Road Trip 2025: Day 9

After consulting Kati’s cousin who is familiar with the parks in Utah, we modified our route and decided to bounce across the border into Nevada for the day to explore Great Basin National Park before hitting the parks in southern Utah. When I was planning this trip, I figured we’d be so close to Nevada, why not cross the border so that G3 could have one more state. I specifically looked to see if there was a National Park near the border because if we were crossing we needed a destination, something worthwhile to see and explore. I was happy to find Great Basin. This upped G3’s state count to 45. That’s not bad. I only have 47 and I’m a great deal older than he is.

It was about a four hour drive across the desert to Great Basin. At least the mountainous landscape was pretty to see. Roughly two hours into our drive we stopped at Ranchers Cafe for breakfast. The hashbrowns and eggs weren’t anything special, but the jam—raspberry and strawberry—was delicious. And I don’t usually like jelly or jam on my toast, so that says a lot.

The road for much of the drive was desolate. It truly felt like we were driving through No Man’s Land. Then, about an hour away from the park, we realized we forgot to get gas at our breakfast stop. A quick search yielded no gas stations anywhere near us. The closest was sixty miles away at the border between Utah and Nevada. Our gas gauge said we could only go seventy miles on what remained in the tank. Needless to say, our anxiety spiked. Along the way, we saw a sign that read, “40 miles to services. At that point, our gauge said we could go fifty miles. G3 commented, “You know, I watch horror movies and I think, ‘How can those characters be so stupid to break down in the desert because they didn’t get gas?’ And now, I’m thinking, ‘Oh! My mom is one of those characters.’

We did reach the gas station on the Utah-Nevada border before we ran out of gas. Thankfully. The border between states is also the border between time zones. We are now on Pacific time.

I am incredibly happy that we detoured to Great Basin National Park. It was named after the geographical area that is comprised of most of Nevada, parts of Oregon, Utah and Idaho, and a tiny portion of California. Rivers and streams run into this area but there is no outlet for the water. Therefore, it forms salt lakes that eventually evaporate in the desert heat. This is why the Great Salt lakes is identified as “Great.” It’s not the only salt lake in the area. It’s just the biggest and most well known.

What I find fascinating about this park is  that when you arrive, you are in the desert. It looks and feels—hot, dry, and desolate—like a desert. But then you enter and start driving on the alpine road which brings you high up in the mountains, where suddenly, the air is cool and you are surrounded by pine trees.

After visiting the gift shop and buying sweatshirts that were on sale—a price too good to turn down—we drove along the scenic drive—gaining an altitude of almost 10000 feet—until we reached the end. There, we hike the Bristlecone Trail. The trail was just short of three miles round trip, and it took us to the bristlecone forest where Kati fell in love with the trees. Bristlecone trees are the oldest living beings in the world. Some are as old as 5,000 years. They are found only in high altitudes, on dry slopes, and in nutrient-poor soil. They grow very slowly—one inch in girth every one hundred years. They also die slowly because they erode; they don’t rot. In fact, part of the tree can survive even if other parts are dead, as long as a small section of the root system remains intact. The bristlecone trees were truly some of the most beautiful trees we’ve ever seen. Their trunks are solid with wavy patterns where the bark is worn away. The branches are gnarly and the needles are soft.

Great Basin National Park is also the only place in the world the flower holmgren buckwheat grows, and it only grows on Wheeler Peak because it needs a certain elevation to thrive. The Bonneville cutthroat trout was once believed to be extinct. However, it was discovered in a remote part of the park, and conservation efforts have been successful in reintroducing to other parts.

Along the trail, a guy, noticing G3’s Bridgewater-Raritan wrestling shirt, asked if we were from New Jersey. He lives in Hackettstown, but grew up in Roxbury, which is where Kati works. His mother used to work in the elementary school before she retired. He is traveling for just five days, having left his wife and daughters at home. If I left G3 home and went away, he’d be irate. If Kati left me home and went on vacation alone…well, that would end our marriage. But all families are different.

Baker, Nevada is a tiny town far away from anything other than the park. I’m sure it owes its existence to the park. There is nothing here except a few subpar places to eat, a run down motel, and a post office. After our hike, we were all hungry and one of the rangers recommended we eat dinner at the Mexican food truck. I’m sorry we took her advice. Not only did Kati and G3 dislike their tacos, the portion was so tiny it didn’t come close to filling them up. My veggie burrito was barely tolerable, but at least it was enough to satisfy my hunger. Since G3 and Kati were still hungry, we tried another food truck. G3 hated his cheesesteak. He picked at the meat and the threw most of it away. Kati’s quesadilla was good, but too big and she couldn’t finish it, so G3 ate what she couldn’t.

This evening we went to an astronomy program at the national park. It started with a history presentation that was so boring even I struggled to pay attention. The gist of it was that the land around the park was initially settled by sheep herders, the majority of whom immigrated from the Basque region in Europe. They left behind their names and brief messages—none terribly exciting—carved into the trees. The second part of program was about exoplanets. They are planets outside our solar system. Only about 5,000 have been discovered thus far. On one planet it rains shards of molten glass. Another planet may be made entirely of diamonds. During the final phase of the program, we got to look through the telescopes. We saw the double star Albeerio (sp?), as well as the Herculean cluster, which is a tight ball of stars 20,000 light years away. Perhaps the most incredible part of the night was seeing the Milky Way with the naked eye. The sky here is so dark, we saw more stars than ever before.

A really awesome thing about this part of the country is dispersed camping. It’s camping on Federal grounds that are run by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and it’s free. Yes, free. You just pull off the road onto the Federal land and pitch your tent. Sure there are no amenities—toilets, potable water, showers, etc—but it’s free. And that’s where we are staying tonight, on a patch of Federal land in the middle of the Nevada desert. Setting up, however, was a challenge. Not only was it dark when we pulled in—it was nearly 11:00–it was also exceptionally windy. We struggled to get the tents up because the wind kept ripping the fabric out of our hands. Plus, staking them down was hard because the ground is covered in gravel and it’s not soft. It’s definitely not comfortable to lay on, but it’s free. It’s a good thing there is no service so I can’t post until tomorrow morning. This way, by the time Mom reads this, she will know we survived.