Monday, July 28, 2014

Heading home… Jackson WY to San Mateo CA, via Ely Nevada… 2 days in one post…



From Jackson, the trip takes a turn, and changes from a vacation to a transit home… still a vacation, but the transit home takes precedence… The distance driven grows… the sense of urgency to make time looms… few pictures are taken.

Saturday morning, early, we checked out of the Angler lodge in Jackson, drove a block away or so and had breakfast at the Bunnery, a local breakfast place… some years ago Rachel Ray visited… The New York times has mentioned it… We have been here before…  We had breakfast…

Well fortified, we headed south, through Afton with its “world’s largest antler arch”, through Montpelier Idaho where the Hole in the Wall gang robbed the bank (on August 13, 1896) … then through Logan Canyon heading to I-15…

I-15 South took us through Ogden, Salt Lake City and Provo… Off to the east are a couple of wild fires… new fires.  We can see spot fires down wind… We can see the sudden bright neon orange of a borade air drop.  The weather is weird… broken clouds, likely leading to lighting but little rain… the dreaded dry lightning.  We leave the interstate at Nephi UT… and on to the little roads… following local roads in search of US Hwy 6… and from there east to Ely, NV… this is not highly populated country… farms and ranches giving way to open range… at one point it was 80 miles between gas stations (with one unlucky truck sitting by the side of the road with two blown tires, almost exactly between… 








Just across the Nevada border was Great Basin National Park… a wonderful little known isolated park… It is very vertical… ranging from 5,000’ to a bit over 13,000’ with a range of eco systems and unexpected vistas…   We didn’t spend as much time in Great Basin as the site deserves… This is one of the dangers of road trips… the need to move on leads to rushed visits…

Any road trip is about unplanned meetings… at the visitor center at Great Basin we encountered the “4K for Cancer” cross country bicycle riders… The vans were in the parking lot… the bikes piled outside (neatly) and the riders collapsed in the visitor center… They are taking 70 days to ride cross country… 

A little over 50 miles beyond we reached Ely Nevada. Home of the Nevada Northern Railroad and the Hotel Nevada…  We drove by the railroad depot where a train was waiting… then on to the Hotel Nevada, our home for the night… It’s a “classic” hotel… downtown, 4 or 5 stories… said to be the first hotel in Nevada with a bath in every room… (a sign suggestst the plumbing is old but we had no issues) It is old school… real Nevada…  We had dinner downstairs… then collapsed for the night… We could see the Nevada Northern Railroad excursion train from our window as it headed up to Ruth…

The next morning, our last on the road… Up… shower… breakfast downstairs… a really nice old school eggs and meat and carbo breakfast… I had corned beef, Tina French toast… Nearby a fire crew is eating… two others are apparently here to support a fire air crew…  We don’t see it but there is a fire nearby, to the south east… 

We stop for gas and ice and headed south-east on Nevada Hwy 6… the real loneliest road… 186 miles to the next services… sadly the sign saying “Next Services 186 Miles” seems to be missing, likely someone’s souvenir…  Once on the road We passed a truck… one truck… we saw 18 oncoming cars… most in the stretch between Warm Springs and Tonopah, in 186 miles… There were deer in one field… two herds of wild horses…

We explored Tonopah, found the new brewery… It’s not quite open yet but should open soon.  We got half a tank of gas (i.e. fuel, in the desert you never leave a place with fuel with less than a full tank…) then headed out of town… eventually heading south on Hwy 6 again… past the closed truck stop and whore house at the Jct of 6 and 95, over Montgomery Pass at Boundary Peak (with its closed motel and whore house… apparently the rural sex industry in Nevada is seeing hard times). Then down into the Owens Valley… checking in at the California Agricultural inspection station… (we only had dried apricots purchased in CA in their original package… she (aka the agent) suggested I was waiting to tell her that… I might have been, I once surrendered a store bought apple with its sticker here) Now down the valley to Benton…then right on 120 to Benton Springs and beyond… there were signs for “Bicycles on road”… and eventually bicycles… we passed Mono Mills… past the ash cones and tufa towers… to Hwy 395… early in the trip the trip was about Hwy 395… now for a few minutes we rejoin the road on our jog north, a couple of miles to the 120 turnoff toward Tioga pass… we pause at the 395 Mobil… the Jeep carries a Lee Vining Mobil sticker from a previous visit…  Up towards the pass… traffic is thick… slow… and comes to a stop a mile and a half from the entrance… An hour wait in line… this sucks…

There is a fire in Yosemite… (The official “Yosemite July Lightning Fire Update #1” from July 24 reported that there had been over 3,000 lightning strikes with more than 21 fire starts in the last 10 days, its all about the dry lighting.)  As a result the road between 120 and the Valley is closed… rangers are challenging (this is not a nice word but the only way I could describe the interaction with the young lady in the magic hat at the east entrance) guests entering the park… “where are your going” (no mention of fire or road closures) we are not going to the valley… they let us pass but never mention the fire… I am not impressed with the customer service offered by the NPS…  If we had been headed to the valley, a sign at the bottom of the hill would have let us choose options other than driving up the hill, setting in line at the top of the hill for an hour, then turning around and driving back down the hill.

It is smoky in the park… I am used to fires, and this is not a surprise… There has been bad smoke on 6 days of the trip…  once again the west is burning.  Smoke does not seem to be affecting visitation to the park, but the views must suck in the valley.

The road is initially crowded but soon thins out and we pass over the Tioga Pass road at near speed limit… (45 and 35 mph… not fast but reasonable…)  I think about this road in comparison to the “Going to the Sky road in Glacier, and the Bear Tooth Hwy…  There may be a blog post about that later… 

At the park exit we are in a 15 minute line while they check people out…  This is our 6th park and the only one that is checking people out (as well as in.) The park staff don’t seem to understand the effect on their policies on visitors, and I might suggest don’t care…

Out of the park… down Old Priest Grade and into Oakdale… We pass a couple of fire crews headed up the hill… in Groveland they have a Red Cross shelter set up…  Once off the mountain our speed increases… we head across the valley to the Bay Area… and home…  The dogs are happy to have us home…

The trip has taken 13 days, covering 8 states and one Canadian Provence… 6 National Parks (plus Waterton in Canada) a National Wild Life preserve… and 3,986 miles…  There are 5 new stickers on the Jeep… I won’t guess at the number of wild fires.

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