Our first experience with getting mail on the road went smoothly. We had the traveling mailbox forward our mail to “General Delivery” in Baker Nevada. Baker is a very small town right outside the entrance to Great Basin National Park. We arrived in Baker and the tiny post office was right on the main road coming into town. Picked up the package without incident and went on our way to the park.
Great Basin National Park is a place I have wanted to visit for a long time. A coworker had told me that it is a very quiet National Park and there is a lot of hiking, sounded perfect. I read that it is high desert terrain and the second highest mountain in Nevada, Wheeler Peak is there – 13,000 feet. We were hoping to stay at the Wheeler Peak Campground which is up the mountain at 10,000 feet. It must be cool there, right? It turns out they have not opened that campground for the season yet because there is still a lot of snow but they expect to open it this weekend. We will be moving on by then. We are staying at Baker Creek Campground, a couple miles from the visitor center down a well graded dirt road. It is all first come first serve, so we had to drive around and look at the tags on the site number posts to see if the last person had left the site and it was available for occupying. There were quite a few sites available so it was no problem finding something with a little shade over the table. It was very sunny and hot even though the campground is at 7500 feet, but I think this is still part of the heat wave that we had in Phoenix before we left and temperatures may be above normal. Once you claim your site you go to a self-pay station, put your money in an envelope, fill out the info and rip off the top part which shows the date and number of nights you are staying and that is what you clip onto your site number post. This is the cheapest camping we have had to date – $12/night. I have heard it is a good idea to secure your site with some items that show that it is occupied when you go out for the day. So in addition to leaving our camp chairs, I decided to put up my small backpacking tent to “secure” the site. The campground has all dirt roads the brand new van is getting very dusty and dirty inside and out. But this will be the new way of life!
There is a cave here, Lehman cave, the park service gives tours. I am not really interested in caves, but it is a main attraction here so we had to go on the tour. Very interesting formations in the cave, and interesting stories of its past. Apparently there was actually a wedding in the cave sometime in the 1920’s. There was also a “speak easy” inside the cave during prohibition where people would come from the surrounding towns and have a drink!
We decided to hike out the Baker Creek Trail. There is small trail from the campground about a mile to the trailhead. Once on the Baker Creek Trail you cross the creek several times, go through some pine forests, then to an open meadow, and on the way back it gets much sunnier and exposed and we even saw a few prickly pear cactus, which we are familiar with from living in the Sonoran desert.
We also hiked Pole Canyon trail to Timber Creek and I actually saw wild turkeys on the trail! They looked like big dark brown geese. Unfortunately I wasn’t fast enough with the camera, but at least I saw them, so that was cool!
Great Basin has been designated an International Dark Sky Park. Other parks have this designation as well such as Big Bend in Texas and Canyonlands in Utah, but I am not clear exactly what the designation does for them. Somehow it helps preserve the night sky. We went to the ranger’s astronomy program which started at 8:30 pm as the sky is darkening. There were a lot of people there! The theme of the ranger talk was how as a modern society we have become disconnected from our night skies. He talked about how ancient people such as the Greeks made up stories about what they saw in the night sky such as the constellation Cassiopeia, a queen who was being punished because she boasted that she was more beautiful than the gods. This upset the gods so she was banished to sit on her throne for eternity in the night skies. The ranger believes the main reason we are disconnected from the night skies is the increasing light pollution in our cities. He encouraged us to make up our own stories about what we see in the night sky to become closer to it. The rangers then had two telescopes set up and we got to see the moon in detail, craters and all, then Jupiter and three of its moons. Since there were about 50 people it took a long time to get through the line to look in the telescope and we were getting tired. We left early and did not get to see the other planned object viewing. They are also building an observatory here but it sounds like it will be mostly for research and not public viewing.
I believe we as a society we are not only disconnected from the night skies but we are disconnected from the outdoors in general. We live and work in climate controlled environments that are optimized for our comfort. Living out on the road, we are feeling the effects of different weather, because we are out there in it! We are not used to that! So far we have experienced heat which is normal desert stuff, high winds, right now as I am sitting in the van and it is shaking and it is too windy to sit outside because all the stuff just blows away, and rain which cut our walk around the campground short.
I understand why this park is not visited by a lot of people. It is hard to get to and far away from any civilization. As we head out it seems like it will take a long time to get anywhere.
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