The Road Home

Great Basin is probably not a national park you have heard of — I certainly hadn’t. I found it in the road atlas when I was looking for potential parks/monuments that we could visit on our way back home. It’s a relatively new park (established in 1986) and probably not very visited since it is a long drive from anywhere. And some would say a monotonous drive as you travel across endless seas of sagebrush. But this “sea” is surrounded by mountain ranges that provide a unique feature — rather than rivers flowing toward the ocean, they all flow into the basin. This provides the water for the surprising amount of flora and fauna in the area, as well as the vehicle for carving and shaping of the many limestone caverns there — including the Lehman Caves that we visited. The other thing Great Basin is famous for is their groves of ancient bristlecone pines that live right up at tree line. Some of these are over 7000 years old. Unfortunately, when I was getting ready to hike up to see them, the rain intensified and started turning to snow. Ah well, next time!

Next stop, Grand Basin. This looking at Wheeler Peak, over 13,000 feet in height. We drove up to over 10,000 feet to hike to see the ancient bristlecones.

4:45 pm, potential 3 mile hike with nearly 1000 foot elevation gain, rain picking up and turning to snow — nah, better not…

This photo was borrowed from the Internet to show you what I was after. Next time!

As we were coming back down the mountain, the clouds parted for a short time, showing snow starting to accumulate. By the following morning, the entire range was covered.

Looking down onto the Basin. Truly beautiful!

We also toured Lehman Caves, named after the man who discovered them. These limestone caverns go about a quarter mile back into the mountain. It turns out that Mr. Lehman was quite the entrepreneur — he would lower people into the cave through a small hole with nothing but a candle. You could stay for up to 24 hours and take home a souvenir — hence all the broken stalagtites.

This is the Lodge Room — one of the biggest in the cave. Why was it named so? Amazingly, a group of Elks (two- vs. four-legged) would hold meetings and parties down here. Imagine crawling on your belly in your Sunday finery for hundreds of yards. They brought food, liquor, musicians, etc. and would party down here. It’s reported that this was also a Speakeasy during Prohibition!

This is the Inscription Room, the furthest room in the cave. What you see here is graffiti made by early visitors, using the smoke of their candles to make the graffiti. While we were initially pretty appalled by this (and there have been a number of failed attempts to remove it), it does reflect both the time and a recognition of having made it that far through some very narrow passages (including one indelicately called “Fat Man’s Misery”). If you see the orange stuff around the ceiling, that is cave bacteria that is slowing eating the carbon. So, come back in a thousand years or so and it should all be gone.

These caves have most of the features of other caves, but there are some rarities like these shields that have curtains hanging from them. These are called parachutes.

Here is another cool thing. You may be aware that stalagtites are initially hollow and lengthen by adding new rings of growth on the bottom. On the left is an example of what happens when one springs a leak — you get these interesting rings that form. It takes over 100 years to achieve an inch of growth, so this leak continued for a long time.

A shout out to a relatively new restaurant in Baker — Kerouac’s. They have great pizzas, burgers, breakfasts (all organic), and even a good wine list — especially out in the middle of nowhere. But the service is amazing, including having our server drive us back to where we were staying in the middle of the rainstorm. If you ever find yourself in Baker (highly unlikely), I highly recommend it! — in Baker, Nevada.

Lots of rain; lot’s of wind!

From there, we took a leisurely (well, at least for me — Deb did all the driving!) drive back to Seattle, mixing camping out with more frequent hotel stays.  It was good to get back home!

While this road trip didn’t go exactly as planned, it was a lot of fun. We visited three national parks and three national monuments. We got to see friends and Deb got in some fly fishing. We also met some wonderful people along the way — both fellow travelers and people from the towns where we stayed. These days, it’s easy to let the politics and emotional disagreements on issues get you down and make you lose hope about our country. But then you take a trip like this — it’s like a salve for the soul. And it reinforces that we, as a people, are a lot more alike than different, and we all are struck with how small we are in the context of the natural world around us.