Lincoln County rematch

John Muir once said "The mountains are calling and I must go." I hear it a little differently ... it's the desert that calls. (This is a mystery to me. More on it anon.) For now, the desert was calling us and we had even managed to persuade the teen to go, so on Friday we packed up Harry's boot good and tight with a thrilling array of camping equipment, shut the cats in with all their necessities, and got on the freeway north. We had unfinished business with Lincoln County.

Arrow Canyon Range NV:
The dark grey band makes the fault lines conspicuous even at 70 mph.
And look! Moon!

The second time up a highway can be a little as a song that was sung or a story told. That is to say, it can be a bit tedious or it can catch your breath like it did the first time.

Having fallen for Nevada's stripy hills and mountains, it's never less than a quiet pleasure for me to drive through its valleys and see those improbable blocks of rock slowly sinking into their blankets of sand and sediment.

And on this particular drive, there's a stretch of 93 after the road turns north for the first time and the valley is bounded on the east by the spectacular Arrow Canyon range, gorgeous with horizontal bands of colour in the early evening light. The moon already risen, and that crazy Nevada blue sky ...

Traffic had slowed us down a bit leaving LV, so instead of enjoying the sunset at our campsite, we enjoyed it with the almost full moon over the Delamar Valley as we passed through.

Kershaw-Ryan State Park has a modest first-in, best-dressed campground. It was about a third full when we arrived and made a couple of circuits in the gathering twilight - looking and calculating for daytime shade. We pitched the tents hurriedly by lamp- and moon-light, which definitely makes it sound more romantic and enjoyable than it was, then sat down to a supper of cold baked chicken and herbed sweet potato salad. (Somewhere during this period the mosquitoes discovered me. I'm not sure why I got the 'most delicious' vote ... anyway, the welts have mostly gone now.) We didn't stay up late to watch the stars, although we did take some time to enjoy the cliffs by moonlight. (Also, there was a Welcome Frog or at least a resident frog by the ablutions block and I saw it eat a bug, just like that. It is these small things that make me happy.) A campfire would wait for Saturday night.

Jacket keeps it warm :)

I was up bright and early at about 4:30 on Saturday morning. The sky was already lightening and it
felt cold (well, I say cold. It was probably 16 or 17 C.) I got the coffee going and enjoyed the sunrise, painting colour everywhere. The campground, in the lower part of the canyon, is about 20 years old. (It was rebuilt after its predecessor was washed out by flash floods.) On either side the ash-flow tuff cliffs catch the light beautifully at every hour of day.

Stove and coffeepot did their mighty work; yoghurt and cereal (or thereabouts) for breakfast. Then Simon and I went for a walk up the canyon while the teen stayed in camp reading.

I'm still nursing plantar fasciitis (or fascists, as autocorrect would have you believe) so we took the car up a mile or so to the visitor parking and walked from there. The canyon overlook walk winds up through gardens and pleasure-grounds (I think that's the right word when there's a wading pool and a terrain for playing horse-shoes?), past 40 foot high thickets of wild grape. The trail then divides, into or across a wash. We went across and up through juniper scrub, the trail twisting back on itself to traverse layers of rock to the mesa above, which afforded a view over the canyon to the valley beyond and even a glimpse of the Union Pacific line.

We saw deer or maybe bighorn sheep tracks and, more excitingly, big cat tracks - could have been bobcat or mountain lion, hard to tell. The prints were about 3 inches wide, and some of them were very clear, but too hard to photograph. 

To return, we scrambled down into the wash and followed the riverbed. Whatever big cat had been up to the summit had also been down in the wash - possibly to drink, possibly to hunt. We skirted a bulrush-fringed pool guarded by a tarantula hawk wasp (which is, alone, a sufficient argument against a benevolent creator) and scrambled down a couple of small dry waterfalls. Then I came round a corner and saw a snake - the first one I've seen alive and face to face in the wild here, as opposed to watching its flickering back depart. It tasted the air and high-tailed it into the grasses and low shrubs. I'm pretty sure it was a mountain gartersnake, most of a metre long, with handsome pale lemon and dark green markings.

Back at camp, it was time for a nap before we headed out for the afternoon.

Itinerary

Friday: From LV, I15 then 93 through Coyote Springs, Alamo, ET junction, and northeast past Delamar to Caliente. Turn south on 317 to Kershaw-Ryan State Park.
Saturday: Kershaw-Ryan State Park ...