All posts by Steve Stern

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… 

We are going to the Smoke Creek for the weekend.

Uncategorized

Why it is Death Valley and the Smoke Creek? I don't know, but that is how Michele and I refer to them. The Smoke Creek is a huge playa about two hours north of Reno and we will be visiting friends. From there we will probably wander east to a ghost town named Vernon in a small mountain range called The Seven Troughs. My favorite desert is around Death Valley but Michele considers that area too extreme and much prefers northern Nevada. It does have its allures.

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For reference, the picture above (double click to enlarge) is from our friends place, and in the Google Earth capture (also double click to enlarge) below at the green patch in the lower left hand corner. Reno is in the circle at the upper right hand corner of the capture and the the big lake is Pyramid Lake. 

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What a landing looks like from the front window of the shuttle.

Uncategorized

The space shuttle Atlantis returned from orbit from orbit, a couple of days ago. For the last time. It didn't even make the front page of the New York Times.
I am not a shuttle fan. I think that the shuttle and the space station have a symbiotically wasteful relationship.

The space station – which does almost nothing useful except prove man can stay in space for awhile if we spend enough money – justifies the space shuttle by giving it a place to go. The space shuttle – which does almost nothing except give a very small group of highly motivated, over competent, pilots and technicians the ride of their lives at our expense – justifies the space station by having a place to go.  

But that is just my opinion and it is the end of an era. This video is a little slow but what a great way to come home from a vacation (or three day weekend)! Probably the best thing is to double click to take you through to You Tube because, for some reason way beyond my expertize, the picture is too big here.