A Night on Black Rock Desert

Near Gerlach, Nevada
July 7-8, 2001

My weekend on the Black Rock Desert was in stark contrast to a weekend of Burning Man. Instead of thousands of people and a burning effigy, there was only myself, Karen, a small group of fellow campers, and a couple that we met at the hot springs on the east edge of the desert. Our caravan of a half-dozen vehicles drove a little way up the playa, turned left, and camped on the west side where the playa met the hills. With no one else around, it was safe to walk across the desert under the moonlight to the tracks of the Union Pacific Railroad. The next day we picked up camp and a few of us ventured to the Tregos Hot Springs for a dip in warm water.

Web Link

Friends of Black Rock High Rock

A Cross-Country Drive

Truckee, California to Seville, Ohio and Return
April 28 to May 12, 2001

Lehman Caves

The Start of the Cross-Country Drive
Truckee, California to Cedar City, Utah

Day #1. For my two week vacation, I decided to drive across the country to visit relatives in Kentucky and Ohio and see some attractions on the way. My first day did not offer much in the way of attractions. My only stop was at Great Basin National Park to tour Lehman Caves. Unfortunately, on my tour was a troop of boy scouts with two scout leaders. The scouts were rowdy and loud, and the scout leaders did not nothing to curb their rowdiness. For myself and the other non-scout participants of the tour, it was not an enjoyable visit.

Where you see a day with italics text, that text is from a postcard that I sent while on the road to chronicle my trip. Like a postcard, it is short and to the point.

Another Holiday Weekend Trip

Northeastern California and Southern Oregon
September 1-3, 2001

A holiday weekend trip to northern California and southern Oregon to visit Lava Beds National Monument and Crater Lake National Park. On the way back, Karen and I also made some quick stops to other sites of interest.

Lava Beds National Monument, California
Day #1

We started the morning in Reno, and our first stop was to the top of California to Modoc County. This was my second time at the Lava Beds, and this time I had a partner and did not have to solo into the caves. A drive through the park and stops at the following attractions:

• Big Painted Cave / Symbol Bridge
• Merrill Ice Cave
• Schonchin Butte Fire Lookout
• Balcony Cave / Boulevard Cave
• Gillems Camp and the Canby Cross
• Captain Jacks Stronghold
• Petroglyph Point

We arrived at our stop for the night in Klamath Falls, Oregon just as night descended upon us.

View from the Schonchin Butte Fire Lookout

The start of the trail to Balcony and Boulevard Caves

Inside Captain Jack's Stronghold

Petroglyphs etched onto Petroglyph Point

A Weekend on the East Side

Mono and Inyo Counties, California
August 11-12, 2001

This was a quick Saturday-Sunday trip with Karen to visit some highlights along the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada. Highlights not recorded by photograph: a nighttime dip in the unimproved BLM part of Keough's Hot Springs south of Bishop and another drive down Silver Canyon Road with a drop of 6,000 feet in nine miles (average grade 13%).







The west entrance to Bodie State Historic Park via State Highway 270, the last three miles on dirt road.

Eight Days, Five States, and a Wedding

The Southwestern United States
December 26, 2001 - January 2, 2002

A trip with the Lyons ladies (Karen and her mom Joetta) to reach a wedding in Denver and to take in some sights along the way.

December 26th. We started our drive in Lompoc, California and ended up for the night in Kingman City, Arizona. Highlights of the day were following a bit of the historic Route 66 in Barstow and viewing London Bridge in the evening lights of Lake Havasu City.

Meteor Crater

December 27th. We had plenty of highlights this day—the Meteor Crater, Petrified Forest National Park, the Navajo Nation, the Four Corners, a far off view of Monument Valley and Ship Rock, and dinner at La Placita in downtown Albuquerque where they have a tree growing from the inside up through the roof. We spent the night somewhere east of Albuquerque on I-40.

Petrified Wood at Petrified Forest National Park

The Four Corners of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah

A distant view of Ship Rock

Looking for a Nuclear Blast Site

Gote Flat, Churchill County, Nevada
February 19, 2001

My Internet browsing brought me to a webpage with a nugget of nearby trivia. Only a hour or so away was a site where they U.S. Government conducted an underground nuclear explosion test. Only a dozen or so sites in the United States can lay claim to a nuclear explosion, and this nearby site was easily accessible by State highway.

Off I went to Churchill County to the northern part of the Sand Springs Range. In less than 10 miles on paved roads from US 50, I was on top of the range at a place called Gote Flat. It was here in 1963 that the Department of Defense and Atomic Energy Commission detonated a 12-kiloton nuclear device around 1,200 feet below the surface. Forty years later there is not much to show that event ever occurred. Concrete pads, shards of metal and cable, caps on monitoring wells, and scrapped ground. But there's not too many places where you can stand at ground zero and say I'm standing on top of a nuclear blast, but Gote Flat is one.

Web Links

Here's a Nevada blast site you can visit - Las Vegas Sun 10/29/13

US Department of Energy Fact Sheet on the Shoal Site

The northern part of the Sand Springs Range

Goodbye to Greensberg

Choice Valley, San Luis Obispo County, California
November 22, 2001 and December 22, 2007

You will not find Greensberg, California on a map. You will not find it on the Internet.  You will not find it on the land. A few of us may remember it if we traveled through Palo Prieto Pass in the far eastern slice of San Luis Obispo County. What we remember is the Greensberg General Store: a desolate building with a mysterious past, a building once part of the land, a building now just a memory.

I traveled through Cholame dozens and dozens of times I drove between Kettleman City and Paso Robles. This route is the fastest way from Lompoc to the San Joaquin Valley and the Sierra Nevada beyond it. My first time was in April 1981 on my way to Fresno to explore my soon-to-be university. I traveled through Cholame many more times on my visits back to Lompoc from Fresno and then Mariposa and Truckee.

There's not much to slow you down in this part of San Luis Obispo County along Highway 41, but in all my travels through Cholame, I did stop a few times to sample what Cholame had to offer. There was that time I had to stretch my legs, a couple of times to check out the Japanese memorial to James Dean who died in an auto accident only a few miles away, and the time I had the most delicious coconut cream pie at Jack Ranch Cafe. There was, however, one offering near Cholame that I did not avail myself. It would entice me every time I passed it – Bitterwater Road.

The Four Corners, a Quadripoint

Teec Nos Pos, Arizona

December 27, 2001

What’s better than a tripoint? A quadripoint. Although there are 62 state tripoints, there is only one quadripoint where the borders of four states converge together. This spot in the United States is in the Four Corners region where the southeast corner of Utah, the southwest corner of Colorado, the northwest corner of New Mexico, and the northeast corner of Arizona come together. Being the only place where four states meet, the Navajo Nation has made the quadripoint a tourist draw worthy of a one-of-a-kind photograph. When my derriere was planted firmly in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona, I knew no one else in America was in four states at that same exact moment in time.

The Four Corners

Web Links

Wikipedia - Tripoint  

Wheres Pikes Apostrophe?

Pikes Peak, Colorado
April 30, 2001

Pikes Peak postcard from the 1930s

There are nearly two dozen places in the United States that are officially named Devils Punchbowl. You will not, however, find a single apostrophe in any of those names. Although placenamers may have thought the devil possessed these places, the United States Board on Geographic Names has determined otherwise. Since 1890, the Board on Geographic Names has discouraged the possessiveness of places by not allowing the genitive apostrophe and the “s”. In fact, the Board has actually removed the apostrophe from geographic names for natural features although they allowed the “s” to remain. Five natural features have been able to keep their apostrophe thanks to official decisions of the Board:  Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, Ike’s Point in New Jersey, John E’s Pond in Rhode Island, Carlos Elmer’s Joshua View in Arizona, and Clark’s Mountain in Oregon.