New Roads!

 

 

“You are what you choose to be today.  Not what you've chosen to be before.”

― Wayne W. Dyer

As we continued our trek north, the above quote by Wayne W. Dyer came to mind.  We were driving a rather nondescript section of road with little to distract or interrupt our thoughts. (Otherwise known as a dam boring section of road.)  I was going over in my mind all the various interests Linda and I have had over the years, the careers/jobs, the education, the hobbies, the families, the places we lived, the places we’ve traveled, the volunteer work, the friends, and all the things in-between.  At times I wonder if I have space in my brain for all these memories and experiences.  Maybe that's why we grow older and start forgetting stuff – to make room for all the new stuff when we choose to do or to be something different today!  What a life!

So with all that in mind we headed down new and different roads - for us anyway!  But I do have to back up a bit to our last stay in Alamo where Oreo met his Aliens and we geocached along the ET Highway.

Linda was very pleased to find the first of many caches on the ET Highway -#1 - during our stay in the area, it’s a kind of Must Find! in the Geocaching world, that is if your in the area and a geocacher.

 

Near the little town of Alamo, Nevada we rode the bikes on some of the back roads and discovered a section of eroded hills that went on for miles. This is only a small section but this type of erosion on a large scale gave the feeling of a really big ant hill that could be crawling with gigantic ants or bug things if you made one wrong move.  Kind of creepy when you’re actually down in this landscape.

 

We got back on the road after a couple of days and headed up towards the town of Ely, Nevada with the goal of visiting The Great Basin National Park which we had not explored in our travels to this point.

 The Great Basin National Park is just a small area of the actual Great Basin, east of Ely, Nevada and just west of the border of Utah.  Congress created the Great Basin National Park in 1986 and it includes things like the worlds oldest Bristlecone Pine Tree, Wheeler Peak, and the Lehman Caves.

The center piece in the Great Basin National Park is the Lehman Caves.   

As we toured the Lehman Caves it didn’t take us long to realize that this was one of the most ornate and profusely decorated caves we have ever been in so far. The stalactites, stalagmites, columns, draperies, flowstone, soda straws, and popcorn formations were incredible.  As we toured the cavern, the tour guide/ranger told us stories of the history of the cave and explained all the various formations - and we were busy taking pictures.  It seems that during the prohibition years the cave was actually used as a “speakeasy” complete with bands.  If you don’t know what a speakeasy was ask your Grandma or Grandpa, or in some of your cases, your Great or Great-Great Grandma or Grandpa.  You know – some of those “old” people.  In one of the chambers the local Boy Scouts still to this day have an annual campout, minus the speakeasy. 

The caves were first found and explored in 1885 by Absalom Lehman who thought that perhaps it held gold.  Then it was held and operated by a number of different people for various reasons until the Federal Government took over the land.  While the individual owners operated the cave they made improvements in and around the cave with stairways replacing rope ladders, floor excavations providing more headroom, sleeping tents were placed outside in Lehman's orchard, and roads to the cave entrance were improved.

The owners were quite the entrepreneurs, so they began developing one of the rooms of the cave as a meeting place for large groups.  Weddings were performed in the cave. Musical selections were played on the stalactites and stalagmites (they are crystalline so they make some pretty cool sounds).  Dances, picnics, and pageants were held on the grounds, and pack trips were offered to Wheeler Peak.  In 1928 the owners constructed 15 new cabins (only one remains near the Lehman Caves Visitor Center today, known as the Rhodes Cabin) and a log lodge that provided regular Saturday evening "concerts" for guests and locals.  Then in 1930 new managers for the local Federal Forest Service were named and the owners decided that they really weren’t appreciated anymore and it was time to sell the land to the county who in turn donated it to the Federal Government.

Over the next several decades the caves and area were cleaned up, rehabilitated, and repair projects were conducted in the cave and on the surface by government agencies such as the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), and the Civil Work Administration.  The people that had owned, used, and cared for the Lehman Caves littered it with garbage, tin cans, lumber, and broke many of the formations, all for the entertainment of the early visitors.  The Wishing Well was a small room filled with trinkets left by visitors who believed that if they left an item and made a wish, it would come true.  One pool alone yielded 700 objects, including coins, a garter, and an American Flag.  It still amazes and saddens me how often people have a tendency to destroy the natural wonders of this world.

While we were in the park, we took a drive up the road to the viewpoints for Wheeler Peak, the tallest mountain in both the Snake Range and White Pine County in Nevada.  Its summit elevation of 13,065 feet makes it the second-tallest peak in Nevada, so we just had to get as far up it as we could.  You can notice in the picture to the right that there was a bit of snow as we passed 9,000 ft. on the way up.  So being us, I just had to stop at a turnout and park my butt in a snowbank – sat a while until my butt started getting numb - just to remind myself why we don’t winter anywhere where there is cold and snow.  It worked!   

 

As we drove through the area, so far away from any major cities, we couldn’t help but notice the vividly blue skies.  That combined with the snow covered mountain peaks, kept our attention as we explored this beautiful area.

 

 

This poor old car, complete with the horse skull in the driver’s seat,  welcomed us as we turned towards the Ward Charcoal Ovens site.

 

 

 

 

 

 On our way back to Ely from the Great Basin, we stopped at the Ward Charcoal Ovens State Historic Park, about 18 miles south of town.  We had fun wandering in, out, and around these enormous stone beehives as we learned about the operation and the local history.

These ovens were built in 1876 and only operated for about four years.  They were built to reduce the local Pinion Pine and Juniper into charcoal for smelting the ore from the local silver mines.  Each of these ovens are 30 feet high and 27 feet in diameter at the base.  The walls are 20 inches thick with holes for vents all around the lower portion.  Each of these ovens could hold 35 cords of stacked wood (each cord being 4X4X8 feet).  When they had one full, they would cement the doors shut and light it up with just enough air coming through the vents to produce charcoal and not reduce the whole wood pile to ashes.  When the attendants determined that the process was complete (about 10 days) they plugged all the vents and extinguished the fire and started scooping out the 1,750 bushels of charcoal produced.  Each time they filled one of these ovens they had to clear about five to six acres of trees from the local forest - so you can imagine with six ovens going 24/7, 365 days a year for four years, any tree within miles didn't have much of a chance of surviving.  And this was only one location!  All for the love of that “silver”.

We took time one day to visit the Nevada Northern Railway National Historic Landmark in Ely.  We took a walking tour (self guided) and glad we did.  The Rail Yard is the last of its kind, the sole survivor of the grand era of mining in the Silver State.  It is now a National Historic Landmark and is situated at the East Ely Railway Yards, which are part of the Nevada Northern Railway.

The Nevada Northern Railway Museum Complex is the best preserved, least altered, and most complete rail yard complex remaining from the steam railroad era.  It was established in 1905 to support the area's booming copper

mining industry.  When the era of diesel locomotives came to the railroad industry during the second half of the 20th century, it led to alterations and demolitions of railroad yards and shops nationwide.  The East Ely yard escaped modernization because of its remoteness and the decline of the mining industry it served.  When it came time to close down the operation as a business, the company made the decision to donate the entire rail yard “as is” to become a museum rather than paying the exorbitant fees required by the federal government to clean up the chemicals, fuel and other wastes associated with the environmental mess they had made.  The museum collection includes three steam locomotives, an electric locomotive, and several diesel-electric locomotives, as well as a collection of maintenance equipment and numerous historic freight and passenger rail cars. During the tourist season, two of the steam locomotives are in operation in regularly scheduled rides and events.

We were also able to walk through and around the extensive fleet of the museums original rolling stock, including passenger cars, wood-side box cars, ore cars, work trains, and the huge maintenance buildings (complete with all the tools) all dating from the 1910s.  It has the oldest operating tank car and the oldest operating coal-fired steam crane on any American railroad and one very cool old railroad snowplow.

 

From Ely we headed to the little border town of West Wendover which is located on the eastern border of Nevada and the western edge of the Bonneville Salt Flats.  We had never been to the salt flats or West Wendover so we didn’t know what to expect.

West Wendover is a little Nevada casino border town that began to develop in the 1930s and 1940s with the introduction of legalized gambling in the State of Nevada. A guy named William "Bill" Smith founded a small cobblestone service station that provided a needed rest to weary travelers crossing the desert terrain of western Utah and eastern Nevada.  So like with most things in Nevada, they constructed a rather gaudy Neon Cowboy (named after William) pointing the way to the nearest casino at the entrance to the town.  Good place to leave your money.

I had always been interested in the Bonneville Salt Flats since I was a small boy building models of super cars that ran there.  So I wanted to go and see this mecca of speed – where all the land speed records are broken and re-broken by dare devils willing to risk their lives in the pursuit of going just a little bit faster than the last guy.  We didn’t take the Dodge Dually out there – it was too wet!  (Maybe next time!) The Bonneville Salt Flats are a densely packed salt pan in Tooele County in northwestern Utah.  It is really flat with mountains around the far edges, with distances being very deceptive.  The whole area is public land, managed and maintained by the Bureau of Land Management.  Access is free and anyone can drive on the flats – most people only seemed to be interested in doing donuts around the access roads from what we saw.

The salt flats were first used and tested for suitability in 1907 by a guy called Bill Rishel, who with two local businessmen, tested the salt for driving on by taking a 1906 Pierce-Arrow onto the surface of the flats.

The first official land speed record wasn’t set there until 1914.  

It really is salt – I tasted it! - but it needed some eggs or chips or fries – something to go with it that didn’t taste like racing fuel.  I probably won’t do that again!

The Salt Flats seemed to draw the movie industry - with movies such as Warlock, Independence Day, Pirates of the Caribbean-At Worlds End, and The Last Indian being filmed there.  The Triumph Bonneville Motorcycle was named after it as well.

 

So after a few days at Wendover and the Salt Flats, we headed up the road to Idaho Falls, Idaho.  This stop was a kind of holding pattern stop as we waited out the last few days before we were allowed to pull into the Jackson Hole Elk Refuge.  We were able to stock up on the supplies we knew we would need as well as take a few walks/hikes, sight-seeing and geocaching along the way.  

 

The Snake River runs right through Idaho Falls and has some excellent walking/biking paths and outstanding scenery along the way.  One thing that we found rather interesting was that they didn’t have the all too common fiberglass painted animals like most towns have – they have benches!  Lots and lots of benches – unique benches all along the walking paths.  I do have to admit that I had not seen that before.

It was finally time to move to our summer home and volunteer positions, so we packed up once again and headed out on one of the most beautiful/scenic drives we have had these past nine years of fulltime rving - from Idaho Falls through the Snake River Canyon to the town known as Jackson and the area called Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

 

 

The Wisdom of Oreo

 

Warm sun beams are good things.

Nuff said!

 

Oreo 

 

 

 

 

 

We just arrived in the Jackson, Wyoming area for our summer volunteer positions.  We will be volunteering with the National Elk Refuge doing whatever they need help with in the shadows of the Grand Tetons.  From first looks this has quite the backyard!  But it is cold – and wet – and rainy – and lots of road construction!  More to come once we get settled. 

Home is where we park it!

Lee & Linda