My Nevada / Utah Trip

[blackcloudbrew]

Late this September, my wife and I traveled from our home in California through central Nevada to southern Utah. Our focus was on several of the great canyon national parks in southern Utah (Bryce Canyon NP and Zion NP), but we also explored others parks and places both along the way and nearby. All tolled we visited six national parks and a number of state parks covering about 2,200 miles in 10 days. I took with me my usual range of too many lenses and cameras (my K20d, K5, K100ds [IR converted], PZ-1p [35mm film], and Pentax 645 [medium format film]). I'm not sure of the total but I believe I shot around 1,000 images including a lot of HDR stuff and about 7 or 8 rolls of film. It took me about a month and a half to fit in processing the images and film, although I've yet to fully deal with the 35mm images and have on more roll of film to develop.

ANYWAY, while I have traveled much of the western United States, I have never been to this area of southern Utah. These parks are well known, well visited, and are meccas for tourists and photographers alike. In reflecting on the images of these places I've seen before we went and now after visiting them, I have to say that 'I get it,' I see what draws people to these places. They are just amazing and I will return again and again to see more. My dream trip would be to travel slowly throughout the boarder regions of eastern California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. There is so much to see, a lot of which requires either special guides and/or 4 wheel drive vehicles. Someday I will cover a lot more of these places. On this trip, my wife and I just scratched the surface. So off we go.

Our first day, we drove some 535 miles from our home in northern California to the mining town of Ely, Nevada. Stopping along the way as is our style, we did quick visits to a few places just to break up the monotony of traveling the interstate highways. One interesting spot was located east of the town of Fallon, NV called Grimes Point. It is an area long used by native Americans dating back 10,000 years or more and has many petroglyphs on the rocks depicting things mystical or hunting related activities. While high desert now, thousands of years ago the area was the shore of a lake. Anyway, here are a few of the petroglyphs.

1 - Petroglyphs at Grimes Point, NV

_IGP4503 by blackcloudbrew, on Flickr

2 - My wife getting a shot of the petroglyphs.

_IGP4506 by blackcloudbrew, on Flickr

3 - More petroglyphs and a hand to show scale

_IGP4511 by blackcloudbrew, on Flickr

4 - FA-18 fighters approaching the Fallon Naval Air Station. As an interesting aside, this ancient set of petroglyphs is located just east of a US Naval Air Base. Many years ago, while in the Naval Reserve, I spent two weeks there providing tactical weather support for an exercise. NAS Fallon has been the home of the 'Top Gun' fighter pilot school. It's an odd place because it's a Naval Base in the middle of a desert. Where are the ships? Anyway, it's a perfect place for fighter jet.

_IGP4502 by blackcloudbrew, on Flickr

[blackcloudbrew]

As we traveled through central Nevada, we drove US Highway 50. Because of the sparseness of the landscape, it's been called the 'loneliest highway in the US.' I would tend to agree with that. It still was an amazing road. It loosely follows the old Pony Express Rider route which for about a year and a half in the 1860's carried mail from Saint Louis to Sacramento in 10 days or so. Along our route, were the remains of livery stations built to support the Pony Express Riders.

5 - foundation remains of a Pony Express livery station

_IGP4513 by blackcloudbrew, on Flickr

6 - Due to a road construction delay, we spent a half an hour on some nameless place in central Nevada.

_IGP4521 by blackcloudbrew, on Flickr

7 - Sunset on Highway 50. As it happened it was just near sunset so instead of just driving and driving, I got to get my first sunset shot of the trip.

_IGP4518 by blackcloudbrew, on Flickr

We arrived late in the evening in Ely, Nevada (population about 4,500) and spent the night in a motel attached to one of the ever present Nevada casinos. Next morning we did a quick walk around the main part of town.

8 - Ely main street.

_IGP4526 by blackcloudbrew, on Flickr

After doing some final provisioning in Ely we left towards our next destination, Great Basin National Park.

[tcom]

Looks like this is going to be another long travel report thread. Looks very promising so far.

[blackcloudbrew]

Yep, it's going to be a long one. Not quite a long as your current one, or as magnificent either, but following your style. I'm going to space this out a bit in posting. Thanks.

[Mike Pearson]

Looks like this is going to be a very interesting thread Earl 

Anthony

[Ron Kruger]

I'm ready for more.

[blackcloudbrew]

Right, more, ok

So from Ely we drove about an hour southeast almost to the Nevada / Utah state borders.

9 - To Great Basin National Park (GBNP). This park is one of the less visited National Parks - mostly due to it's long distance from a lot of places but it has a 13,000+ foot mountain - Wheeler Peak, a system of caves, stands of Bristle cone pines - the oldest living trees, I believe and a bunch of other stuff.

_IGP4532 by blackcloudbrew, on Flickr

10 - We camped there for two nights and were dilighted to find that the quaking Aspen above 8,000 feet or so was turning fiery fall colors

_IGP4544 by blackcloudbrew, on Flickr

11 - Aspen detail

_IGP4543 by blackcloudbrew, on Flickr

12 - We were camped around 7,000 feet and the first night we went up the mountain road to see the night sky. I could see the Milky Way clearly from one horizon to the other. This park has very dark skys and wow was it worth seeing. No photos of that sorry. But next morning I did get up before sunrise to see this.

_IGP4561 by blackcloudbrew, on Flickr

13 - And this, first light on Wheeler Peak and stands of Aspen.

_IMG8891_2_3_4_5 by blackcloudbrew, on Flickr

[blackcloudbrew]

That morning we went to Lehman Caves in the park. We both agreed that these caves had just about everything we've seen in a lot of caves all in one place plus some unique things too. Technical note: Because I'd taken my K5 in a cave system this summer I would have had to do some serious decontamination to take it into these cave as there is a fear of cross contamination of a virus deadly to bats in these parks. So instead I went with the K20d and my DA*55, I could use flash in these caves but getting decent hand held pictures was ... well ... hard.

14 - Drum head stalagmite - This is a very unique formation to any cave system. I've never seen these before. Very cool actual and quite big.

_IMG8923 by blackcloudbrew, on Flickr

15 - Cave Bacon

_IMG8926 by blackcloudbrew, on Flickr

16 - A baby stalactite in formation (ISO 6400!)

_IMG8934 by blackcloudbrew, on Flickr

17 - An underground lake

_IMG8948 by blackcloudbrew, on Flickr

18 - And the signature formation in the caves - these jelly fish looking things.

_IMG8951 by blackcloudbrew, on Flickr

[blackcloudbrew]

19 - On the next day we left to head to Bryce Canyon about a 3 hour drive or so east. On leaving the park we spotted this piece of folk art:

_IMG8970 by blackcloudbrew, on Flickr

That's a horse head in there and it's called 'the Horse with No Mane,' interesting.

20 - Rust detail

_IMG8973 by blackcloudbrew, on Flickr

21 - Last look back at GBNP and the stands of Aspen (orange) in the distance.

_IMG8974 by blackcloudbrew, on Flickr

[davidhampshire]

hey,   these are very nice,   you are very prolific,  bcb !   

[blackcloudbrew]

22 - Right outside the park is the very small town of Baker, Nevada. People do live there and there is a couple of small motels and a gas station but this lovely structure caught my eye as to the flavor of the local humor:

_IGP4529 by blackcloudbrew, on Flickr

23 - Oops, one more look at that Horse with No Mane

_IMG8971 by blackcloudbrew, on Flickr

I'll let you absorb these for a bit and get on to the main event Bryce Canyon in a bit.

[Mallee Boy]

Love a road trip...room for one more?
Thanks for posting this, I think it is great to see a little of the "not so travelled" parts.
Should be a nice drive to Bryce.

[blackcloudbrew]

You understand that I did this trip already in late September and early October. It was a nice, and very interesting drive to Bryce Canyon.

[Pacerr]

I know that area pretty well -- lived in Fallon, NV for three years and Logan, UT for two and prowled the surrounding area by car, on foot and from the air.

The high desert country is a macro lover's paradise once you learn to look closely. The nature of the terrain is such that you really value the golden hours and low, grazing light angles. Not much in the way of colorful fall foliage there though.

Unfortunately, '86 - '90 was in the pre-digital era and nearly all my film stuff's sunk to the bottom of the pile after 25 years and three household moves.

Here's an aerial view of the terrain along US Route 50 somewhere between Fallon and Ely in Nov 2009.

[blackcloudbrew]

Interesting. It is quite an interesting place. Like I said somewhere, I will have to return again and again to these places to know them better.