Moments in Dirt and Ink

Yosemite National Park Being near Glacier Point and having someone along who had never been to Yosemite, we had to take the little extra drive to the end of the road and have a look around. We started at a nearer lookout point before getting out to the main feature view point. It's not as jarring as looking up at 3000-5000 foot cliffs, but it's still an impressive way to look at the grand valley. There's some of the Yosemite Valley with the cliff of Half Dome standing over it. And over here, if you know where to look on a lower cliff facing the photographer, is Nevada Fall below a smaller dome. It was smoky, as we expect of an August day. Except, hold on! When I was very young, they had many smog days. When I was older, they had signs about how they used to have bad smog days and what was done to clean it up. As a teenager, I had a few backpacking trips in these Sierra Nevada mountains and not a single one of them was smoky even though they were in August. But no...

Shasta-Trinity National Forest Click for location Scott Flat Campground is sometimes referred to as Scott Flat Dispersed Area. I stayed a couple days, ironed out what the rest of my trip might look like, and read a John Muir book ( A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf ). When I finished backpacking in the dark, I had gone off toward the middle of the camp. It basically is an empty dispersed area there and would be easier in the dark. The August Complex in 2020 killed off all the pines and some of the oaks in that part. The dead have been downed for safety and the sawdust suggests the downed are getting hauled off for firewood. It leaves a cluster of oaks in a large meadow. At the north end is the small site I photographed on the way to starting backpacking. At the south end, past the trailhead, are the regular numbered pullouts of a campground. There, it is surrounded by lush pine forest. Two sites were taken by hunting groups. Camping is currently free, but the information board requ...

Tonopah Field Office BLM ( Click here for the locaiton .) On my way through, I stopped in Silver Peak. The cemetery is very cute with each site picked out in rocks. Someone seems to have added a huge number of wooden crosses to it recently, perhaps to distract from how many of the plots have been left without a name. The cemetery at Silver Peak. Although not marked with names, some are singled out by visitors. Some are given great detail of the outline of their living. The cemetery, Silver Peak, and the lithium mine from the top. Some details higher in the cemetery. *photo album* ©2023,2024 Valerie Norton Written 9 Feb 2024

Tonopah Field Office BLM ( map link ) Corral, it says. Cave Spring, it says. Ruins, it says. There's a couple prospects and a building marked too. Okay map, I thought, we can stop there and see what all the fuss is about. That's quite a few little marks. Cabin, corral, and Rhyolite Ridge. I did find myself deciding that the way up Rhyolite Ridge was up the valley north of the road and pick one of the later minor ridges to the top. The only trouble is the Rhyolite Ridge Lithium-Boron Project. (Sponsors of Radio Goldfield , oldies western and a whole lot more. Strongly Appalachian sounding when I first stumbled on it, playing "Christmas songs for folks who don't like Christmas songs" later, and highly recommended.) There's a bit of activity south of the road including "no unauthorized entry" signs and seemed like even more activity north of the road. No exclusive signs, but still worrying. So I discarded actually doing my plan for the Rhyoli...

Tonopah Field Office BLM Location: Fish Lake Valley Hot Well It's really quite nice camped near Emigrant Pass. It wasn't too far below freezing at night and a bit of early morning sun could bring the temperature up quickly. And this morning, I finished brushing my teeth and turned around to find this bunch looking uncertainly at me. A collection of pronghorn with different ideas on which way to run. They milled a bit, took off up the wash shortly, milled about some more, took off down the hill, stopped and milled again. They even vanished and came back. Good thing for them I wasn't really anything to worry about. There they go, up the wash. No, maybe the other way. Returned again from off over the hill. The pronghorn were my first visitors. My tire marks out on the road were only marred by my own footprints. As pleasant as it was, I was ready for the next thing. I pondered returning the way I came rather than brave the rest of this iffy road over the t...

Caliente Field Office BLM After stopping by the Oak Springs Trilobite Site a second time , I had a relaxed program of travel aiming at Mecca, #19 on the Ely District Recreation Opportunity Guide. It has a toilet and picnicking, so it would be easy to find although these circles aren't always well placed. (Crystal Wash Petroglyphs is marked on the wrong side of the highway, for instance.) It's not far, so I added in stops for a couple geocaches on the way. They were supposed to be stops during the first pass along this road. This time, I hit the "toggle talking" on c:geo so I could actually stop in the right place for these. It's annoying, but the Lincoln County High School radio station kept finding dead spots leaving nothing at all for my driving entertainment. I'd Go a Mile for a Smile-Yuccy Dead : Says it's "on a road you could take your mamma's Jetta." This really is a good road except for a little washboarding and part of the road t...

Wayne E. Kirch Wildlife Management Area Location: Dave Decon Campground More weather passed through and I must admit to some regret that I had not dragged the little trailer along for this trip. I figured it would be easier to face the roads that my car isn't really up to if backing up is possible. A tarp helped close up the spaces between the slats of a provided shelter to keep the rain off my breakfast as the wind blasted north. When it stopped raining, but started blowing very hard to the south, that tarp took the brunt of the blast, too. I did have to get out in that wind and move the tarp. This weather brought an excellent rainbow. Complete arc. Double. There it is, doubled. Some more coming rain to renew the start. Light playing in other parts of the sky too. The starlings continued to waft in a group from tree to tree. The grackle continued to be loud from various branches.

Caliente Field Office BLM Location: Shingle Spring and corral I decided to head over to Wayne E. Kirch Wildlife Management Area, which my Ely District recreation opportunities map indicated had wildlife viewing, but was less optimistic about hiking. The wildlife viewing is primarily the birds that come to rest on the reservoirs, but also the birds that come to the other environments near the reservoirs because water is nearby. Well, I had a reservoir in miniature right where I was in the form of Shingle Spring. I would "practice birdwatching". I actually spent most of the day writing, but I popped over at a few times to see who was flying by. The dark-eyed Junco is by far the most common bird. This one is male. I think. There's plenty of lighter female dark-eyed Juncos , too. The first birds back to the spring after I scared them off are the really common ones that I'm sure have been scooting around all the juniper trees. Ward Mountain was particularly f...

Bristlecone Field Office BLM Great Basin National Park ( map link ) I started the day on a patch of vast BLM lands that happens to have a corral, which was a surprisingly quite place to sleep but confusingly labeled "Snake Creek Campgrounds" on my offline OpenStreetMap. It made for a stunning sunrise and an easy start for a day exploring the area of the actual Snake Creek Campsites that Great Basin National Park maintains as free camping for visitors along this unpaved road. Looking across a dilapidated corral toward the Mount Moriah Wilderness and the sunrise colored clouds over it. not a cave The road is very nicely maintained as far as the state fish hatchery and some private property just before the park boundary. At this point it gets rougher and narrower, but still suitable for my go-cart of a small car. While I had some thoughts to playing with some new-to-me mapping software to try to improve the map, my main goals were fall colors and a stop by a miner...

Mount Lewis Field Office BLM ( map link ) I never want to do a long drive, and this was quite a long drive, without finding a little something along the way. Well, next to a random toilet in the middle of generally Bureau of Land Management lands along the so called Loneliest Highway in America (US-50) are three little pieces of western history all in one clump. Across to the left is an old Overland Stage and Mail stop. Across to the right, a telegraph repeater and maintenance area. On up the hill at a nice little 1.5 miles is a Pony Express stop. So many ways to communicate across the expanse of what was already, in its way, flyover country even before planes. Oh, they also could stop along the way, same as the planes. Just a big dirt and gravel lot for a short trail and two shorter trails to history. I decided first to cross over the highway to the nearby locations. There's a paved lot on that side with a state historical marker and claims to an ADA compliance all the ...