Basin and Range Part 2: Range

 The 2nd half of our figure-8 itinerary led us up I-15 from Vegas to the home of the best state motto west of the Rockies, Utah: Life Elevated. (Spirit of America is still my overall #1) 

Zion National Park was crowded! Forgot to take a picture of the Visitor Center, but picture Grand Central Terminal at rush hour any year pre-2020.

The width of the canyon is defined by those dotted lines and it is 1/8 to 1/4 mile. With the canyon walls about 1500 feet high, visitors are packed into the valley floor.

We hiked a few hundred feet up to see some waterfalls

Here in spring, the green flora contrasted with the red canyon walls

After 18 hours in Zion we moved on to the bigger and better park further up the Grand Staircase

Being at Bryce is like exploring the Junior Grand Canyon. The lodge is situated at rim of the canyon, which is only ~500 feet deep, not 5,000, and makes for great hiking

Most trails were open but a couple were still icy and closed

Hello western bluebird

Bryce is at elevation >8,000 feet and there was still snowpack in the shady areas

The canyon has a rare combination of cold and dry weather, which allows ice to erode the siltstone into tall pillars called hoodoos. Bryce has the largest concentration of hoodoos in the world. 

The ranger said that they used to get over 200 days with subzero overnight lows but last year they only saw 170

We hiked down into the Queen's Garden among the hoodoos. The ranger said that the average lifespan of a hoodoo is estimated at 4,000 years and every couple of years a hoodoo in the park topples into dust

Coming up from the canyon floor in the thin air was a trudge

Sunrise point at sunrise. We used our East Coast body clocks to our advantage and were in bed by 9 pm and up before 7 every day.

The trail ride into the canyon was beautiful

There was a dedicated horse trail and with the horses doing all the work, we could sit back and enjoy the scenery

There were bristlecone pine trees, the oldest living things on the planet. These ones are young and probably about 1,000 years old

The burnt out trees were from lightning strikes not forest fires

There was even a lightning safety page in our hotel room. On this map "0"s and "1"s are unsafe and basically if you're anywhere in the canyon during a storm, you are at high risk of getting zapped. 

The Jr Ranger booklet took some time to complete

For a bonus activity, if you found any 3 of 7 benchmarks located around the park, you could earn a special pin

The older girls and I did the Swamp Canyon hike

Sadly our 3rd benchmark had been pried off

Snow pellets from the squall that hit us

Patch, badge, and pin: success!

Sunset at Inspiration Point after a thirty thousand steps day

On the way out from Bryce, we stopped at the Creamery

for some Utah cheddar grilled cheese

Love the beehive on the road signs of the Beehive State

Out into the desert for one last park stop

Nevada was Battle Born because it entered the Union in 1864 during the Civil War and its rich silver and gold deposits helped fund the Union cause.

We've been to the Smokies and the Sand Dunes and now we're at the Basin. All Nevada north of Vegas is a Basin in that none of its rivers flow out to the sea. Great Basin National Park surrounds Mt. Wheeler, the highest mountain in Nevada

Who knew that there were snow-capped peaks out here in the desert?

and caves...

and the Park store was full of board games, more like overstuffed with them. How could we resist? We came home with a tile placement game called Wooly Wars.

With a splitter and only two headphones, the kids figured out how to all watch one iPad

Nevada is so big that we couldn't make it back to Vegas and spent our last night in tiny Panaca

Nearby was Cathedral Gorge State Park, famous for its slot canyons

We loved playing the slots here

Basin and Range Part 1: Basin

 Way back in Feb 2020, before the pandemic, I roughed out a trip to the Basin and Range province of CA-NV-UT and made reservations at Park lodges in Death Valley, Zion, and Bryce. These are popular parks and visiting in the summertime with the crowds and the heat seemed unwise. April Break in the pandemic turned out to be the perfect season. We experienced 97 degree afternoons in the basin of Furnace Creek at 190 feet below sea level and 25 degree mornings in the range of Bryce at 8,500 feet. The earthquake gods kept us tremor-free and our Chrysler Pacifica was named MVP for not overheating or popping a tire over the 1,700 mile trip.

Step 1 was COVID testing in MA prior to our departure. The free state-sponsored program, called Project Beacon, returns same-day results and allows us to travel with peace of mind. We tested on return as well to enable the kids to return to school.

Say goodbye to snow in Lexington

and hello Vegas. Hey there's our first destination: Lake Mead

Caroline, Erin, and Heather flew out 2 days early so that Caroline could compete in her Science Olympiad meet while Tessie and I were flying in.

I'm guessing that this Boulder City bar hasn't given out many free drinks 

 

First taste of the desert at Lake Mead National Recreation Area

Smell ya later Mandalay Bay

and you too, Vegas strip

Heading into California, that glare is from the Ivanpah solar thermal plant, comprised of 173,000 reflectors that focus the sun's rays on 3 water towers that generate steam to drive turbines

The Mojave National Preserve and adjacent Castle Mountains National Monument was empty and quite the contrast from the hordes in Vegas. Probably the only shade in the entire park was here at Kelso Depot, built back in the early days of rail travel when extra locomotives had to be added to pull trains on the way to the California coast up the long rise out of the Mojave basin.

The Kelso Sand Dunes were not Great, and they made for quite a trudge 

In the desiccating heat we didn't get close to the top

I hope this old dad doesn't have to overlook any jackass canyon behavior

Here at the first gas station outside the Mojave, in Baker, CA, we found Jim "Jet" Neilsen's rocket car, which is capable of hitting 700 mph on the salt flats. We stuck with the 85 octane unleaded.

World's Largest Thermometer. I like how with room for 130+, at 80 degrees it registers only halfway up 

Still going down

Amazingly, here at the Ranch at Furnace Creek, there's enough thermally heated spring water to fill a swimming pool. The water is a constant 87 degrees and it was a highlight of the trip to relax guilt-free in the oasis of the desert-surrounded pool. And the air was so dry that your swim trunks dried by the time you got back to your room.

Trailhead for Darwin Falls

and a most unexpected waterfall

Pop quiz, besides Hawaii what is the only state growing larger in area?

Answer: Nevada. Out here the earth's crust is being stretched out east-west such that Reno and Salt Lake City get further apart by 6 inches every 10 years. The stretching has thinned the crust so much that it created 50-100 mile-long north-south trending faults at regular 10-15 mile intervals. This patchwork of enormous cracks in the continent allow the rectangular crust blocks to dip sideways at 40 degree angles. The top halves protrude upwards as ridges of the ranges and the bottom halves are silted in as the valley floors of the basins. This is the Panamint Range on the west edge of Death Valley.

and there beyond the Panamint range is Death Valley's partner in meteorological crime, the Sierra Nevada range. Those are the highest mountains in the lower 48, and they capture all of the moisture coming east, leaving a 750 mile desert in their shadow. Being the closest to the Sierras, Death Valley gets the least amount of rain and without any erosion to fill its basin, it is the only valley below sea level. All of the other basins eastward into Nevada would be below sea level too, if they weren't filled in by mountain runoff from the occasional rainstorm.

Our goal on this day trip was the Manzanar Japanese Internment Camp in the windswept and desolate Owens Valley. The buildings at Manzanar were closed but the scenery was wide open. One of those peaks is Mt. Whitney, the top peak of the Sierras.

The B-ball court was open, too. With my jump shot you can Sierra 'nderneath my feet

This cemetery shrine inscription reads "monument to console the souls of the dead"

Back in the Valley, it was only double-digit heat

Last August it reached 130 degrees

Here at Badwater, the lowest point in North America, you can walk out on the salt pan of the dry lake bed in the center of the valley

or you can take crazy pictures. (photo inspired by Chinda and Mike)

At home we have a box of 20-mule team borax. Boron is one of the coolest elements and we use its ionic bonding properties to make slime. The original 20-mule teams mined borax here at Furnace Creek and hauled the mineral all the way over to that Kelso train depot in the Mojave.

Words of advice on the wall of the DV Ranch Saloon

We saw roadrunners on the roadside and here we found a coyote!

Sunset trail ride

Zabriskie Point

Puzzler: see if you can put these 3 photos in the correct chronological order

After 28 years of driving, Heather earned her first moving violation

Heading up to Utah, at Floyd Lamb Park outside Vegas we picnicked among the peafowl.

Peahen

Peacock

Peacock!

Las Vegas translates to "the meadows" and back during the ice ages the Vegas area was wet enough to attract large mammals. The so-called Pleistocene megafauna included lions, tigers, camels, and mammoths, all of whose fossils can be found in the rapidly disappearing scrubland north of Vegas. A portion has been preserved as the newly created Tule Springs Fossil Beds, which currently consists of a signpost in the dustbowl.

We'll have to see what Joshua Tree National Park has to offer, but here in the Mojave they have one of the densest "forests" of joshua trees anywhere

Long jump practice for our spring season of Waltham Track

Typical hike in Death Valley

This is more like it