May 28 - Boom Towns & Hot Springs

Started out the day with a hike from our campground to the Upper Lehman Creek site. For a trail that’s probably mostly used by the Rangers doing their rounds, it was surprisingly beautiful.  

   

On the way back I saw the first evidence of snake life of the entire trip.  I was promised rattlesnakes and they have not delivered!

We packed up and headed further into Nevada.  Our route on Highway 50 took us through two really cute old boom towns.  First, Ely, which still seems to be fairly thriving (possibly thanks to their brothels).  We got groceries in the newer area of town, and drove through the historic Main Street area on our way out.

   

Further on we passed through Eureka, which was more historically preserved but didn’t have much activity on the streets.

       

We got to our campground for the night at Hickiman Petroglyph Interpretive Site.  We threw on our bathing suits and dashed out to nearby Spencer Hot Springs.  We decided to be daring and take a route that showed up on Google Maps, but wasn’t recommended anywhere we looked.  It ended up taking us along old mining roads and nearly got us lost.  But we finally found our way through to the first of four springs sites, where we passed these wild burros.

The first spring had one of the old metal cattle troughs that the baths are known for, but it was rusted out and the tepid water was covered in scuzz.  We’d heard that this was the least popular spring for humans, although it’s the most popular for the burros, so we moved on to the next.

We found Platform Spring just down the hill.  This spring is a dugout with a rock-paved bottom that has become mostly covered by mud over time.  The water isn’t clear by any means but seemed clean by natural springs standards and the temperature was perfect, so we got our butts in! 

   

The source is covered with a grate for safety because it emerges from the ground at boiling hot temperatures.  A pipe with a spigot feeds the water from the source into the pool, so if it gets too hot bathers can shut it off temporarily, and it will continue running down the hill into other smaller pools.

We were joined shortly by a family of three who had just pulled into camp nearby.  It’s free to camp anywhere around the springs, although there are no designated sites or hookups.  We had a lovely time talking with them, and I got to try a delicious Lavender Honey cider from the husband’s employer, Snow Capped Cider our of Colorado.  They don’t distribute out of state yet, but if you’re in CO, they are highly recommended.

After simmering at Platform a bit, we drove down to the “main” spring, a large metal trough in much better shape than the first spring’s.  It was being drained and cleaned that day by a volunteer bather, though, so we weren’t able to use it as it would still be refilling for a few hours.

The last spring used to have a trough but had recently acquired a new plastic tub.  The water here was really nice and hot and clear, but it was quite a bit smaller. 

We joined a local man and his adult nephew for a bit and had a nice chat with them too.  The guy used to work in the nearby mines and is now a safety consultant for defunct mines that are being refurbished for tourism.  He said he lives within view of the springs so he can scope out how busy they are before he drives over.  Luckily for all of us it wasn’t crowded at all, especially for the Friday before Memorial Day weekend.

    

The last springs was too hot for a very long soak, and we’d been there for about two hours total, so we returned to the camper totally relaxed but wiped out!  I think we were all asleep by 9:30 pm.  The springs were so fun and we were really glad we went out our way to visit them.

May 26-27 - First, Panguitch, Next, The Stars!!

Our last full day in the Bryce area, we drove to Panguitch, the county seat.  It boasts a self-guided walking tour of their historic homes made from red brick that were locally made and often used as currency in the 19th century. 

The houses were cute but the tour map was made by a clinically insane person, possibly a descendent of the person who named the streets:

(Zoom in for a peek into the mouth of madness)

There was a historic red brick in that had been half-devoured by a mid-century motel that I would have loved to explore.

We checked out Main Street and browsed through a very cool antique shop.  There were some nice Old West storefronts, although it didn’t seem many still housed active businesses.

 

We ate at Henrie’s Drive-In (although we walked-in and dined-in because we are rebels) which had delicious burgers and freezes which were basically blended floats.  We went there to try English Chips, which seems to be a Utah fast food thing that’s more like large battered homefries than chip-shop chips.  But they were out!!  So we got an order of them from a pizza place in Tropic on our way back when we stopped to get a gift certificate for our friend’s birthday.  We all said they were okay, but we downed about 50 in 20 seconds, so you can draw your own conclusions.

After we returned home, I hiked up a horse-riding trail that starts across the road from the campground.  I got as high up as I could on a rocky outcropping, although the trail continued well out of sight back down the ridge.  I didn’t meet any horses but the view was spectacular.

Rain clouds passed over as I headed back, which made the hoodoos at the base of the trail look really eerie and striking.

The clouds ended up passing over without a drop, so we were able to have a last bonfire with our friends, this time with real s’mores courtesy of Kim’s generous donation of Jumbo Marshmallows.

Thursday morning we set out towards Great Basin National Park.  We made a quick pitstop in Beaver, UT.

Beaver was the hometown of this guy, inventor of the Giant Sausage Video Camera Tube.

We were able to snag a spot at the Lower Lehman Creek Campground at Great Basin, which is maybe the most beautiful campground I’ve ever seen in one of the most beautiful parks.

The aspens were full of new leaves and there are multiple rushing streams throughout the campgrounds fed by the lakes and glacier on the mountains.

We headed to the Lehman Caverns visitor center first, in case they had any no-shows for the last tour of the day.  Unfortunately they didn’t, but we found out about the Astronomy Talk later that evening.  We piled back in the truck and drove the scenic route to approx 10000 feet above sea level on the side of Wheeler Peak.

There was still tons of snow at this height, and the aspens hadn’t begun to get leaves there.

The trailhead to Wheeler Peak starts from there, as well as several other shorter hikes.  We opted for half of the Alpine Lake Loop.

We made it to beautiful Stella Lake and headed back shortly after, since the sun was sinking behind the range.

Shark or Sea Lion?

The view of the surrounding desert on the way back down the mountain looked like the surface of another planet entirely.

We just made it to the Astronomy Talk after a quick dinner in the camper.  Although Great Basin is considered one of the darkest places in the U.S., the sky was still very light when it started, but the Park Ranger hosting the talk shared a presentation about the history of the park and light pollution that passed some time.  

Once it was dark enough to see stars (and whooo boy were there stars!), the audience formed separate lines behind two large telescopes aimed at various distant galaxies.  It was cool, but they were such blurry amorphous shapes that you had to use a lot of imagination to really “see” them.  So when the ISS orbited overhead, there was a palpably more excitement.  We were able to see quite a few individual satellites puttering across the sky.  THEN, something that looked like a long orderly train of stars appeared at the horizon and started to slowly sail across the sky before disappearing into a void one by one about 3/4 of the way to the opposite horizon.  It was a huge chain of Skylink satellites, and when they seemed to “disappear” they were entering the Earth’s shadow!

(Not my photos - even if my phone had a chance of capturing it, there were no cell phones allowed to allow our eyes to remain adjusted to the darkness)

Luckily the Ranger and a couple of park guests knew what they were immediately — otherwise we might have genuinely wondered if our alien overlords had shown up.  Needless to say, the Skylink’s appearance stole the show.  It was a pretty incredible sight.

The way back to the parking lot was marked with these little red lights that looked like suns.  Since getting a photo of the actual stars wasn’t an option, I got this one to remember the night by.  

PS - Funny story - my hair-tie-bobble thing went missing that night, and it was the only one I brought on the trip so I’d been looking for it everywhere.  Just before writing this post, I was editing the photos and when I brightened this one up, I spotted the dang thing RIGHT NEXT to the little red light on the pavement.  RIP Invisibobble.

May 25 - Gorgeous Gorges

Tuesday morning the whole gang plus the two very good dogs Katie & Finley packed up in two vehicles and drove into the wild blue yonder in search of the Willis Creek slot canyon (Slot canyons are those photogenic narrow, meandering gorges that you may recognize from Instagram travel accounts & your computer’s default desktop backgrounds.)

The route took us through a small part of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

The canyons were absolutely breathtaking, and we were happy to see a small yet steady flow of water in the creek, since nearly every waterway in nearby Bryce seemed to have dried up.

Katie-Bell had a blast leading us through the caverns with Finley, who I couldn’t get a photo of since he was too excited to stand still.

Dad tried this door to another dimension, but it was closed for the day.

I made an impressive debut as a pro rock climber.

But decided it wasn’t for me halfway up.

After our hike, we drove further to look into a taller section of the gorge.

Next we drove to Kodachrome State Park, named by National Geographic photographers in the 1940s for the range of colors in its rock formations.  I learned that the lyrics to that Paul Simon song are NOT “Mama don’t take my motorhome away.” 

Glenda & Kim checked if Chimney Rock was a portal to sexy-Scotsman-times.  No dice!

Everyone wanted a photo of this particular formation although I’m not sure why...

After returning to the campground we all rested and then met back up for dinner at Showdowns Restaurant in nearby Tropic.  The cottonwood trees had started raining fluff just this week, and it goes wherever it pleases.  It’s really beautiful floating through the air, though.

The Giant Ghost of John Wayne bade us farewell after our meal.

The ice cream store down the street was closed so we split a pack of Klondike Bars from the adjoining market and watched the sunset hit the mesas in the distance.  Take that, Big Ice Cream!

Before bed we all sat around our site’s fire pit and toasted mini-marshmallows over the fire as the Supermoon rose in the sky.  A super moon for a super day! ... I’m very tired, that’s the best I got right now.