Cans, stripes, luck (Carrara NV)

It was a lovely cloudy day on Sunday. I'm still delighted by stunning blue sky days here, but sometimes a brewing storm can be even more beautiful. It wasn't heavy enough to be raining down to ground level much, but the virga/walking clouds were trailing lightly over the hills, and the sunlight was dappling the land through huge crazy cloud patterns.

Raffle prize - a chunk of halite from California.
Approx 25 cm across. Yes, it's pink.

We started out by driving over the hill to Pahrump, where Simon had won two raffle prizes at last week's rock and gem show. (Our batting average lately is astounding, actually. Last time I entered a raffle was at the rock and gem club meeting a few weeks ago, where I also won two prizes, one of them the grand prize. Hey statistics, you just keep looking the other way, okay? Okay.) The prize pickup was handled in a particularly Nevadan way, by meeting up in a casino car park.

Hidden treasure (Casto Canyon)

Early Autumn foliage at Casto Canyon

It's kind of off the beaten track though really not far off it: less than 3 miles north of the Bryce Canyon turnoff, and then about 3 1/2 miles in on an unpaved but well-graded road. To - just a canyon, in about the middle of nowhere.

A wide stony wash, still wet in places from recent rains. Red-orange sandstone walls, lucent against the sky, subtly echoed in the autumn foliage. The rain has washed off and settled the dust, leaving all the rock richer in colour and the sky a crazy clear deep blue, near-cloudless.

Still plenty of heat in the sun, but a cool breeze.

Drive to a Bristol tea party (down 93 in White Pine and Lincoln Counties)

After adventures in Ely and Great Basin National Park, we drove home via 93. This highway runs from the Mexican border nearly to Canada. So our route was only a scrap of it - but we've now done most of the Nevada section of it. Which is a start.

Any road around the middle to south of the state of Nevada takes you through Basin and Range country, where the valleys run roughly north/south between those thrilling stripy ranges. Millions of years ago, the crust was stretched thin (lots of vulcanism) and twisted sideways (lots of broken and up-tilted macro chunks of crust.) (Whenever I read about these huge geological processes I just imagine what would happen to piecrust or to sand at the beach, seems to help me visualise it. I expect I need professional help of some kind ...) Since then, erosion has shown us a thousand fascinating ways that stone can weather.

This section of 93 is in the true Great Basin desert. No Joshua trees, not much creosote, but rippling seas of grey-green sagebrush, hip-high or taller, and yellow blond grasses. 'Cedar' (juniper, actually), pine, and aspen cloak the lower slopes of the ranges. Our route starts at a higher elevation, and though crossing several ranges, overall trends downhill.

Two loops and a spring: the goodness of side roads

Panaca Spring

Lazy Sunday morning in camp, reading and sleeping, maybe somewhat in denial over having to go home. My reluctance to leave only increased as the campground steadily emptied out around us. It would clearly be almost deserted by night ... and a quiet campground is pretty much my favourite kind. But we had clichés to insert and eventually we packed up and shipped out.

Go straight home though? Yeah nah. Side roads for the win.

Springs and the Calligraphy Highway pt 1

Leaving Las Vegas at 5 o'clock on a Friday has a direful sound as of much traffic. (Note to self, start earlier to pack the car.) Actually, though, it was pretty sedate and orderly, and didn't slow us down more than five minutes. With the temperature around 110/43, Mt Charleston still had a wee scraping of snow! The I15 northeast from Vegas runs through broken country, hills (well, big lumps or small hills) whose origins are currently mysterious to me. Clearly a lot of it is sedimentary. There are cuts that the roadway passes through and low bluffs showing handsome sandstone (?) stripes. (Below one of these is nestled the finest collection of heavy machinery you could hope to see. And all for sale!)

The turnoff north-east onto 93 is only about 20 miles out of the city, amidst a local centre of power generating excellence. Some of these power stations are coyly hidden in the hills, their smokestacks visible only at particular turns of the highway. The 93 is a comparatively lightly used highway with plenty of scope for easy overtaking. It passes through a valley, where hills rise on either side, showing classic Basin and Range stripes at various angles, soft pediments sloping down into the basin floor. A line of broken land appears to the east, and the road runs over washes with increasing frequency as the road and river converge. The valley narrows, and the road disappears into the range. After the winding road through, the road comes over a summit and down the hill, and suddenly there is green. Trees, grassy flats, and still on either hand the sagebush and joshua tree desert close by, showing that this verdure is from the ground or from irrigation, not from the sky. We see deeper grass, and uncountable wildflowers. Then, at last, standing water - a lake.

Pahranagat Lake has rushes and tall trees round its margins. As we drive along the lakeshore, more than once we startle a heron into flight. (The ducks, geese and fish are less excitable; the dragonflies so constantly in motion that we can't tell whether we disturb them or not.) On the other side of the single dirt road, desert - sandstone, cholla, agave. We already had plans for the night, so we didn't camp, but we did stop for a picnic tea overlooking the water.

So it was nearly sunset by the time we came to Ash Springs. This is 5 miles north of where we planned to stay, but there was supposed to be a warm spring, and we wanted to get there while it was still light. We need not have bothered. Unfortunately (and this is a very common story in rural Nevada) the Spring itself was closed, locked, ringed with barbed wire and adorned with stern signs from Uncle Sam telling us to stay out lest, I don't know, the National Guard be called out to teach us the error of our ways. As we later heard, the wall around the spring needed repairs, and people kept leaving broken glass there, and so forth, so the BLM closed it. We watched the sun set instead, and the spectacular light over the valley.

Retraced our path south to the Alamo Inn. Its rustic decor might not be suitable for fastidious princesses - but it was scrupulously clean and we thought had a charm of its own. Besides, the owner is a personable, hospitable local guy, as friendly and helpful as you could ever hope to meet. We were sitting outside in the comfy chairs having a beer and some dessert, and he came over to tell us we'd be able to see the ISS about 9 o'clock, if we were interested. Well, yes. I fired up the iPad and opened StarWalk - just as well, too, because the sky was still darkening and the space station was not very easy to spot. We had a great chat with the owner and a couple of other guests as we all watched the station pass by near the northwestern horizan. Then an excellent night's sleep - the walls were still warm with the heat of the day, but the air conditioner knew its business.

We already knew, thanks to our helpful host at Alamo, that Crystal Springs no longer allowed bathing. The story was that the Mormon Church had bought the surrounding land and didn't want bathing there, probably for the usual reasons (vandalism, noise, etc.) I'd seen a photo of the springs, though, and we thought it was worth a stop anyway. It was.

Crystal Springs is at the very beginning of the Extra Terrestrial Highway (Area 51 and all that.) Himself had read about the Alien Research Center not far up that road and wanted to check it out, so we went up to have a look. However, we were unable to carry out any alien research on this occasion. Presumably the management had been Taken Up - the signage was present but the doors were locked.

Back on the 93, which takes a sharp bend north-east at that junction. Beautiful Joshua Tree forest on either side, chollas coming into flower in bronze and green, and the road in some places lined with lovely white flowers (prickly poppies), orange desert globe mallow, and a variety of yellow, blue, and purple flowers on sage-green low shrubs. Our Alamo Inn host had said it's a once in a lifetime year for wildflowers. His 84 year old father has lived in the area much of his life and never seen one like it. On the one hand I'm glad and grateful to be here and enjoying them .On the other, as himself says, next spring might be a disappointment.

Our host had also mentioned the Delamar playa, in the valley to the easy of Alamo. We didn't take his suggested road, as it was a backtrack south, but when we saw the turnoff south of the 93, we were tempted by the excellent condition of the unsealed road, into what became quite a diversion.

It's 21 miles down that unpaved road to the Delamar dry lake (or playa). We left a plume of dust behind us and Harry's back was thick with it. We were lucky enough to spot a small herd of pronghorn, but they're wary and quick, so we didn't get any good photos of them.

The playa, or dry lake, is a vast flat of broken natural pavement. I think Simon enjoyed taking a right turn off the road and just carrying on out into the middle! There was another group of people there playing in a jeep. With our usual good timing, more groups were arriving as we were leaving.

We pootled around some rocks that are supposed to have petroglyphs. Without hiking boots, long pants or gloves, we weren't really prepared for climbing or scrambling. We did see an amazing dust devil, but Pahranagat Man eluded us for this time.

Back up the power line road, we decided to try and look for the Delamar Ghost Town. Nothing's signposted, so we were just guessing when we took a likely seeming road east towards the mountains. Google maps says it's called North Cedar Wash at first - but we went in about 15 miles, up to an unnamed summit, seeing a beautiful variety of country, flora, fauna, and artefacts on the way:

• creosote scrub 
• blooming cacti and wildflowers
• ruined stone house
• old mine shaft
• cedar/piñon forest
• oak stands
• wild horses
• wild roses
• the perfect back country campsite 
• corrals apparently in the middle of nowhere
• a dead rattlesnake (first rattlesnake we've seen in the wild)

Eventually, after a few stops for hesitant inspections of the track by our unpaved-road expert driver (not me, that is!), we came to a short steep slope by a wash that even we couldn't pretend would be okay for Harry, and turned around just past Bishop Spring. (We think Harry is okay. He didn't seem too flustered but we asked a lot of his gearbox!)

Dirty Harry at some apparently unnamed summit in the Delamar mountains.
Well done, thou good and faithful servant!

Stopped under the shade of a juniper tree for a late picnic lunch, and then carried on back out to the highway.

To Be Continued.

Itinerary

Friday: From Las Vegas north on I15, take Apex exit onto 93. North to Pahranagat Lake, Ash Springs, back down to Alamo NV.
Saturday: Crystal Springs, Alien Research Centre, Delamar Playa, Delamar Mountains, Bishop Spring ...