Here’s a little more on my last adventure.
From Reno, there were four choices as described before. My first direction was south to the Lake Tahoe area. The weather couldn’t have been better, nice and sunny, but a good breeze to keep you cool after working up a sweat.
Most of the out of the vehicle stuff I did was on the west side of the lake, around D.L Bliss State Park. Parked right off the road and hiked down towards the lake. Not even 50 yards down the trail you run into a bunch of boulders, some small enough to jump on, a lot large enough for a good short climb. Came across a few that were way beyond my skills, pretty cool looking though. One had the shape of an inverted pear and was about 30 ft tall. It had a sign with a number 8 on it. Not sure if that was climb #8 out of some number or if it was a difficulty scale.
After bouncing around the rocks for a while I ran into a group of tree hugging, gun toting republican hippies. I know this combination doesn’t sound right, but that’s the closest thing I can come to a description. I hung out with them for the day and climbed the rocks they were quite familiar with. They might as well have been monkeys. Pretty impressive skills, but when you spend 3 months out of the year doing nothing but that, I guess you develop the monkey-agility thing. They invited me back to their place near Sunnyside just up from the park and we partied pretty hard for a couple of days, spending our days out in the rocks and mountains and evenings slurping some drinks and bouncing to some beats.
I said my farewells after a few days of this, not that it wasn’t fun, but it was time for my solo time. I’m not an introvert, but I’m not an extrovert either. I’ve taken the Meyers-Briggs personality test a few times for fun and I always come out right on the border of the E/I category for being etxro/introverted. So anyways, next came the North.
I drove up to the High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trails area and hiked a few foot trails, pretty amazing area. Hiking around there made me feel like I was an early settler trying to cross the great wilderness on my way to the Pacific. Didn’t soak in much of the historical signage, but there seemed to be quite a bit if you wanted to take it all in. I got the latest BLM maps for where I could and couldn’t take the Durango and set off in to the hills. I usually just picked a spot on the map that looked like it had good topo and headed to it. Usually when the sun was hitting close to the horizon in the west I’d pick a nice open area and camp out. Sunsets were mesmerizing, but the stars were better. Usually stayed up til the wee hours and woke up with the sun. It got a little cool at night, probably in the high 40’s or low 50’s, but I had my north face coat and liner not to mention 2 t-shirts and a sweatshirt to snuggle up in. I didn’t wimp out and sleep in the truck though. Never saw a soul once I went away from the BLM Emigrant trail boundary.
I was starting to reek of Bigfoot, so I drove south to Winnemucca and got a hotel for the night. Ooohh, warm shower, good. I headed south from Winnemucca to, well basically nowhere. Once you get south of the interstate out of Winnemucca, there’s not much besides dirt roads, rocks, dust and ghost towns. I like saying Winnemucca, just seems to flow off the tongue. I got some intel at one of the local bars in Winnemucca, by getting a few rounds of beer for the bar fixtures there. They marked a couple of spots on my maps of some good places to go. I was half-way thinking they were setting me up for an ambush once I got to the ghost towns they marked. It was a calculated risk going to the places these local ruff-n-tuffs pointed out, but I’ve come across a lot worse than these guys and came out unscathed before. The worry was unfounded, I ended up not seeing a soul the next few days. Either their intentions were good to start with and they were just being friendly or they got drunk and forgot they were plotting my death in some cruel fashion and going to leave me for vulture bait.
Anyway, I came across about a half dozen good sets of ruins, most just barely recognizable as the remnants of a town, but with a good imagination it was fairly easy to reconstruct how the buildings and streets were laid out. Two of the towns still had buildings standing, one had them all boarded up and the other I was able to walk through what was left of the structures. It wasn’t anything like you see in the movies, the place had definitely been scoured by treasure hunters, jeepers, and many, many others before. Most of the towns had abandoned mines littered all over the place. I went into a few, but not too deep, only as far as I could see the light still coming in. I had a flashlight, but only one. If I lost the light, I’d be screwed, next time I’ll bring three. Slept on the truck all of the nights a little ways outside of the towns just incase the bar lunatics showed up, sunsets and the stars were perfect every night.
Left the towns and came back into Reno the night before my flight out, got a hotel room out of respect for the people sitting next to me on the flight home. Oooohh, warm shower, good!
The only disappointment of the trip was the lack of wildlife. Didn’t see much other than lizards and vultures. Also I packed light, just a carry on, would have liked to have had a camera. Once home I slept for 14 hours the first night, I guess the 4-5 hours sleep nights had caught up to me.
I hope this fills a few minutes of your day k_sra. I aim to please. And yes, I do have a job. Well sort of. It’s more of a hobby, and I get to make my own hours. I had a real job once, working for someone else, and came to the quick realization that it sucked. I took a few months off, drew up a strategy of my early very near term retirement and followed it through. Now I work when and where I want, but only because I enjoy it like anything else, if it sucked I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t call myself wealthy, just comfortable to do whatever the urge brings.
Thanks for the close call on bringing in SAR in Worldgineer, I did say two weeks, and I it was almost that. Time flys when your having fun.
I'm off again on the 29th, Northern Arizona here I come. This time I'll bring a few more luxuries and of course my handycam so I can post a few pics.
