Northumberland via old Highway 8A

Before I get very far into this blog post, I have to say that the Blogger interface, with its recent "upgrade," now sucks due to sudden changes in the way the HTML works. First off, the code for each photo is different than it used to be, such that I have to go back to older posts to duplicate spacing at the top, bottom, and left margins. I mean, I guess if I was 100% prolific with HTML, I wouldn't have to do that, but every time they’ve done one of their upgrades, I’ve had to modify the way I enlarge the photos to the right size, and have to recreate or copy the HTML that controls the way my photos display—and quite frankly I do give a damn!

Back to our trip. As I mentioned earlier, it was hot, so I didn't stop very often on my trip down old Highway 8A (now S.R. 305) from Battle Mountain to Highway 50 near Austin, en route to the Northumberland caldera. I did, however, make a point to stop at an old stone house along the Reese River—possibly the original Walters Ranch, though the USGS map shows the ranch down in the green valley closer to the river.

The old place is holding together fairly well, though it looked a little more rundown than the last time I stopped.

A closer view of the entry area, with quite a bit of carved graffiti.

An old rusty stove sits in the ruins of the old stone house, below the caved-in roof and amidst the partly discombobulated walls (stove = dark patch in lower right of photo).

The roof has slumped more than the last time I stopped, which might have been as long ago as 2012. The meadow beyond—the valley of the Reese River between the Ravenswood mountain range on the west and low hills that lie more or less between the Shoshone and Toiyabe Ranges on the east—is often quite green; here it's looking a tad dried out.

At 12:29 pm, toward the end of my little stop, it was 96°F.

A little farther south I drove past the location where FMOH and I canoed meanders of the Reese River back in 2006. This time, the meanders were choked with dark green sedge and the river was too narrow for a canoe. 

My next stop was Austin, for gas. I prefer to be fully fueled when traveling the back roads of Nevada. After fueling up, it was up and over Austin Summit on Highway 50, then up to Bob Scott Summit, where I stopped briefly for a pit stop and to consider Bob Scott as a campsite. But no, I wanted to keep going. Scattered clouds hovered overhead, and a light sprinkle hit the windshield. At 1:20 pm the temp was 84°F.

Beyond Bob Scott, it was downhill to the turn off on old 8A (now S.R. 376) into Big Smoky Valley. I thought about the old camp on Bowman Creek as a possible camping location, but blew that off. I was shortly at the turnoff to Northumberland Canyon.

In this photo, taken just past the turnoff from pavement, Northumberland Canyon is almost 12 miles across Big Smoky Valley as the crow flies. The mountain range that we're looking at, on the east side of the valley, is the Toquima Range; the singular mountain to the right is Mount Jefferson, third most prominent peak in Nevada. I've been to about 11,400 ft near the North Summit. The South Summit reaches 11,941 ft.

I arrived at the western mouth to West Northumberland Canyon at about 2:30 pm and pulled off on a side road where I had a relatively elevated view of Big Smoky Valley and the Toiyabe Range beyond. A low area in the mountain range (just left of center in the photo above) marks the drainage basin of Kingston Creek. The tiny town of Kingston sits on Kingston Creek, right at the range front. Bunker Hill, the rounded peak right of the low spot, reaches 11,473 feet in elevation.

* * * * *

2:45pm: It's now 92°F. I just walked a short ways up the dirt road behind the Jeep, thinking I'd check the road to the range front, but I gave that up for the heat. Instead, I'm sitting next to the Jeep in a lawn chair, enjoying the view. A few clouds overhead look threatening—possible T-storms. I won't cross the flash-flood prone Northumberland Canyon dry wash until...well, hopefully the clouds will dissipate. The crossing right now would be perfectly fine, but if the canyon floods, I'd be stranded on the other side. A long time ago, there was a road across Big Smoky Valley going back to 8A north of Kingston, providing a possible escape route if stranded; I have no idea if that road exists anymore.

There was a huge wipe out of a flash flood in West and East Northumberland Canyons back in 1979. Heavy barite ore from the small mine on the west side of Northumberland Pass was washed down canyon, as was a USFS truck. Fortunately no one was inside the truck.

Back in 1978, in the reddish hills across the dry wash of West Northumberland Canyon (behind the Jeep in the photo above, or somewhere in the low part of the reddish hills in the photo below) I left a standard Estwing rock hammer leaned against an outcrop of tuff as scale for a photo. I've looked for the hammer a couple times, both before and after the mega flash flood of 1979. I suppose it's part of the drainage, downstream somewhere. But who knows? Maybe it's still there, leaning against the outcrop.

The reddish brown tuff of Hoodoo Canyon, 31.4 Ma, overlies whitish volcanic and volcaniclastic rocks that include Ts6, an air-fall tuff related to the tuff of Hoodoo Canyon, and Ts5, 4, and 3—and possibly Ts2 and 1—which are all intracaldera sediments deposited after the partial collapse of the ~32 Ma Northumberland caldera and before deposition of Ts6.

2:53 pm: I've frequented this valley, these parts, since before 1978. In fact, the first time I camped in the area was up on Pete's Summit in 1976, after seeing the Ordovician graptolites in the Vinini Formation while on a grad school field trip. It's my country, I feel, and if I had a house up here on this pediment, I'd sit outside and stare at the basin, the way I did back in 1979-81 when the company put me up in a small cabin above Kingston. There's usually no no one around for miles, for at least ten to fifteen miles. The view is awesome.

It's 4:27 pm now, and I've crossed the wash and moved to the site we used to call the Hot Spot, so named for it's anomalous gamma radiation and U3O8 minerals. From the camp I've chosen, I can look northwest toward Kingston Canyon, east into Hoodoo Canyon, and south toward Northumberland Canyon. The wind is coming in from the northwest, and it's 91° F in my little camp. It's five hours to sunset according to the hand method, though at five hours away, the method is grossly inaccurate.

4:51 pm: I'm cracking an All Day IPA. Until the sun is lower, I won't set up camp more than I have already, which is only to remove the ice boxes, the water cooler, and folding chair. I'm somewhat low on ice, and the beer isn't the coldest beer in the world, but it's refreshing. And now the sun has come out from behind those formerly threatening clouds, so I've moved into the shade of the Jeep. A tree would be nice!

* * * * *

As the sun got lower, I drank my cool beers and had a minimalist dinner of chips and dip. The sun finally went behind the clouds hovering over the Toiyabe Range. I watched the sunset colors change, took many photos, marveled at the yellow-orange crepuscular rays, took more photos, and basked in the quietude of the area.

Virga and a cliff of Northumberland Tuff glow reddish orange.

I had another beer or two and took more photos. At some point, the sun went down, but with the Toiyabes in the way and no connection for my cell phone, I could only estimate the time of actual sunset, guessing it to be about 8:05 pm. According to SunCalc, the sun set at 8:10 pm at my campsite. The hand method referenced earlier gave a time of about 9:25 pm—off by almost an hour and a half! (It's more accurate within one to three hours of sunset, especially when there aren't any mountain ranges looming above the true horizon.)

By 8:43 pm, I had my headlamp on, using the red light setting. It was way warm for sleeping, but I didn't check the temperature by turning on the Jeep. Overall, it felt strange to be camped there in the middle of nowhere during the middle of a summer heat wave. And for some reason, I felt creeped out by a long ago memory of a lone mountain lion in the Toquimas, so I didn't want to sleep outside the Jeep, making for a night that was hotter than necessary. Eventually, I slept, albeit restlessly.

Well, it's been so long...

It's been a long time—almost a year—since my last real post, the actual last post being a road song with brief blurb. And even though it's been a year, I haven't really started what would be the last in a series of posts reporting on a trip from Winnemucca to northeastern California, with geology and other points of interest along the route. It's been hard getting to that last post and to a few side posts along the route that would be possible if I would just maintain a bit of focus. And the stumbling block is basically that I'm not traveling that way anymore, at least not routinely: I don't live at that end of the road. Yeah, "the lake" is a thing of the past (which is really sad, especially given the exceptional heat that the summer of 2020 has brought to the northern Nevada area where I currently live).

Anyway, that's a roundabout way of getting around to saying...it's been a long time since I visited the Northumberland caldera in central Nevada. The current isolation of living by myself, social distancing to the extent of hardly seeing anyone who doesn't happen to be in line behind me at the supermarket, and WFH—which I've been able to do so far for exactly two months since leaving "the field" of northeastern Nevada—was starting to drive me nuts, as it does periodically, and I wanted to get away.

Unfortunately, it's been very hot here in northern Nevada (and elsewhere in Nevada, and in many other parts of the west), so though I contemplated going on a brief camping trip, it seemed too hot for that (did I mention the heat?), and the upper campground at Wheeler Peak is closed for renovations (I consider the lower camps to be both too hot and too crowded). So, with the highest, coolest camp in Nevada out of the question, I opted for a central Nevada area that I've been familiar with since 1978: the Northumberland caldera.

Yeah I thought, maybe I'll camp in the highlands, up in the piñon-juniper, but I was unsure of any specific places up there so was sure I'd opt for the more familiar lowlands. Eventually, after much dithering accompanied by equally much grousing about the heat and why it's not a great time to go camping, all the while and nevertheless preparing, then reverting to no it's too hot, then more prepping, then etcetera, off I went.

The trip was a reprise of many, and because of the heat (the highs were around 100°F) I made few stops on my way out to an old drill site atop a location in the northern part of the caldera that we at NEC (Northern Exploration Company) called "The Hot Spot."

The Hot Spot (photo above) is a fairly small mound-like outcrop of welded ash-flow tuff (tuff of Hoodoo Canyon) mineralized with carnotite replacing feldspar sites. At least I think it's carnotite. Maybe it's autunite. That mineralogic tidbit is somewhat blurred by time. I didn't break a single rock out there this time, so didn't check the uranium mineralogy. I did, however, collect a couple nice hand samples of Ts2 and Ts3, formations within the intracaldera sedimentary package.

Anyway, I ended up at the Hot Spot, spent an overly heated night camping in the back of the Jeep, and then I returned via a slightly different route the next day, a partial reprise of trips made in the region as recently as 2012, a time which seems almost as long ago as those first days in 1978.

SWxS to SSW of Center: The West Northumberland Canyon Springs and Northumberland Pass

In summer, the spring area in West Northumberland Canyon is one of few sources of water on the east side of Big Smoky Valley, and it's way up the canyon and out of the way for Highway 8A travelers (now S.R. 376). Better bets for finding water while traveling through Big Smoky Valley are the many running creeks coming off the east side of the Toiyabe Range, more than 15 miles across the valley from this often wet and muddy spring area (MSRMaps location).

On our mid-January trek up West Northumberland Canyon, we came to a large ice floe that had completely cut the road in the area of the West Northumberland Canyon springs. The slick ice was easy to track across, though staying to the right was entirely necessary to prevent sliding off into the ditch on the left side of the road.
I didn't stop to examine the ice prior to crossing; I instead followed existing tracks and stopped on the far, uphill side of the ice, to get this shot looking looking west-northwest, back down the canyon.
Like I said, the ice floe went entirely across the road.
In fact, the entire spring area was covered with ice, as seen in this shot looking northwest toward the lower end of the spring and the remains of a small mill.
The frozen spring upstream a bit: Freezing aparently caused the water to flow around the spring and marsh area and onto the road, where it froze solid in a shady spot.

From the springs, we wound our way up a few switchbacks toward the Northumberland gold mine (currently inactive), making it to the pass, which has been somewhat relocated from its original sit by mining activity. (Original map location of Northumberland Pass; a newer air-photo shows the pass a little to the north of the old site.)
We had a fine view from the pass, looking back to the northwest over the north part of the Northumberland caldera, and across Big Smoky Valley, all the way to the Toiyabe Range. The high peak in the Toiyabe Range north of Kingston Canyon (the low-ish spot beyond the reddish hill of tuff of Hoodoo Canyon) is Bunker Hill, at 11,473 feet.

From the pass, we drove down East Northumberland Canyon into Monitor Valley, to the Monitor Valley salt flat, the Potts Ranch hot springs, and The Geographical Center of Nevada.

Related Posts (in order of posting; #s indicate order in real time):
A Soak at Spencer Hot Springs (1)

The Geographic Center (8)

West to Southwest of Center: Beers and Roads and Folds and Things (2)

ENE of Center: Breccia at Devils Gate (3)

South of Center: Potts Ranch Hot Springs (7)

South by West of Center: Monitor Valley Salt Flat or Dry Lake (6)

Backroads: Too Cold to Change a Flat, and other Considerations (9)

SW to SWxS of Center: Northumberland Canyon (4)

SWxS to SSW of Center: The West NU Canyon Springs and Northumberland Pass - this post (5)

SW to SWxS of Center: West Northumberland Canyon

In our backwards trek away from The Geographic Center of Nevada, we've reached one of the last stretches of dirt road prior to the start of our now long ago January day in the center and south-center of the Northumberland caldera. And what stretch of road would that be? That would be the Northumberland Mine Road, the section running from the mouth of West Northumberland Canyon on the west side of the Toquima Range, east and up West Northumberland Canyon past the springs, the old barite mine, and the Northumberland gold mine, to Northumberland Pass. Beyond the pass, the road continues eastward, down into East Northumberland Canyon, past another old barite mine (the larger of the two, both of which operated in the 1970s and 1980s), finally ending at the Monitor Valley Road about 7 miles southwest of our last stop.

Compass Card, on Wikimedia Commons

by Denelson83

The mouth of West Northumberland Canyon, up on the west pediment of the Toquima Range, is about 27 miles southwest of center; the springs are about 26 miles southwest by south (SWxS or SWbS) of center; Northumberland Pass is about 27 miles south-southwest of center (see Boxing the Compass).

I had planned to post this section of our trip — that is, the entire Northumberland Canyon section, in one post — but due to limited editing & writing time (I did my initial editing of this on a funky phone while riding one of the better (read: smoother) buses back from a day's work at the mine) — I'm now posting just the first part: West Northumberland Canyon from it's western mouth to just below the springs. The second part will post in a few days.

After returning from our 5 mile excursion up some canyon near Mt. Ziggurat, which we'll hopefully see later, we hightailed it north on the range-front road, turned right on the Northumberland Mine Road, and entered West Northumberland Canyon. (MSRMaps location of the area.)

Northumberland Canyon cuts southeast through the northern part of the Northumberland caldera, a large caldera about 21 miles in diameter that erupted a moderately large volume (15 cubic miles) of rhyolitic quartz-sanidine ash-flow tuff about 32.3 million years ago (McKee, 1974a). The canyon wall is cut into typical exposures of the typically goethitic golden brown, strongly welded Northumberland Tuff, which usually shows intense vertical fracturing and imperfect columnar jointing.

Driving up the canyon, one can see a good deal of geology related to the formation of the caldera, including large, often irregular, and at least sometimes internally brecciated landslide blocks of often dark gray to black Ordovician Vinini Formation (Ov).

A couple of the smaller slide blocks or masses are shown in the photo above; these particular masses are apparently at least partly contained within welded tuff.

The reddish hill in the distance to the north is capped by the tuff of Hoodoo Canyon, K-Ar dated at 31.4 Ma (McKee, 1974b). The reddish portion of the hill is underlain by moderately to strongly welded tuff; a black vitrophyre can usually be found near the base of the upper reddish zone, above a white, relatively thin, poorly welded zone. The tuff of Hoodoo Canyon (Hoodoo Canyon is the canyon north of West Northumberland Canyon), overlaps and rests on intracaldera sediments (what we called Ts2 through Ts4; what was sometimes called Ts5 turned out to be the poorly welded portion of the tuff of Hoodoo Canyon). These intracaldera sedimentary units were deposited on the Northumberland Tuff and on the Ov landslide blocks in an irregular intracaldera moat lake that may have been deeper on the north side of the caldera, resulting in a sedimentary package that was thicker to the north (it was thinner to the south, or maybe partially to entirely eroded in places).

The fractured dark brown to black mass capping this hill of golden brown Northumberland Tuff on the north canyon wall, is one of the larger Ov landslide masses or blocks.

Several of the largest of the landslide blocks and masses occur close to the mouth of the canyon. At least one near the canyon mouth can be seen from the road, others can be reached by hiking north of the road. Several, if not all, of the dark patches and outcrops in this MSRMaps airphoto are landslide blocks or masses composed of black chert of the Ordovician Vinini Formation (Ov). I keep saying landslide "masses" and not just landslide "blocks" because we found from mapping and drilling that many or most of the masses join in what is probably a basal layer to the intracaldera sedimentary section, a unit we called Ts1. A couple of these larger masses can be seen in the first photo here and the second photo here.

Here's a somewhat closer view of the irregular contact between the same Ov landslide mass sitting on top of the Northumberland Tuff. The internally brecciated fragments of the black chert in Ts1 are often glued or welded together, presumably from the heat of the tuff beneath it. Where drilled at depth, the angular to subangular breccia fragments are sometimes rimmed or cemented by pyrite. In places, the brecciated Ov landslide masses or layers look more like cemented talus deposits than landslide blocks.

In the central part of the caldera, these intracaldera landslide or talus deposits are thinner and are overlain by a later pulse (or more than one pulse) of Northumberland Tuff, which in the central part of the caldera show strong welding and compaction foliation like the tuff in West Northumberland Canyon. This upper part of the Northumberland Tuff correlates with what we called Ts3 in the northern intracaldera moat sediments: an ash flow or series of ash flows that flowed into the intracaldera lake, retaining some semblance of ash-flow tuff in places, and looking more like disrupted ash-flow tuff or even waterlain air-fall tuff in other places.

And now we've arrived at the springs in West Northumberland Canyon.

References:
McKee, E.H., 1974a, Northumberland caldera and Northumberland Tuff, in Guidebook to the geology of four Tertiary volcanic ceters in central Nevada: NBMG Report 19, p. 35-41.

McKee, E.H., 1974b, Road log to Austin-Northumberland caldera-Carver Station, in Guidebook to the geology of four Tertiary volcanic ceters in central Nevada: NBMG Report 19, p. 3-5.

Related Posts (in order of posting):
The Geographic Center
South of Center: Potts Ranch Hot Springs
South by West of Center: Monitor Valley Salt Flat or Dry Lake
Backroads: Too Cold to Change a Flat, and other Considerations
SW to SWxS of Center: West Northumberland Canyon - this post

SWxS to SSW of Center: the West NU Canyon Springs and Northumberland Pass - a coming post

West to Southwest of Center: Beers and Roads and Folds and Things

I thought I'd back up to a time a week before our stop at The Geographic Center of Nevada, a time just prior to our soak at Spencer Hot Springs. MOH and I had gone out to Austin, Nevada, and we had aimed, successfully, to arrive in time for Serbian Christmas.

Serbian Christmas is celebrated yearly at the International Cafe & Bar, and we've happened in once before without knowing that we were arriving on that celebrated date. This time, we postponed our already scheduled trip to Austin by one or two days in order to arrive on the 7th of January, which corresponds to December 25th on the Julian calendar.
By perfect celebratory standards, we got there just a wee bit late, but still in time to get a room with overrated free wi-fi (terrible bandwith, poor broadcasting) at the Mountain Motel, and time to sit in the bar for a drink or two — including some traditional plum brandy from Serbia — before moving to our table in the cafe. The Christmas dinner of pit-roasted pig served with various and sundry dishes and desserts begins at around 2 or 3 in the afternoon (or maybe as early as noon). I think we sat down just before 6:00 and the food was still coming. The meal is free (unless you order off the pizza menu), the experience is more than worth the price, and the cuisine is the best for miles around.

We spent much of the next day trying to find a certain locality in the Northumberland caldera, and at one point we came close to taking the right road.

The right road.
I somehow didn't manage to take a picture of the wrong road.

We found a nice Z fold in Ordovician cherts of the Vinnini Formation just a couple miles southeast of the turnoff to the right road. The Z fold was part of a larger fold or fold complex that was difficult to photograph with straight-down-sun lighting. You can barely make out the Z fold near the main fold axis, just to the right of the prominent, though thin, black chert band in the right hand part of the photo.
Here's a better look at the Z fold with my boot for scale
And here's the Z fold rotated into a Z postion. I'll leave it to all the diehard structural types in the audience to tell me which direction is up in the photo showing the whole fold.

Not knowing that we hadn't made it to our sought-after spot in the Northumberland caldera, we returned to Austin after partaking of the waters at Spencer Hot Springs. We had another beer or two at the bar before eating dinner at the International, and the next day we continued our journey.

View Northumberland in a larger map

A Soak at Spencer Hot Springs

It was just a week ago. MOH and I were heading home from holidays travels, and we had stopped in Austin, NV, making it there for Serbian Xmas. We had driven my truck over the mountain into Big Smoky Valley, down old Highway 8A, and across the valley on the Northumberland Mine road where we were looking for a long lost spot from a 1978 adventure. After roughing it over various relatively unused and poorly maintained dirt roads, we crossed the valley to get back on 8A, headed north, and crossed the valley again to have a soak at Spencer Hot Springs.
We ended up at the main hot spring, the one with the large pool, interior sitting stones that form a circle, and exterior deck. You can see a couple of the large sitting stones below water level on the right side of the pool; these form a nearly complete circle, although they are partly caved in on the far side. They get reset every now and then. You can also see the edge of a dark metal contraption just on the far left of the photo.
This metal framework has been put in place sometime in the last year and a half, to keep people (and dogs) out of the very hot source pool that has formed around the pipe that taps the hot water. It's quite ugly, and makes the springs look a bit smaller, blocking what view there is to the south.

Yes, the water is hot. That's rather the point, isn't it?

It's likely that the 165 written on the pipe indicates the temperature in Fahrenheit of water coming out of the well. Various temperatures have been reported for the main spring: 144°F was reported in 1917; a higher temperature of 162°F was reported in 1974 (two sources from Garside and Schilling, 1979).

Temperature of the geothermal reservoir at Spencer was estimated at 216°F in 1981 by the Nevada Department of Energy, and at 253°F in 1974 by Mariner and others (the latter also in Garside and Schilling, 1979).
Water from the source well flows through a pipe into the main soaking pond.
Temperature of the soaking pond can be regulated with this valve. While we were there, the water was bearably hot, hot enough for us to feel comfortable after getting out into the chilling and persistent wind.
After our fairly short soak, we took the main dirt road from the spring northwestward toward the site of the old Frontier and the junction of old 8A with Highway 50, thence over Bob Scott and Austin Summits back to Austin.

In this YouTube video from June 2010, by davidsquall351, you can see the way the main hot spring looked prior to the metal contraption being placed over the source well. You can also hear the gurgling of the water, and the braying of wild burros. The local burro herd make an appearance in the latter half of the video.

The burro herd typically has one mule or horse tagging along with it. We didn't see them while we were there last week, but do see them fairly routinely. Pictures of a couple of them are included in this trip report. They roam at least as far the north as Highway 50, which is only four miles away. We've seen them at least six miles from the springs.

Four Years Ago: Spencer Hot Springs, Kingston Summit, to Fallon

I'm going to depart a little from my usual "X Years Ago Today" format and go with this post, a few days late, which follows on from my 9-21 Newark Valley post of last year. That way, I don't have to wait one more year!
9-21-2007: After driving south from Highway 50 east of Austin onto old Highway 8A, now Nevada S.R. 367, we stopped at Spencer Hot Springs and soaked briefly in a lower tub, one just below and west of the main spring. It’s a tub that MOH and I hadn't been to before, although it’s possible that I camped next to it a number of years ago while at the springs with NJ&O. The tub was well set up and was at a good temperature.

From Spencer, we drove to old Highway 8A and then south to Kingston Canyon.

View of the Toquima Range from Highway 8A.

We're looking across Big Smoky Valley toward the Northumberland caldera, with the wide, flat-topped mountain in the far right being Mount Jefferson, the sixth highest peak in Nevada, with the third highest prominence.
We wound through the small village of Kingston, driving by the rundown cabin I lived in back in '79 and '80, and by the land-uphill, takeoff-downhill dirt airstrip. The road meanders through town and then into Kingston Canyon.

The Kingston Canyon road, a good graveled road, then goes through and under willows and cottonwoods, past a small lake or two, past a campground, a couple fishermen, and an old ranger station.

Up ahead, the road switchabacks up to the pass.

Just past the ranger station, the road crosses Kingston Creek, shortly thereafter making a broad turn to the northeast. After the turn, the road abruptly steepens to switchback through a rocky section, 4WD usually (always?) required, to the 8660-foot pass between Kingston Canyon and Big Creek Canyon.

View northward from the pass between Kingston and Big Creek Canyons.

The road then descends less abruptly and with gentler turns into the southern high reaches of Big Creek Canyon—a long, north-south canyon full of aspens, scattered quartz boulders, abundant sagebrush, steep slopes, and a creek stocked with trout.

Quartz-vein boulders littering the west slopes of the 11,000-foot-plus Toiyabe Range ridgeline.

One of the larger quartz-vein boulders.

Old ore bin in upper Big Creek Canyon.

After passing Big Creek Campground, we drove out of the canyon onto the western slope of the Toiyabe Range above upper Reese River Valley.

Sand Mountain.

We then drove forthwith to Fallon, stopping only at Middlegate Junction to get a soda and snack. Middlegate Junction, as is often the case, was suffering a horrendous dust storm due to strong winds coming north up the valley from Gabbs. Wind was blasting Highway 50 at a perfect 90º angle. Farther on, sand was spraying from Sand Mountain, making life miserable in the RV city sitting at its base.

We got a room in Fallon that night, then went for a fine Mexican dinner at a little cantina south of the main drag (Highway 50). The chips and salsa were excellent; the waiters and waitresses were dressed in black and white outfits like tuxedos. We had first dined there many years ago after retreating from a subzero winter trip to Spencer Hot Springs. The temperature in Big Smoky Valley had been -18º F, and amidst unknown electrical problems, a moonless darkness, and a foot of snow, the heater in the camper wouldn't kick on. Fallon was the closest place for repairs on that earlier trip; it was a welcome stopping point four years ago.