALL ALONG: we go to Vegas, get the innertube (in fact, get TWO), and then we go back up the road to Alamo and stay somewhere there - a hotel, because it was well over 100 degrees and I was not camping. We had to go back in that direction anyway, to get to Rachel the next day. It made so much more sense. Stefan agreed, and then suggested I stay at the truck stop while he went to Vegas by himself. I was worried - what if something went wrong? But we had phone service, we had Internet access, we could reach each other if something went wrong. So, I sat in air conditioning, watching the folks at Subway work their damn asses off (they were so impressive, I tweeted about it), while Stefan sweated all the way to Vegas, picked up the innertubes, and came back. In that time, I got a raging headache - thank you, Advil, for getting rid of that.

I am really happy for some reason that I have seen so much of Nevada - many hundreds of miles of it - but still have never seen Las Vegas. I've never even driven through it. For some reason, the idea that everyone goes to Vegas if they visit to Nevada, but I go to the rest of the state, makes me feel special.

Stefan got the innertubes, no problem, and texted me from the shop so I knew all was well. He got back and we shared a personal pizza while he cooled off. We got gas and then we set off back for Alamo, just 73 miles away. It was over 100 degrees as we rode. I wanted to drive straight through without stopping, not only because I hated the heat, but because I knew there was NOWHERE to pull over to rest along the way, except for a rest stop just 10 miles outside of Alamo. I don't mean there wasn't anywhere shaded where we could pull over until we were almost to Alamo, I mean there was NO WHERE to pull over, not a drive way, nothing. I had noticed that on the drive down and it has worried me. I played every mind game I could think of to take my mind off the heat as we rode - singing songs, reciting poetry and movie dialogue. Yes, that's what I do. But after about 40 miles, I started to feel very overheated, and every few miles, it got significantly worse. I was so hot I was hurting. I was trying not to cry. I was misjudging distance as well, thinking the rest stop would be around every curve - and it wasn't there, and it wasn't there, and it wasn't there. It felt like it was getting farther away. I think I made a noise when I finally saw it. I pulled in, past the state worker sitting on the side of the driveway, ready to inspect recreational boats, I found an empty spot where I could safely park under shade, I parked, and I was so exhausted, I couldn't get off the bike. I waited for Stefan to walk up, and when he did, I said, "I need water from the cooler. I need it right now." He didn't quite get what I meant, and thought I wanted drinking water, so while he was trying to fill a water bottle with cold water from the cooler, I finally managed to get off the bike, strip off my helmet, gloves and jacket, run over to the cooler and start splashing water on my face. Then I laid down next to my bike and tried to calm down. My heart was racing. I just laid there and breathed as calmly as I could. Stefan brought me water and said, "It's only 10 miles to Alamo." He didn't seem to quite comprehend that I was having a meltdown. I poured water on me instead of drinking it. Finally, I said, "I need you to be a first responder now." He got it and knelt beside me and took my pulse. By then, I was already starting to feel better, but I needed to lay there for a while and cool down and calm down.

I found it fascinating that no one who drove by or parked came over to see if I was okay. If I saw someone laying on their back in a drive way or parking lot, at a rest stop or otherwise, I would absolutely walk over and say, "Is everything okay?" Especially a person that had been riding a motorcycle.

I pulled myself together - just laying in the shade, even in such heat, had really helped - and we went on to Alamo. I regret that it was too hot to stop at the visitor's center for the Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge, to see what that was all about.

We had a reservation at the Windmill Hotel and I rode straight there instead of stopping at the gas station for supplies for the evening. We stopped in the front parking lot, walked into the air conditioned lobby, and even through my heat exhaustion I saw the signed Adam West head shot hanging in the lobby and had a fan girl moment. We got our key and road over to our cabin and I was so happy that the room was already air conditioned. I pealed everything off, took a quick, very cold shower, pulled back the lovely quilt and collapsed on the bed. I fell asleep almost immediately and, when I woke, realized Stefan still wasn't back from going to get beer. Turns out that Alamo is a dry town - no alcohol sold. Though the restaurant does sell BEER battered cod fish... anyway, Stefan had to go on to Ash Springs for a six pack and things for me, like cold juice.

My feet and ankles were still swelling. I would look at them at the end of the day, like on this day, and get super worried. I made sure my feet were elevated every moment we weren't on the motorcycle or in a restaurant - even at a picnic table, I would always have my feet up. By the morning, they were less swollen, but still swollen. I know it was a combination of my weight, the heat, and how little walking we were doing on this trip.  

Stefan had ridden 282 miles that Saturday. I road 65 miles less than that. All but 14 miles of those miles were because of the diversion for those damn intertubes in Vegas. And, yet, we STILL weren't behind our very loose schedule - I had wanted to be in Rachel by Saturday or Sunday, the mid point in the trip, and that would be happening. How were we managing to still be okay, time wise? Well, unfortunately, we weren't stopping to see anything. No ghost towns. No petroglyphs. No wildlife refuges. No hikes. The caves at Great Basin and the crevices at Cathedral Gorge were pretty much all of our sight-seeing. It was just way, way too hot to walk around in the day time. We also were leaving a place two hours earlier than when we camp, because there's so little to pack up. It didn't at all feel like we were rushing, but we weren't dawdling or walking anywhere the way I love to - and we just couldn't. It was too damn hot. 

I thought the hotel where we were staying might be more upscale than what we wanted, but it was actually just our speed in terms of affordability and style. What IS upscale and way out of our price range is just down the road - a Cowboy's Dream Bed & Breakfast. But as Stefan pointed out, it's still cheaper than Las Vegas on a weekend.

That evening, we had supper at the Windmill Hotel restaurant, just a short walk from our cabin. I was famished. I ordered roast beef and it was delicious, but it was too much, so I took my leftovers back to our room. Stefan had a bunch of dinner rolls he had bought for breakfast, and I suggest we use some of them to make lunch sandwiches for the next day. And so I did. I wrapped them in a plastic bag we had recycled (we carry a LOT of plastic bags - amazing how much you need them) and put them in the cooler. Have I mentioned how much I love that cooler? Stefan sat out a bit with the Austrian couple in the other side of our cabin celebrating their Elvis Vegas wedding. I would have LOVED to have chatted with them and heard about the wedding, I really would have, but I was dead. Absolutely dead. I went to bed early. I hope they don't think I was being a snob.

I also discovered no one at the Windmill Hotel knows who Adam West is. They had no idea why that headshot was hanging in the lobby. Tragic, these kids today...

The rest of the story here 

And now a word from my husband:

Adventure Motorcycle Luggage & Accessories
www.coyotetrips.com

Aluminum Panniers and Top Cases,
Top Case Adapter Plates,
Tough Motorcycle Fuel Containers, & More

Designed or Curated by an experienced adventure motorcycle world traveler
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You won't find these exact products anywhere else;
these are available only from Coyotetrips

(my husband) 

 
Disclaimer
Any activity incurs risk. The author assumes no responsibility for the use of information contained within this document.
 

 
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