After three days in Great Basin NP we’re finally on the road again. We’re currently somewhere in the middle of Nevada on our way to Lee Vining, CA where we’ll spend a night before moving on to Yosemite NP. It’s been a whirlwind few days and we recorded some video blogs that either have been our soon will be posted, but I’m going to try to hit on some of the highlights.
First, we took our first backpacking trip as a family. We had to divert from our original plan due to snow again, but it ended up being a perfect first trip. We climbed 1600 feet up to a clearing just above a natural spring that flowed into a small stream. We also had a beautiful view of Pyrimid Peak and the other surrounding mountains. The hike up was a tough one, especially for Molly. It was a steep climb!
There were some highlights though. My favorite part was a tunnel of butterflies. The trail ran parallel to a creek for a few hundred feet and the entire area was filled with more butterflies than I’ve ever seen in one place, including those zoo butterfly houses. I counted at least 5 different species with lots of blue, yellow, and orange patterns. There were also frequent views into the distance where other mountain ranges lay.
Our time in camp began with a brief exploration of the area immediately around camp. We found a small fenced in area that we couldn’t come up with a good explanation for. There was also a lot of “evidence” of the animals that come to the spring for water. Then we set up camp, ate our jerky dinner and went to bed.
The trip back down the next morning went unbelievably fast. While downhill is certainly less exhausting there is a lot more muscle use involved which makes it hard in a different way. The trail we took down followed a creek nearly the entire three miles which made for beautiful scenes the entire way.
After finishing the trip we did the more touristy parts of the park including a drive up to Wheeler Peak. With none of us wanting to make the 3,100 ft climb to the summit we headed back down to the town Baker, NV. There isn’t a lot to Baker. Just a few houses and businesses. As the only gateway to a national park we were pretty shocked about how little there was. As I’ve written about previously, Estes Park, CO is a bit over the top touristy. Baker is just the opposite. In fact, it’s practically screaming for an ice cream parlor.
I did love what we did see of Baker. Namely, the Snake River Festival and Kerouac’s. We’ve had quite a bit of luck with hitting local events this trip. First, the rodeo in Fruita, CO, and now the Snake River Festival in Baker. We didn’t participate in all the events, but we did make a point of attending the parade on Saturday morning. It was billed as being “so small it goes around twice”. It did just that. First up the street and then back down. It’s not just every parade where you get to see both side of the floats. It consisted on a few pieces of farm machinery, several floats promoting local control of water, a small brass band, and a few other miscellaneous participants.
We watched the parade from the tables set up in front of Kerouac’s, one of only 2 or three restaurants in town. In addition to the coffee we had that morning we also ate dinner there two nights. The pizzas were top notch, especially the white pizza with garlic and rapini.
After that last paragraph it was my turn to take the wheel, so it’s now Monday night. We’ve run into yet another snowy roadblock on the trip. Literally. Tioga Pass, the eastern entrance to Yosemite is not yet opened for the season which means that instead of the 1.5 hour drive we had been planning on tomorrow, we’ll have another 6 hour day in the car. It also means that we won’t be hiking Yosemite Falls as we’d planned. Even worse, the snow at Lassen NP, our next hiking stop after San Francisco looks like it would make backpacking there pretty unpleasant so I’ve spent some time this afternoon working on alternatives. We’ll still be heading there, but minus two nights of camping.
I think that’s all I’ve got in me for writing tonight. Tomorrow we’ll be sleeping in Yosemite Valley so I’m guessing we’ll have no wifi. We’ll update again in a couple days.
