This year's ride took Kelly and I to the Great Basin National Park on the border of Utah and Nevada. We took off early Saturday morning and headed southwest out of Utah county. We made our first stop at the Oneman Band in Nephi and got breakfast. After breakfast, we took state road 132 southwest and headed to Delta. After a quick pitstop and top off the truck at the local Maverik, we continued west on highway 6/50. Our first stop was at the dry lake bed of Sevier Lake. We took a dirt road to the lake bed and drove a little way out on to the dry lake bed. We didn't realize that it was so large. Very cool but multiple signs said not to venture far because the subsurface layers could be wet and you could get stuck. Not wanting to dig out and being alone we followed the advice of the signs.
We next saw this very cool mountain with huge cliffs and there were a couple vehicles out by it and a couple vehicles we were following took off in that direction. We decided we needed to investigate further. So glad we did! This was a surprise find. The area is very well known for rock climbing and bouldering. It is known as Ibex. We watched a few climbers move up and down the rock faces and talked to a couple of them. This place I will return and spend a couple days at. Not only to watch and maybe do some bouldering but also for the night sky. I can only imagine that it is brilliant.
We moved on down the road and came to the border and turned south for a couple miles and stopped at the visitors center of the Great Basin National Park. The folks were very helpful with instructions and information. We drove up the road to the top parking lot. Stopping along the way to take in the sights and pictures. Wheeler Peak is awesome and towers over the desert floor. This trip was to see the Bristlecone Pines that are abundant on the peak. We parked and got ready for the seemingly short round trip hike. The folks at the visitors center said it was 1,2 miles round trip to the Bristlecone grove and only an elevation gain of 600 feet. Not quite! It was more like 2 miles one direction and a gain of 1000 feet. Kelly made it to the cut off to Teresa Lake about halfway and took a seat. I continued on and got to the bottom of the grove and took a couple pictures. Our side trips took a bit more of our time than expected and cutoff our hiking time. So I turned back, only to find that Kelly had started his way back to the truck. I asked a couple if they had passed Santa along the way. They said they had, I told them he probably got chilled, after spending the summer in the Bahama's and Florida. We had to acclimate him slowly to return to the North Pole. The young lady looked at me like really.....I had quite the chuckle the rest of the way back to the truck. I found Kelly at the truck and we loaded up and went to the entrance of Lehman Cave and the visitor center. We stopped and picked up a late lunch at the center.
After lunch, we hit the road for the return trip home. We had a great ride and saw some amazing country, some of which I will return to explore more.
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