Despite a great summer in the pacific northwest, we decided to head east towards the rockies for fall. We initially had plans to spend some time in Bend, OR as well as Lake Tahoe, CA. However, we had been watching the wildfires and smoke forecasts for weeks and both of these areas were getting hammered with poor air quality from dense smoke. This prompted our decision to switch gears and make a run through a bunch of National Parks we haven’t seen before as well as visit with my (Kyle’s) parents at the Grand Canyon.
The drive over to our first destination for the fall, Great Basin National Park, was interesting. There’s very little civilization east of Bend, OR. We drove many sections of roads with nothing, even one section that was signed “120 miles until the next services”. That’s pretty remote! But we made it to Winnemucca, NV where we boondocked at the Winnemucca Sand Dunes. It was a great place for an overnight stop – there are some nice little pavilion areas but we couldn’t get to those due to sand drifts. It’s just a city park, no amenities but beautiful views!
The next day we drove on to Sacramento Pass, a BLM campground just outside of Great Basin National Park. It was a very nice free campground, much nicer than some we’ve paid for. We ended up staying here for 4 nights while exploring Great Basin. It ended up being a very beautiful area with some trails right out of camp.
Our destination for the trip, Great Basin National Park was pretty cool! It is located in Nevada, near the NV/UT border. It has a few big things going for it – bristlecone pines, mountains, and the Lehman cave system.
The best hike we did in the park took us up to the Great Basin bristlecone pines. These are a fairly rare kind of pine tree that are some of the oldest living things in the world, definitely the oldest living trees, with some up to 5,000 years old! They only live in extreme environments in mountain ranges out west.
We ended up getting some last-minute tickets to tour the Lehman Caves in the park. We’ve discovered that if you look occasionally in the week leading up to your trip, you can usually find plenty of tour tickets that come available as people cancel their reservations they set months and months ago.
The caves were really cool, but the history of the cave system is interesting. Their discovery was in the late 1880’s and were used for tourism starting immediately – but the way such a treasure was treated over the years was amazing. The first decades of cave visitors were encouraged to break off stalagmites/stalactites to take home as souvenirs. At some point, people were given wooden mallets to “play music” on various fragile cave formations. During prohibition, there was a speakeasy deep in the cave. They even filmed a movie and held high school proms in the 50’s/60’s despite it being designated a National Monument in 1922! Once it was absorbed into Great Basin National Park in 1986, it was finally protected properly – but the damage is very evident still today, and will be for many thousands of years. These formations have been developing for millions of years, as we now know. Examples like this really give you a sense of why protecting our public lands is so important.
We really enjoyed our time at Great Basin! It’s a very remote area, so if you visit, know that going in. A day or two would be plenty for most people.
Next up, we headed down to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon to meet up with my parents.
-Kyle