Visiting Great Basin National Park

Traveling in Eastern Nevada and the eastern part of the Great Basin can become pretty boring, and its a lot of driving. It's hard to imagine for us Europeans how few people live in this neck of the woods. Out of Ely we drove into the Snake Range with Wheeler Peak (13.063 ft/almost 4,000 m, on pics above and below) as its highest peak and the focal point of the Great Basin NP. The old rusty car belongs to a "ranching exhibition" in the National Park.

Because of the season, Wheeler Peak Scenic Drive was closed, but we got a 1-hour-tour of the Lehman Caves on the eastern slope with a young and very knowledgeable and sharp park ranger by name Becca Miller. These caves were already used by prehistoric indians, besides all sorts of animals, of course. They were rediscovered accidentially 1885 by a rancher/cowboy/miner by name Absalom Lehman, who explored and opened the caves as a tourist attraction. The caves, full of stalagmites, stalagtites, popcorn and draperies as well as the seldomly discovered "shields" and other rock formations, were used for a long time as a "playground" and for parties and "suffered" correspondingly.


In 1986 the National Park was created by the U.S. Congress and since then the caves are protected. Nevertheless,about 40.000 visitors annually leave their tracks for sure. Which raises the question: how do you protect and how do you use natural wonders like this one? General thinking is, that the National Parks were created for all citizens and can be used by all. On the other hand there is an obligation to protect nature,,, what now?

We drove from Great Basin NP back west to Ely and then along the Great Basin Highway north to Wells; crossed the famous Pony Express Route (see pics) and passed by several small Native American Reservations of the Goshute Tribe. From Wells I-80 brought us into Elko, our headquarters for the next 5 days (!) during National Cowboy Poetry Gathering. More on that tomorrow (hopefully!).

Great Basin Highway

We left Rachel early in the morning and drove on US 93, the "Great Basin Highway" north, crossing the Great Basin, passing by mountain ranges, valleys and humongous wide open spaces. There are almost no towns or villages, gas stations only every 120 miles, a handfull of ranches in the distance, that's about it. Landscape consists of sage, pinon, and, in the southern part, still Joshua Trees and Chollas, typical for the Mojave Desert. Besides (mostly free ranging) cattle, there must be elk, mule deer, bighorn sheep, mountain lions, rattlesnakes, etc. in abundance. We only observed mustangs and burros.

Caliente was the first small town en route - famous for its hot springs. We drove into nearby Kershaw-Ryan State Park (pics) with Rainbow Canyon and hiked a short trail. This place was formerly considered an oasis in the desert with wild grape vines, different flowers, trees - all in an elevation between 4,300 to 5,100 ft. 1873 a guy by name Kershaw founded the first ranch on the grounds and sold it to the Ryan family in 1904. It became a State Park in 1935 and it is gorgeous! Also, considering its solitude: we were the only visitors.


15 mi. north of Caliente an even bigger surprise: Cathedral Gorge SP, once homeland of the Paiute, was declared one of NV's first State Parks in 1935 and is a very unique one: volcanoes, earthquakes, water and erosion created spires, caves, slot canyons and buff-colored cliffs. We hiked the Miller Point Trail into the gorge and up to a lookout with gorgeous views.


Also, we also explored the cliffs, caves and the slot canyon - a really bizarre rock formation:

Pioche - our next stop - is a small former silver-mining-town 8 miles north of Cathedral Gorge. It's partly a ghost town today with the old Overland Hotel and Saloon and a sort of picturesque Main Street. With a little luck, we found an open café and embraced the opportunity and got us burgers for lunch.

What followed, was a pretty lonesome drive of about 110 miles to the next town, Ely (pic), through the Lake Valley on an elevation of about 6,000 ft. Some cattle ranches and, again, a ramrod straight road, lined by mountain ranges on both sides in the distance, with the towering Wheeler Peek - 13.063 ft high - as its prominent feature. 30 mi southeast of Ely US 93 meets US 50 (the so called "Loniest Highway") and after having climbed Conners Pass (7,733 ft) down we drove into Duck Creek Valley, where Ely, another old mining town, is situated. We stayed in the Jailhouse Casino & Motel with the Cellblock Restaurant, where meals are being served behind bars. Even more unique is the Northern Nevada Railroad in Ely, a historic railroad and station bulding, which we had a chance to ride last year:

Death Valley and Extraterrestrial Nevada

Sunday: 400 mi (640 km) driven on mostly ramrod straight roads in „rural“ Nevada. It’s been sunny all day and we’ve had it all inbetween 45 and 85 deg. F (7 to 28 deg C) and from -282 to 6,522 ft in height (-85 to 2,000 meters).

We left Vegas in the morning through Red Rock Canyon down into the valley of Pahrump, from there into California. First stop was at Death Valley Junction with the pretty exceptional Amargosa Hotel & Opera House from the 1920ies, today a restaurant and cultural center, in the middle of nowhere. Continuing through the Mojave Desert into Death Valley NP with stops at Zabriskie Point (overlook) with dramatically folded mountains:

On to Badwater Basin, with the lowest elevation in North America: 282 ft. below sea level. It really ressembles an ocean bottom still with its thin salt layer. One can imagine how hot it may become in summer - it was 85 deg. F now! The valley was used in the 1920ies for borax mining and material was transported by muli teams.

Stopping at Artists’ Palette - very colorful mountain formations, unfortunately, not so much at noon with bright light -, took Artists’ Drive then - a very narrow, curvy road through mountains, equal to a rollercoaster ride - and ended up at Furnace Creek Visitor Center. Glad, we had a chance to revisit parts of Death Valley National Park. The one time we've been here before, in 2011, it has rained and it was cold - photos were horrible!

Leaving the NP towards Nevada we climbed up again, on the Beatty Cutoff to Rhyolite. With no residents for more than 100 years, there are just dilapidated buildings (as the railroad station building on the picture) in a unique Wild West setting. It is one of many ghost towns in Nevada.

From Beatty - with the worth-experiencing Happy Burro Chilli & Beer - Hwy 95 went ramrod straight again, without much human settlement or traffic, just some burros and wild horses in the distance. We passed the old mining town of Goldfield, still in the Mojave Desert, with the International Car Forest, old cars, artistically painted and set up, a roadside attraction.

Climbing Tonopah Summit (6,270 ft.) the change from Mojave Desert to Great Basin became obvious, though there were still a couple of Joshua Trees. In Tonopah, The Mizpah Hotel is still a remnant of the formerly booming mining town (main street on the pic below as well as Historic Mining District) and people say that it's haunted and that the ghost of the Lady in Red is living in the hotel.

Wish, Tonopah would have been our destination of the day, because the Tonopah Brewing Company and a great bookstore were really enticing. But since we had to drive another 1 1/2 hours to Rachel and wanted to arrive at daylight, we skipped the thought of a beer tasting and instead drove on, first on Hwy. 6 East, then along the Extraterrestrial Highway, NV State Route 375. Which was a good idea considering the free ranging cattle, which can become a real danger at night. In addition, it gets dark at 5 pm. Also, there was nothing along the route, really nothing, but a handfull of cattle and about five other cars and one or two ranches in the far distance on a total of over 110 miles between Tonopah and Rachel. We were wondering, why Hwy. 50 is considered the "Loneliest Hwy. in the U.S." - to us # 375 seemed even lonelier, or at least more boring.

Didn't really know what to expect in Rachel, NV, where we were booked for the "Little A'Le'Inn Motel" in the middle of moonlike terrain. It showed to be sort of a container village and the bar (also in one of the containers) - featured aliens of all kinds, reports of UFO sightings and other strange things. We were fortunate to still get something to eat (they shut down the restaurant at 6:45 pm), since dinner options weren't really numerous on this day. Our container room was anything but fancy,,, but at least no aliens showed up at night,,, Felt like having landed on "another planet", especially after Las Vegas.

More than just The Strip

Stayed in the Luxor Hotel this time, the huge pyramid with a sphinx as a guard in front at the end of the Strip - with a view towards the airport and the event space where the crazy guy shot 58 people last October. A wonderful memorial was set up in the Arts District in remembrance of the victims.

On Saturday we didn’t focus on the strip, just walked parts of it in the morning. There not too much has changed since our last visit.

Instead, we explored the downtown area, starting with the Arts District. A lot is going on there: not only arts institutions, hip vintage shops and cafés are popping up (besides older antique stores).


But, the best was a group of abandoned buildings used as canvas for fantastic murals, which mostly date in 2017 or 2018:


Also, there are many, more commercial, murals in this neighborhood:

On to the new Pawn Plaza and Pawn Shop - which is famous from a popular TV series. There is always a long line of visitors in front, waiting to get in. The owner, Rick, has recently set up sort of a little container park (pretty en vogue nowadays!) across the parking lot, and opened a restaurant where he is bartending on weekends.

Walked over to Fremont East, another up-and-coming neighborhood. There was a container village set up two or three years ago. We took a coffee break here in the sun, at about 70 deg. F. Across the street, at the parking lot is where we found this grand mural on the pic.

Fremont Street Experience is the core of "Old Vegas", of downtown,and got a facelift some years ago. The zip line became popular and there are cheap bars and lady dancers and buskers. More and more of the old casino hotels are updated and it's not a bad location to stay.

Getting back from Fremont Street to the hotel- after dinner at Main Street Station Brewery - was quite an effort, busses didn’t arrive first, then they were so slow in the Saturday evening traffic, that we walked most of the way back to the Luxor.