This morning I wake up to a chilly and unbelievable 38F. This is not the best of conditions to ride over a couple of 6500+ ft and 7500 ft summits and I do literarily freeze my butt off as I have an electrical defect on my seat heating. Handicapped as I am I leave Winnemucca, NV east on I-80 until I come to Battle Mountain, NV to pick up NV-305 to Austin, NV not Texas. Here I join the "Loneliest Road in America", Hwy US-50. For a starter I can not confirm that this is a lonely Hwy, as on NV-305 I only had one (1)! car passing me, and a handful coming toward me for a stretch of about 100 miles. On Hwy-50 for the same distance there were more cars, trucks, or RV in either direction. But perhaps lonely is because of the distance between towns, and the endless, unchanging landscape. Changes are the many passes and summits I have to cross, the first being the Hickison Summit with 6564 ft before coming into Eureka, NV. This town hasn't changed a bit since my last visit eight years ago, if any, it is more empty than before.
Murals in Eureka, NV
Eureka, NV
From Eureka I continue over the Little Antelope Summit 7438 ft into Ely, NV. From there I leave the Great Basin National Park to my right, climb some more summits in the 6500+ ft range, and start to fight heavy winds all my way into Delta, UT. Along the way I pass Sevier Lake, which is an intermittent and endorheic lake which lies in the lowest part of the surrounding Sevier Dessert. Like the Great Salt Lake and the Utah Lake, it is remnant of Pleistocene Lake Bonneville. The wind is picking up at some places the potashes and creates a surrealistic picture, like ghosts floating over the lake. In Fillmore, UT i call it the day, not challenging my luck any more to notch the rain. So far I only got some sprinkles the whole day, not bad for the distance covered. The next couple of days shall be sunny, and temperatures should be much more pleasant than this morning.
Impressions of the Great Basin, Monitor Range, Ruby Mountains, Shell Creek Range, and Sevier Dessert:
Sevier Lake, UT (left curtesy of Wikipedia)
"Another glorious day, the air as delicious to the lungs as nectar to the tongue." - John Muir - Scottish-American Naturalist, Author, Environmentalist, and Philosopher
No comments:
Post a Comment