Colorado/Utah Trip- Chapter 7 Great Basin NP- July 20

After a hearty breakfast at the Crazy Cow Restaurant, compted by our Best Western  we were back on the road again and headed to Nevada and the Great Basin NP.  I really didn't know what to expect but we had been told to make sure we had a full tank of gas, food and water and to make sure we didn't break down on the way.  We had the first 3 covered and we were silently praying that our mini van rental would hold out for one more day.  As we drove west on route 21 we passed through towns like Garrison which were marked on the map as having NO Facilities and when we made our final turn onto 487 we were certain that we had found it.....the "Road to Nowhere"!  But no, we made another turn onto 488.  Thankfully the roads clearly marked with National Park signs indicating that in this very flat, desolate land, we were indeed heading for, what I am sure is, one of the lesser visited parks in the lower 48.  We passed a group of cowboys on their horses rounding up or counting cattle out in a field of tumble weeds and cacti and I was thinking to myself, "how could cattle survive when it appeared that there was nothing to ear or drink in the area."  Farther down the road was a pull off and we convinced Sharon to pull off .  We had been driving for nearly 3 hours and we had spotted an old rusted car sitting out in the field.  There was a nice shelter house with tables but little else.

On closer inspection we found the driver to be a little "dried" out. Someone had used baler wire to fasten a cow skull and two hooved leg bones to make it look like a cow had been driving.

Our Dispatch travel tip:  Make sure you have a full tank of gas, food, water and pray your car doesn't break down!"

It was apparent, after we were back on the road, that the ranchers in the area were quite creative and imaginative and had way too much time on their hands.  We stopped to admire their handiwork several times before we arrived at the park entrance.

A ziplining skeleton

Tony "TooTall" Jones

Sally checking out Tony's sleeping arrangements

Decorative birds on a fence

Finally, we arrive!

Great Basin NP is on the edge of the desert called Snake Range.  Had I known this I would not have ventured out to take pictures of a cow skull sitting in a model T.  The elevations within the park have created many climate changes and habitats for a variety of plants and animals.  Ironically, I did not get one photo of the iconic Bristlecone pine tree found within the park boundaries.It is the longest living tree and some of Great Basin's pines are 300-400 years old. At one time these pines grew along the many lakes, remnants of the ice age.  Lake Bonneville was the largest and 15,000 years ago the shoreline was within 10 miles of the park boundaries.  Today the only remnant of the lake lies 150 miles northeast in Salt Lake City, Utah and that remnant is the Great Salt Lake.

After checking in at the Visitors Center we drove tohe Wheeler's Peak Scenic Drive which gains 3,400 feet in elevation and taking us past the timberlines and into the sub-alpine terrain. While on top we had a great view of Wheeler's Peak and we walked the Mountain View Nature Trail.  On the walk I saw, but no photos, a Townsend's Solitaire and several Flicker woodpeckers.  The Solitaire was a life bird for me.

Flicker woodpeckers

The making of a selfie "Wheeler's Peak"

Once we got back down to the lower elevations we had a bite to eat before our scheduled cave tour at 1:00 pm.  The cave system is within the park boundaries and had long been known to the native Americans who lived in the area but it was rancher, miner Absalom Lehman who first explored the cave in 1885 and found a way to share it with the public and make a little money as well.  When he first opened the cave he charged $1 to enter and the visitors saw the cave by candlelight and unbelievably were encouraged to take stalactites as souvenirs. As we toured the underground wonderland we could see evidence of those early visitors in the broken remains of stalactites and the initials on the cave roof left behind by the candle soot. There evidently is some debate as to whether the park service should remove these markings that today would be considered vandalism.  However, my thought is that graffiti is historical. The definition describes graffiti as writings or drawings that have been scribbled, scratched or painted on a wall or other surface, often in public view and date back to ancient Egypt, Greece and the Roman Empire.  As a matter of fact I included photos of Graffito in an earlier post from Capitol Reef NP from the Ancestral Pueblo People.  They were called petroglyphs but fall under the same definition. So if my vote counts, I believe that the early writings from the 1880's should remain.

Barn Swallows at the Visitors Center