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.

Rock ghosts and jailbreaks: back in Pioche

After the rock ghosts of the morning, the Ghost Town Art and Coffee Company was a lovely place to spend an hour or two. Housed in a late 19th century workshop with lovely exposed rough wood, it's now a gallery for Kelly Garni's beautiful found-object desert art. And it's a coffeehouse with a simple menu - hot meals cooked on the barbecue out back, and a range of coffees and frappe drinks. There was a lot to love here - we had a coffee in the morning then came back for lunch!

Ghost Town Art & Coffee has treasure within

First, the room itself has clear eastern light, and the walls are full of interesting objects. The artist's workshop takes up a big part of one walland his work is displayed throughout. It's a simple, open plan - I imagine it's very snug, too, on a cold winter day with the woodstove roaring hot. There are a few tables, and some reading material which we pounced on - two books on the town's mad wild west history, by local author Leo Schafer. They're both out of print and hard to find and we haven't finished reading them yet, so I guess we might be back there yet again some time. Also, the food itself was very tasty! I think my idea of a latte is not quite the same as the local one, but I really enjoyed the burger at lunch and the iced tea.

Then, the art itself appeals very much to me, with its re-use of found objects from ghost towns. I guess there's some question as to at what point such objects become of archaeological interest - it must be a sliding scale - but I certainly have a deep sympathy with anyone who picks up bits of rusty crap off the ground. He makes them into flat wall pieces, and uses cut pieces of old sheet metal as backs for vintage photos. The effect is striking, the colours vivid yet organic. The artist was kind enough to talk with us for quite a while about his finds and his work - I was glad to have been there at a quiet enough time for that. This is only one aspect of what he does, as he has an interesting history as a rock musician as well. I loved this profile article, a copy of which is on the wall.

But we weren't just there to loll about in coffee shops reading local history. No, indeed. We had museums to visit. (Also stopped by the old Opera House - as you do. A future post though, opera houses.)

The horsethief and the stars: back in Lincoln County

Arrow Canyon Range with pylon and agave

The drive up to Caliente is starting to seem familiar, and we look forward to all the little highlights of the road - the Arrow Canyon Range faults (we stopped and got some great photos this time), the sudden accesses of green as we come into the oases on the route north and east: Pahranagat, Ash Springs, Crystal Springs, Caliente, Panaca. The road passing over ranges of upthrust blocky hills, up and down but every summit a little higher than the previous one as we climb up towards the Colorado Plateau (further east than we will go this trip). The golden light of Friday afternoon turning to evening, turning to twilight as we swither between stopping sooner to have made camp while it's still light and continuing to where we had planned to stay. Resolutely declining all further diversions so we can at least pitch the tent while it's still dusk. Being glad I put the lamps where we will easily find them in the car in the dark ...

And finally, the last stretch of road. At this time of day, we drive with a careful eye out for deer crossing. This time, we turned east just north of Pioche and gradually climbed a small paved road into a river valley that has cut its way through lava ash tuff. The broad valley narrows quite abruptly and the road crests and dips like a mule trying to shake its rider. On either side, pinon and juniper, then a few houses, then volcanic rock soaring above on either side, grassy meadows, lines of trees showing where the water runs. Our destination was the Horsethief Gulch campground at Spring Valley State Park.

Easier to describe than to photograph!

The campground was more than half full already. We picked out a site, made camp, had a cold supper
by lamplight, and enjoyed a very mild evening - lying on a blanket and watching the stars brighten as the daylight slowly faded. We saw numerous satellites and several planets as well as the Milky Way. It was a perfectly clear evening. The late arrival of neighbours with trucks shining headlights straight towards our site put an end to our night vision; we went to bed.

Ranch Campground

In the morning, we went for a bike ride up the valley a couple of miles. (There is much more road available than we made use of.) We only went as far as the upper campground, where we saw swallow nests by the rafters of one ramada. There was nobody there. With its rock wall niches and slight air of overgrown neglect, the Ranch campground seems wilder and lonelier - and certainly quieter and less occupied - than its lower counterpart. Just goes to show, the name isn't everything.

Eroded holes? or MOUTHS?!!	Volcanic rock down a crazy steep hillside	Intrepid!

I have to describe Spring Valley (and the Eagle Valley reservoir) as yet another under-visited jewel in Lincoln County. The upper valley was seasonally occupied five thousand years ago or more, and then, much more recently, farmed by Mormon settlers in the second half of the 19th century. The park headquarters are in one of the old ranch houses. The lower valley, a couple of miles below the park at Ursine (great name!), is still farmed and many of the yards show a neatness that, rightly or wrongly, I associate with Mormon households.

Eagle Valley Reservoir

In the mid 1960s, the valley was dammed for agricultural purposes. The reservoir has since been
stocked with rainbow trout and we saw quite a number of people fishing while we were there. Theoretically there's swimming too, but up close, the water had a foul smell to it and what looked like an algal bloom - we left it to the fish and fisherfolk.

It is a beautiful spot though ...

Three views from our campsite at Horsethief Gulch Campground, Spring Valley State Park NV

... so beautiful that only a very great curiosity took us into Pioche where we spent much of the day.

Itinerary

Friday: 93 from Henderson to Pioche, 322 to Spring Valley State Park.

No one even knew his name: Pioche, NV

At Boot Hill Cemetery, Pioche, the graves
are decorated with boots, shoes, and flowers.

That's Pee-oatch, not Pee-osh. I wonder what Monsieur Pioche would think? Guess as long as that ore keeps being dug out and trucked off, maybe he wouldn't be too bothered.

They certainly pulled a lot of money out of the ground around here, and probably more than the $25 million of silver that showed up on the reports.

Pioche was a pretty rough town even by Western standards, back in the day. They say that of the first 76 deaths in the town, 75 were from unnatural causes. Or something like that. The precise story varies. The several cemeteries tell a tale ... this is the smallest and most rustic, and the only one we went to so far.

"Shot by a coward
as he worked his claim
No one even knew his name
Pioche Nev" 

Visiting the grave sites, lead poisoning seems to be right up there: "shot by officers 5 times", "shot while working his claim", "shot by in back 5 times from ambush". They buried these men with their boots on, and they say that's why it's called Boot Hill cemetery (one of many).

This is what they had in mind when they called it the Wild West, I suppose. It doesn't sound like the most fun a person can have (for illustration, watch an episode or two of Deadwood.) Makes for sobering visiting, and a half-disbelieving sense of unreality yet again.

Apart from a dodgy history and a lot of graves, Pioche is a quaint little town insinuated into the side of a steep hill and spreading down its slopes most of the way to the 93. Strictly, it's an unincorporated community. This surprised me as it's also the county seat of Lincoln County. Off Main St, the roads are narrow and twisty - luckily we didn't meet any oncoming traffic. Pioche has a variety of gritty historic buildings, including, notably, the courthouse that cost a million dollars, which you'll have to click through to or wait til next time we go because we, driving around bemused, clean forgot to photograph.

Aerial tram

If you like industrial ruins (yes! I do!), Pioche does have a fantastic aerial tram, mostly intact but out of service now. It dates to the 1920s or so, and is complete with buckets and 'danger' signs.

We spent a while poking round an antique store, and I bought three 1920s to 40s surveyor's notebooks detailing survey records of a nearby silver mine - mainly because I like the books themselves, oh such wabi-sabi, full of obscure hand-written pencil notes.

The Bristol mine can be seen, and its associated ghost town too, (if the landowner grants permission - it's still owned by the Company) but it sounds like it's an off road adventure so it goes on the someday list for now.

Back to Kershaw Ryan to cool our feet in the wading pool,
then for a quiet evening with a campfire.

Itinerary

Saturday: North on 93. Turn onto 321 and to Pioche. Northeast on 321 to rejoin 93. 93 south, back to Caliente and Kershaw-Ryan

Cathedral Gorgeous

Q. What if nature played water games in a clayey old lake bed for thousands of years?
A. Cathedral Gorge State Park.


The old lake sediment must be exactly the perfect consistency - soft enough to cut through, sticky enough to hold its shape. Runaway runoff has carved and is carving an astounding succession of crannies, caves, niches and slots into the previously solid accumulation of ancient lake sediment. If you've ever seen Bryce Canyon, with its hoodoos, or Cedar Breaks, both formed by wind erosion and repeated freeze-thaw cycles on sandstone, the similarity is striking.





But the scale is completely different. The shapes recall Hindu carved walls, classical columns, nesting ledges of a thousand birds, and you can reach out and touch them, practically hold them in your hand.













The upper surface is no more than 50 feet above, much less in most places. The close quarters lead to amazing keyholes of sky and effects of sunlight filtering down over the intricate surfaces. And, much photography.

The Grand Canyon kind of does your head in but is hard to intimately connect with, whereas Zion rears above you, you're among it, literally inside it, and it is more humanly touching because your brain can comprehend the scope.


In the same way, some slots in Cathedral Gorge are too small to get through, and we were brushed either side with dirt by the time we came out - but the smaller scale, if anything, made us even more wide-eyed with wonder. (Yeah, even the teen. Fist pump! We casually - nah the truth is we pointedly - mentioned that we do stuff this cool practically every time we go away. The education continues.)

Also, it was fairly warm out there (112/44) but in among the crevices there were constant out-sighings of cool air. How can that be? And even knowing how, I shake my head. It does not seem any less amazing.

CCC water tower

The site is adorned by a few old CCC buildings: a ramada, a water tower and a very charming outhouse that is no longer accepting donations (there's one of those at Kershaw-Ryan, too) - and there is camping there too, perhaps for a cooler season.







And they had the best mud ever. I have seen mud dried into curved tiles before. This is the first time I've ever seen it curled into a fringe.

Miller Point overlook

Across the highway from the park entrance is the ghost town of Bullionville - for next time. (We were already saying 'next time' by then.) For now, we turned north on 93 towards Pioche, stopping at the Miller Point Overlook to see Cathedral Gorge from above.

Itinerary

Saturday: 317 to Caliente, turn northeast on 93. Through Panaca junction, to Cathedral Gorge State Park ...

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 ...

Springs and the Calligraphy Highway pt 2

Last time, on Desert Sage Adventure, we had caught our breath after taking Harry on a whirlwind rough road adventure ...

Highway 93 is also called the Great Basin Highway, and one of these days we will take it all the way up to Great Basin National Park. But that day was not today. We would turn further east at Panaca, cross into Utah and head down 18 to turn off at Central.

Before that, coffee. The Koolatron fits a lot of stuff, but I just didn't have room for iced coffee. And yet paradoxically, we ourselves had all kinds of room for iced coffee. Caliente seemed like a bigger dot on the map than any of the others. We drove up over the mountains - passing by Oak Springs Summit Trilobite Area, of which you, dear readers, will likely hear more in the future. The road dips down into yet another gorgeous little valley. Houses dot the landscape and we tell each other this would be a great place to live, and the sandstone cliffs over you would teach you a sense of perspective and also be just the loveliest distraction, and we stupidly look out for 'for sale' signs.

Then around another bend, and we are in Caliente, quaint wooden buildings everywhere and a grand mission style railway station. On the far side of the tracks, a couple of blocks of shops ... aha! The Brandin Iron. Reckon they'll sell us a cup of coffee or a root beer float.

Best wait staff service we've had for ages, she knew when to hold 'em, when to fold 'em. I don't think we waited more than a second or two for anything at any point, and yet she never seemed pushy or in our faces. Her suggestion of onion rings was a good one (well, they tasted great. Nutritionally, hmm ... they had veges in them?) A good stop.

But still miles to go. Coming down into Panaca is an exciting experience; there's a stopping place / pullout  half way down the hill, without any barrier, that has a hundred foot drop to cattle pastures. This, too, was my first conscious drive-through of desert crop circles. They are just as green in person, but somehow less improbable in appearance than from the air:

We turned east onto 319 at Panaca - there are hot springs there that are still on the to-do list, but otherwise it aspires only to the style of census-designated place with one or two notable old buildings. We continued into another lovely basin-and-range valley, and crossed into Utah.

A calligraphy road, UT 319

Where the road maintenance schedule is out of sync with Nevada's.
And they've a full and frank understanding of this desert crop circle thing:

No, it's not a video game. I'm not sure you could make this stuff up - no one would believe. As always in the south-west - see green, and wonder where the water comes from. Here, a close inspection of the map (click the image above to see it) shows more than one canal and a creek that hardly looks up to the job. Since I read Cadillac Desert I'm even more aware of looking for where the water comes from, who controls it, and what they do with it

Anyway, from the ground it all looks pretty normal - if we weren't in a desert - maybe barring the irrigation machinery, but nothing surprised me enough to stop and photograph it. We turned south at Beryl Junction through more improbable greenliness (it;s my new word, do you like it?). The day was getting on, so we did not stop at Mountain Meadows, but drove through more hills (it's not called basin and range for nothing), turned east again at Central and slowly (so as not to disturb the cattle) up the small road to Pine Valley. (They might understand crop circles but they have something to learn about grazing the long acre.)

Pine Valley is full of, well, pines. Principally Ponderosa, or Yellow pines. Also oak trees. It's cool and high and tucked into a semicircle of mostly wooded mountains that feed the beginning of the Santa Clara River. It is every bit as charming as it sounds! And yes, we stayed there, camping ... Simon managed to get the last available Saturday night site until August ... and yes I will tell you the story ... next time.

Itinerary

Saturday: ... Caliente NV, Pine Valley UT.

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 ...