Driving through Nevada into Utah

Yellowstone and Beyond: 2018 Roadtrip traveling in a Small RV

 
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Thursday, May 3, Battle Mountain to West Wendover, Utah Border

Nevada desert with snow-capped mountains

As our journey continues, there are more high deserts, a few cows, lots of flat stretches of HW 80 interrupted by mountain ranges like Lamoille, Ruby Mountains.
Shortly before reaching West Wendover, we climbed a high mountain to 6900 ft! Surrounded by forest, this range must have a rich wildlife since I saw 3 WILDLIFE BRIDGES and rejoiced that the communities were caring enough to prevent the senseless slaughter of crossing dear, elk and cats and other on the highways. Later in my travel I will see more wildlife bridges in the mountains of Colorado.

Wildlife Bridge over Highway 80

Big Thank You to those states that cherish their forests and wildlife and help them thrive!!

We stopped in West Wendover, the last stop before the Utah border. Like many communities in Nevada, West Wendover is full of casinos but since it is the last stop before leaving Nevada, it has some real big ones. Our plans were to stop at one, have a nice dinner at the casino and stay overnight at the casino parking.

At the Casino

Our 4 RVs parked at the far end, we had a quiet night!

Early Morning over the Nevada Desert

Friday, May 4, West Wendover to Antilope Island State Park the Great Salt Lake.

Leaving the Casino park early, about 60+ miles through the Bonneville Salt Flats and the flats near the Wasatch Mountains and ultimately the Great Salt Lake awaited. This stretch of highway is lonely with no towns or amenities. I finally hit a community named Toelle with a travel center and a Denny’s at around 10 am for a welcome brunch. Good wifi, so I read my emails and news and enjoyed a couple of cups of coffee.

Salt Flats

Although circumventing Salt Lake City, the midday traffic north was heavy until I veered off to the causeway to Antilope Island. It is a large island on the east side of the Great Salt Lake and it is famous for its bison herd. I had visited Antelope Island some 10 years ago but due to heavy thunder and rain storm I left without seeing the bison. This time, our plans called for 2 nights with a nice rest on the island. These plans were derailed once I reached the Visitor Center – almost always my first stop when available – and exited from my BigGirl. A swarm of No See Ums, tine black biting flies, and mosquitoes engulfed me. It was terrible. All other visitors wore head nets and I make a beeline to the gift shop where these nets were sold. So at least your face, neck and ears were protected. I immediately texted my friends to do the same!

Our campsites campsite had a full view of the lake, a shade cover over the table and firepit, but unfortunately none were used since we were eaten alive! Poor Nikki had so many bites that night that her tummy was red polka doted! Inside of BigGirl, it was hot and I could not open doors or windows for the swarm of biting insects.

Bison on the Beach of Antilope Island

Nevertheless, during the afternoon, Sissy and I and our 2 dogs explored the island on either side and visited the historic ranch. Although not close, the bison were there in the distance, some had already dropped their calves with their characteristic orange coats quite visible among the adults. We further visited the Historical ranch on the East side of the Island that is now a museum where we could see and imagine life 100 years ago.

Despite the No-See-Ums, we doned our head nets and ventured out for a walk as well in search of birds, flowers and of course bison:

Magpie

Meadowlark

Impressions from the Historical Ranch on Antelope Island

Back on the campground, tent campers near us set up their tents but shortly afterwards, left again due to the unrelenting biting insects.

Well our plans to relax a day on the island was quickly changed. All of us left early in the morning!

A cooler and more pleasant Bear Lake, Utah, was our next destination!

Til then,
Meggi and Nikki

Yellowstone and Beyond.. The journey starts...

2 Months Roadtrip in my small RV

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Tuesday, May 1, 2018, Sacramento, CA, to Fernley, NV

Our journey has begun! After meeting with my friends in Sacramento, we are off on our way to The Tetons and Yellowstone. We are 4 single women each with a wonderful dog and we travel separately each in our own rig. We met in Sacramento, the rigs are loaded and we are chomping on the bits to be on our way.

Marilyn and Sissy (and Jackie - not in the picture), my travel companions

Initially, we have several travel days before we arrive in the Tetons and Yellowstone, our first major stop, but we are taking it slow to allowing time to stop and 'smell the roses'.

Through Nevada we are following HW 80 East to Salt Lake City before turning north through Idaho to Jackson, Wyoming. Driving over Donner Pass yesterday's snow was still next to the roadside at 7280 ft. And rolling down the hill, spring colors emerged on willow trees graced with the lightest of green of the new leaves - quite a beautiful sight. Beyond Reno we experienced Nevada desert with a slight green hue of spring.
We spent the night at the Desert Rose TV Park in Fernley, a clean and no nonsense park with mostly long term residents.

Wednesday, May 2, Fernley to Battle Mountains, NV

Easy driving on HW 80. Wide open desert with sagebrush shrubs. Long stretches of flat land interrupted by mountain ranges.
I stopped on Lovelock and walked the historic center with the gorgeous courthouse surrounded by lush greens. 10 years ago I stopped in Lovelock in streaming rain. Now I had sunshine and warm weather. The Courthouse built about 100 years ago was as lovely as I remembered it. It’s an impressive building with its massive columns and grandiose staircase. A new Gazebo had been built behind the courthouse and a playground where children amused themselves. The gazebo was surrounded by a fence where hundreds of locks had been placed by lovers locking in their affection for each other. I had seen this in Paris and Prague on bridge and fences, and I am sure other EU cities copied this idea. On some of the famous bridges the locks had to be removed since the weight was too much for the fencing and specifically the bridges. Now, here in the small community of Lovelock, Nevada, the idea has sprouted and the fences around the Gazabo were heavy with locks.

 

Lovelock, Courthouse

Impressions of Lovelock, NV

I continued to Battle Mountain, NV, a small community founded by the railroad and mining in mid 1850ties. We stopped at the City Park, a clean RV park with good amenities. Like the night before, a lot of permanent residents make this park their home. Since RV parks have weekly and monthly rates, parking a bigger RV and living in it might be much cheaper than a rental place. These small communities might just not have enough rental spaces?

We had a good Mexican dinner in 'town' and a card game at Marilyn's rig before we all retired into our small "homes" for the night.

Nikki is adapting well to our travel life as she has done so in past journeys.

To be continued...

Til next time,

Meggi

Milky Way and Night Sky

A Beautiful Night with the Milky Way Cresting in the Eastern Sky

Last Saturday I was camping away from light pollution in search of clear night sky and hoped for millions of stars.  By leaving the Bay Area and driving about 2 hours south I found a perfect spot with a small campground in the hills above Hollister.

As you might remember from some of my posts from last year,  after discovering how beautiful night sky images can be, I have focused on learning more about the art of capturing the stars and I shared some of my earlier images in the following blog-posts:

November:  Focus Night Sky
August:  Milky Way Video

After settling at the campground and preparing my car as it is my night refuge thanks to my Subaru that serves as my sleeping pad, I first found a spot perfect for a beautiful sunset over the valley towards the west.

Sunset over the Valley with low-hanging thick fog/clouds.

As with all images, finding the perfect composition is important in all images and this is equally important at night since just pointing the camera towards the sky can get a bit boring.  So I had hiked around in the afternoon to find a spot that gave me some nice trees in the foreground.  I went back after sunset and prepared my camera to capture the stars and to create star trails.  Pointing north always adds interest since we can visualize the earth rotation around Polaris.

Star Trails around Polaris

At 3000ft, I was well above the valley and above the valley fog which is illuminated pink by city lights in the lover part of the image.

Changing positions and using another composition later at night, the clouds and light from the valley add a nice glow to the lower part of this image.

Looking over the valley in direction San Jose, the lights in the clouds made a beautiful pattern.  And as I hoped for there were millions of star in the sky!  Unfortunately, when we look up from our homes in the city, so much fewer stars are visible.

 Star Points over the Valley with Clouds illuminated by city lights.

Using a  long exposure - this one was taken over a time period of 50 minutes - we again see the earth rotation in the star trails.  This is taken at the same location as the one above.

These last 2 images were taken at around 2 am in the morning and we can see that our busy cities never sleep and never get dark.

From studying the milky way at this time of the year and its appearance over the horizon, I knew I had to stay up late - or should we say early? - but I was rewarded by ~3 am with a beautiful full profile of the milky way when looking east.  This is a panoramic image stitched together from 4 individual images.

Tired but a happy camper, I was ready to snuggled in my sleeping bag to dream of more stars....

If you are intrigued by the beauty of the night and want to learn more how to make images of the night sky and the milky way, please join me for another night under the stars.  I have planned another night out in August and would invite you to join me for a Photo Workshop 'Under the Stars'.  Please email me if you are interested at mraeder33@gmail.com.  Prior to night fall, I will give a tutorial at the campground in the late afternoon on how to set your camera and how to capture beautiful night sky images.

Til next time,
Meggi

California's Back Country

Carrizo Plain - National Monument

Driving away from the busy Silicon Valley and the Bay Area, one can find gorgeous California back country in the corridor between Highway 101 and Highway 5.  From San Benito country, San Luis Obispo county to Santa Barbara, Kern and Ventura counties, few country roads connect the 2 main north-south freeways.  It's rugged country and it's cattle country. However, this time of the year with the rains in distant past the pastures are golden and bone dry and only the California Oaks with their deeply reaching roots remain green spots in the country side.  The more one drives East, even the oaks diminish and the golden hills is all that's left.

Corrizo Plain in April with blooming wildflowers

Last weekend, I needed to drive to southern California and took an extra day to explore the back country east of San Luis Obispo.  I had driven through the Carrizo Plain, a National Monument, last April when the wild flowers put on a colorful show with many blooming in white, yellow and blue.  Now, in July, few hardy survivors struggled in the golden plains and the deserted pastures and fences told the tale of cattle grazing here in the winter.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) describes Carrizo Plain as follows:

"The Carrizo Plain, 100 airline miles (160 km) north of Los Angeles, California is an area by-passed by time. Soda Lake, its centerpiece, is a glistening bed of white salt, set within a vast open grassland, rimmed by mountains.

The plain is home to diverse communities of wildlife and plant species, and is an area culturally important to Native Americans.  It is traversed by the San Andreas fault, which has carved valleys, created and moved mountains, and yet close up, is seen in a subtle alignment of ridges, ravines and normally dry ponds.

Although the Carrizo Plain appears to be a dry, harsh environment, Native American people have occupied the area for at least the last 10,000 years.  Contemporary Native American people continue to attribute important traditional cultural and spiritual values to the Carrizo Plain.

Famers and ranchers built homesteads on the Carrizo Plain during the 19th century, some of which were used into recent times."

Not many travelers come here in the summer heat and weeds growing in the cattle guards tell their own stories of this deserted place.

Remnants of mining equipment and a deserted shaft remind us of a more prosperous past on the Carrizo Plains.
.

 Mining shaft entrance in the upper middle of the picture 

and abandoned miming equipment.

Again from BLM: Traver Ranch

"The L.E. Traver Ranch was established in the 1940s. The family was primarily involved in dryland farming, and historical farming implements are on display. "

There is a whole field of antique farming equipment.  Looking at the heavily built tools, a day in the field must have been a tiring affair for men and beast.

Again BLM: Wallace Creek - San Andreas Fault

"Take a walk along the San Andreas Fault at Wallace Creek. Learn about this infamous fault that caused the 1857 Fort Tejon and the 1906 San Francisco earthquakes. "

San Andreas Fault very visible in the landscape

The length of the only partially unpaved road through Carrizo Plains is about 45 miles.  Half way through the plain on the unpaved but well-maintained road is a primitive campground where the old KCL Ranch was located.  KCL stands for Kern County Cattle and Land - another reminder of the cattle ranching in past times.

KCL Campground at sunset

The KCL campground was my home for the night.  6 camp sites with sturdy tables and fire pits and a single spigot of non-drinkable water.  Situated on a bit of an elevation, the view of the plain and the surrounding mountains was beautiful in the sunset colors.  Being about a hundred miles from any larger city or town, the Corrizo Plains are ideal for stargazing.  As the light fell and the stars came out, there were millions of them visible in the sky even with the 1/2 moon still shining until moon set shortly after midnight.

Moon illuminating the plains

Last light after sunset.

As the quiet of the night surrounded me, I eventually crawled into my sleeping bag and watched the stars sparkle overhead.  There were some owls hooting in the near trees and the red-shoulder hawk that had observed me from the trees at the campground still was calling for his mate long into the night.  But all was good as I drifted into sleep.

I had set my alarm clock for 2am after moon set to photograph the milky way.  I will write about my wonderful night sky and milky way experience in the 2nd part of this Travel TidBits.

Til then,
Meggi


California Back Country:  Carrizo Plains-National Monument 
first published and copyright by M. Raeder-Photography.