All posts by Steve Stern

Running late to the Smoke Creek and beyond and back

Americana, Travel

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Michele celebrated Memorial Day morning by sleeping in – under a threatening sky. Maybe more than threatening: we could see virga as we looked around.

As an aside. There are four deserts in the United States. They are generally characterized by the plant life but I think they can also be characterized by their character? myths? aura? I am not sure of the right word. I have not spent enough time in the Chihuahuan Desert to form an opinion, but the other three deserts are very different.

The Mojave Desert is the wacko desert and I mean that in the worst way and the best possible way. It is where people get abducted by Aliens, it is the desert of Charles Manson, the Repo Man desert. It is also the home of the Mojave Air & Space Port and China Lake Naval Air Station and Edwards Air Force Base.

The Sonora Desert is the Indian desert. It is where the Navajos live, where tourists go to Pueblos over 500 years old, the best place to buy real and faux Indian art.

The Great Basin Desert is the Cowboy desert. Yes, there are Indian reservations, but few tourists visit them. It is where wild horses still roam and cowboys try to thin the herds using helicopters. It is a cold desert in winter – but, now, by the end of May, it is pretty warm – and the dominant plant is sage brush. Rub up against a plant or drive over one and the smell of sage permeates the air. I find it delightful. It is called the great basin because it does not drain to the sea. There are no rivers that lead out of the Great Basin. You can accurately say that The rain that falls in Nevada stays in Nevada.End aside.

We had camped near an abandoned mine that was really just a vertical shaft – but deep enough so that we couldn't see the bottom – and there was abandoned junk spread around. It was more picturesque in the fading light of last night than the heavy gray sky of morning.

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After breakfast, we went south and ran into the tailings, abandoned buildings, and industrial size junk of what looked to be a huge operation. 

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Because a couple of the abandoned vehicles were WWII deuce and half trucks, I'm guessing the mine operated, at least, into the 1950s. But the remaining buildings and technology could have been from a hundred years ago. Including the Tequila Junction bar Michele dropped by and

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the outhouse with view.

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The mine site – I wouldn't call it big enough to be a ghost town – was a little creepy in the drab day and what we really wanted to do was go for a long walk, so we drove north to a canyon that looked promising on the map. And it was: we walked up a double track road until it petered out and then cut cross country back to the truck.

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When we got back to the truck, it was getting late, so we high-tailed it back to Mike and Linda's. 

To be concluded.

 

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Running late to the Smoke Creek and beyond 2

Uncategorized

This is the third part of a multi-part post. To go to the beginning, go here.

The overall feeling of this part of Nevada – maybe all of Nevada – is vastness. Overwhelming vastness. From the top of every pass, the view is of a huge valley and a couple more mountain ranges. But, I think that is deceptive. I think it would look alot smaller filled with trees and houses. It is the emptiness that makes it look so huge. BTW, all the wide-formate photos are double clickable to enlarge.

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We had been over this pass and into this basin about five years ago. Mike said that a mining area about two mountain ranges over, the Seven Trough Range, was very interesting. We didn’t have any maps that went that far east, so Mike loaned us his. Michele made sure we didn’t get lost even though, often, we seemed to be in the middle of nothing.

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When Mark Twain got to Nevada, some Chamber of Commerce type told him If this place had water, it would be paradise. Twain answered You could say the same thing about hell. Actually, I think the Chamber guy was on to something. Where ever there is water, a spring or a well, there are trees and ponds and grass.

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The great majority of the roads we drove on were official county roads with numbers and everything. When I asked Mike how good the roads were, he told me OK but not as good as the road coming into the Smoke Creek. The Smoke Creek Road was in Washoe County and they have a huge tax base with Reno and we would be going into Pershing County with alot less money for road maintenance. But the roads were great and Michele – who drove most of the time with me riding shotgun only with a camera – never had to shift into low range, even when we got off the county roads.   

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We drove by scenes that looked like paintings – here photoed by Michele and painted by Mike – who I think of, here, as Michael Moore, as in Michael Moore paintings.

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– and antelopes or – it is hard to be sure – cows bred with greyhounds.  

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Sunday night, we camp on the fan from Seven Trough Canyon – for which the Range is named – overlooking Sage Valley.

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 To be concluded.

 

 

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Running late to the Smoke Creek and beyond

Photography, Travel

This is the second part of a multi-part post. To go to the beginning, go here.

Both Mike and Linda – the links @ their names are to their websites – are artists and their undisclosed location – as they would like to have it so referred – on the edge of the Smoke Creek playa, is like a giant art piece. Every vista is dazzling and every detail is thought out in a subtle but idiosyncratic way. Every time I come here, my first thought is I would like to move in and change nothing – OK, the name on the door, but that’s it.

Sunday morning, we woke up in our own guest cottage on the edge of a pond.

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And joined Linda, Mike, and their three dogs on their pre-breakfast walk around the ranch – property? spread? whatever.

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After breakfast and visiting, we wandered up the road a spell to Planet X. Planet X is a pottery studio  owned by John and Rachel Bogard. We probably would have stopped there anyway because we like their pottery and they always have an open house on Memorial Day, but Michele had taken a class there several years ago and wanted to stop by to say hello.

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Michele and Rachel talked about the economy and I tagged along. At one point, I mentioned that they looked busy but that most of the people looked pretty old – it never occurred to me that I was one of those old guys – signifying that this was probably their first time here. Rachel said No, they are the same people who always come here, they are just getting old. Gulp! Just like us.

As Michele and Rachel continued to talk, I wandered over to the TV to watch Dario Franchitti win the Indy 500.

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A long aside. Nevada is Basin and Range country. Between Lake Tahoe and Salt Lake City, the North American Plate is pulling apart, stretching the crust thin, fracturing it on a north-south axis. These fractured pieces, are rotating on the same axis producing a series of separate and parallel north south mountain ranges. Each of these Ranges has a flat Basin between it and the next Range. For 450 miles!

It is a geologically fascinating area and the great John McPhee wrote a geology primer about the Nevada Basin and Range that reads like poetry, titled, appropriately, Basin and Range. McPhee, when asked how he would sum up the book, said If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone. Think about that, the top of Mt. Everest was once the bottom of an ocean.End aside.

Leaving Planet X, we drove through Gerlach – the sign says Where the pavement ends and the West begins. but we were coming in from the other way, so, I guess, technically we were leaving the West. Not really, after 18 miles of paved road, we turned east on a unpaved county road. Our trip would take us over several Ranges and through several Basins, starting by going up the fan into the Selenite Range.       (Double clickable.)

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To be continued

Fast-Roping 101

Current Affairs, Politics, War

We got back from the Smoke Creek late Tuesday only to see “Israel attacks flotilla”. Having had no news for three days, I don’t have a good picture of what happened except even India is pissed.1 It is as if Israel has been taken over by the Tea Bag Party. Andrew Sullivan, in a blog post entitled The Capitan Speaks,  quotes and comments on an article in Haaretz.Com.

An interesting account:

“I was the second to be lowered in by rope,” said Captain R. “My comrade who had already been dropped in was surrounded by a bunch of people. It started off as a one-on-one fight, but then more and more people started jumping us. I had to fight against quite a few terrorists who
were armed with knives and batons.”

I note two things. It began with a one-on-one fight. This was not a lynch mob primed to kill. It was a reaction that spread as more soldiers arrived. The second thing I note is that the captain describes the passengers as “terrorists.”

This picture, from the Center for a New American Security from where I blatantly ripped it off, is labeled Too Soon? and filed under Israel. 

 

Helos

1. We were in India at the camel festival at Pushkar when Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995. The Indian government shut everything down and declared a national couple of days of morning. They were that pro-Israel. 

Running late to the Smoke Creek

Americana, Travel

On our three and one half day trip to the Smoke Creek desert and beyond, we started late and it got worse. We had not been up there in over five years and had completely forgotten how far away it is. I thought it would take us about six hours to get to Michael and Linda's place and Michele agreed. We started late Saturday morning and traffic jammed all the way through San Francisco, the East Bay, Highway 80 into Sacramento, and, finally, Reno. By Reno, we had been going for over six hours and still had a couple to go.

We turned north, out of Reno, on Pyramid Way and drove through the Sun Valley/Spanish Springs area. When we first started going up to the Smoke Creek, years ago, the country just north of Reno looked like this.    

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Now it looks like this. No wonder we are drilling for oil in 5,000 feet of water.



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Further north, we passed Pyramid Lake which in the past had always seemed pretty empty. Now, all the beaches were packed with RVs, probably trying to get away from Sun Vally/Spanish Springs  . 

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We got off the pavement at the north end of Pyramid and ran out of people. We also started to climb out of the lake basin and over a low pass. In the fading light, the hills were soft and as sensuous as we remembered.

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Finally, when we spotted the Smoke Creek playa, we were thrilled,
knowing we only had 40 miles of dirt road left to get to Mike and Linda's where Mike would be waiting to light the barbecue for us.

 

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To be continued here…