Winnemucca to Hwy 395 north of Susanville, Part 3

Black Rock Desert

Well, here we are again, traveling from Winnemucca, NV, to Highway 395 north of Susanville, CA, and we’ve just made it to the west end of the Jungo Road where it intersects with NV S.R. 447 (formerly S.R. 34) just south of Gerlach. You’ve probably noticed that I haven't been blogging much recently. I'm not really sure why. Sometimes the work I do takes the writing right out of me, partly because I do enough writing many days that I'm totally done with that by the end of the day; also, I don't really have much time after work before I have to do dinner, then get ready for bed—at least if I want to get enough sleep, which I do want (I don't always succeed). Another thing contributing to the recent spate of sparse blogging—besides taking care of personal things that have been taking a lot out of my energy during my days off—is that my writing effort during the fall and winter months has been going toward writing bits of fiction (a novel?), which I've been working on intermittently during the last two years.

Anyway, all of that—work, trying to get enough sleep, personal issues, and writing fictional to non-fictional stories—has placed blogging low on the list.

Now I'll upload the photos for this post, and we'll go from there. Just like a real journey, we’ll see how far we get!

Smoke Creek Desert

At the end of the last post, we'd driven quickly through Gerlach and had reached the northwest side of the Smoke Creek Desert. I hadn't taken any photos while zipping through Gerlach, but I often stop, and I've even stayed overnight at least twice. So let's backtrack before moving on.

Gerlach is a small town that brags of several mottoes, including "Center of the Known Universe," "Where the Pavement Ends and the West Begins" and "The Time That Town Forgot." More can be seen on the town sign, above, or in this nicely enlarged version of the sign by the RGJ. As indicated by the sign, Gerlach is technically pronounced Grr-lack rather than the Grr-lock one hears so commonly these days. I shot these photos of Gerlach on a trip that FMOH and I took back in the spring of 2014. Like the June, 2018, trip that we—you and I—are reprising, he and I had just come into town from Winnemucca on the Jungo Road. We were bringing the motorcycle back from Nevada, mirroring this trip taking it out to Nevada.

While in town, we did the usual thing of stopping to eat at Bruno's Country Club, probably getting Bruno's Famous Homemade Ravioli. By 2014, Bruno was no longer making his ravs personally, so I don't think they were quite as authentic, nor were they quite as good.

Unlike many trips, this time we stopped at the bar for a couple beers; we weren't driving on that afternoon or evening, but were, rather, staying at Bruno's Motel. Bruno Selmi, the Basque owner of the cafe, bar, motel, and only gas station in town, died in May of 2017—he can be seen in the photo above the bar (the older man on the right).

After checking in to our room at the motel—and after duly going back to the bar to get a second room when the first smelled either of gas or dead mouse—we wandered out onto the far western edge of the Black Rock Desert, where we had a view somewhat atypical of most views of the desert. This section of the Black Rock is a section you don’t want to drive into: it’s usually muddy, and it’s very possible that you’ll get stuck. The getting stuck part typically happens at night when an unsuspecting traveler, one who is already out on the desert somewhere to the east, decides to get off the desert—and instead of driving to the usual take-out spot north of town, sets their sights on the lights of Gerlach and makes a beeline for town. The next thing our unsuspecting—or willfully ignorant—traveler knows, they are stuck, possibly axle deep, in the mud at the west end of the main section of the Black Rock Desert. Fortunately for them, they aren’t far from Bruno’s gas station. Maybe someone will risk a vehicle to come and pull them out!

It’s possible one could wend their way through the merely salty white section of desert to the pavement on the east edge of Gerlach, at least in the drier years, but I don’t recommend trying it. I personally know at least one person who tried this one night back in the 1980s; the getting stuck was epic.

The next morning after breakfast, FMOH and I headed west.

Now let’s get back to my June 2018 trip, which I was taking all by myself (cue pint-sized pity party). I had just made it to the northwest side of the Smoke Creek Desert and had taken the photo seen earlier and in my last post.

A ways farther down the west side of the Smoke Creek Desert, I pulled over for a quick examination of some tufa. There are many spots to see tufa domes, mounds, and hills along the west side of the Smoke Creek Desert; this mound, Hill 4081, was a new one to me.

I climbed up through the cheatgrass and scattered tansy-mustard tumbleweed and looked around. Here we’re looking off to the northeast, more or less back toward the Junction of C.R. 447 and the Smoke Creek Desert Road. The Granite Range, unsurprisingly underlain by granite, rises steeply beyond the distant Smoke Creek Desert playa. The foreground is green because...water. It’s a wet part of the basin, possibly because of the entry of perennial Smoke Creek into the desert just south of where we’re standing. It’s also more elevated than the playa, and covered with grass (at least cheat grass) and various scrub.

I love tufa mounds, so I stood looking around for a few minutes, taking lots of photos. This photo looks off more to the north. The distant bluish hills just right of the tufa dome are part of the Buffalo Hills, which are underlain by a pile of volcanic rocks.

More tufa! More volcanic rocks! The hills in shadow between the tufa masses are some volcanic flows forming the eastern foothills of Burro Mountain.

From this point on Hill 4081, I got back on the Smoke Creek Desert Road, went south a short distance, and then turned west on what Washoe County considers the continuation of the Smoke Creek Desert Road, and what Google Maps refers to as the Smoke Creek Road: a dirt road that heads west up Smoke Creek.

to be continued...

Google Maps location map.

Related Posts:
Winnemucca to Hwy 395 north of Susanville, Part 2
Winnemucca to Hwy 395 north of Susanville, Part 1
Things You Find in the Field: Sulfur at Sulphur
Blue Mountain (2012)
Pulpit Rock (2012)
Smoke in the Black Rock & Smoke Creek Deserts (2102)
Where in the West: Black Rock Desert (2008)
Where in the West - June: A Second Look (2008)
Where in the West - June (2008)
Name That Place (2008)

Twelve Months of LFD (2015)

I'm doing the year-end meme wherein I compile the first sentence of the first post of every month. Meme rules are as follows, as per DrugMonkey:

Post the link and first sentence from the first blog entry for each month of the past year.

I've also added the photo from the same first post, if there happened to be one. I've removed any captions from the photos, so if you want to find out more about locations, etc, you'll have to click through. The first sentences include some classically long, LFD-style sentences, one short sentence, and many that are in between. Previous takes on this Twelve Month meme at LFD were posted for 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012, and 2014.

Aaand...here's the year 2015 for LFD:
January:

A year ago today, a thin snow highlighted some Lake Lahontan shorelines on basalt-capped hills out in (or near) the Fernley Wildlife Management Area (FWMA):

February:

Yesterday, when out hiking in nearby Water Canyon (before the Super Bowl), MOH and I slowly (at least for me) made our way up a variably steep, grassy to rocky hillside until we came to a large rib of quartzite.

March:

Well, I'm back at the place I was working at about two years ago (see these three posts for more info), spending more time on a back paved road and on dirt roads than I was most recently while on the road to work (I'm still driving on the interstate some, but a lot less than during the last two years).

April:

It was a very windy day as I drove south along what's variably called the Surprise Valley Road or the Sand Pass Road (and to the north, is often called the Smoke Creek Road) into the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe's Reservation.

May:

It is often — more commonly than in the past, IMO — hazy or dusty in north-central Nevada where I routinely work and often travel, here and there across basins and over ranges.

June:

An El Niño has supposedly set in (starting when, exactly, I'm not sure).

July: Nada. Zip. Zero.

August:

Neil Young: Rockin' in the Free World (lyrics) Album: Freedom, 1989

This is technically a road song because it mentions streets twice and roads once, and because the video that came out with the song also shows a lot of streets.

September:

There I was minding my own business while flying north from RNO to SEA (that is to say, I was reading a thick book and trying to ignore a seatmate while crammed against the window near the rear of a Q400), when I looked out (to the east) and spotted the peak of an Oregon volcano sticking out through what I first thought was a low, thick cloud cover.

October:

South of the Klondyke District (our previous stop on this journey) and just north of Goldfield, one reaches one of the northernmost populations of Joshua trees (Yucca brevifolia)—or the northernmost population, depending on what range map you use.

November:

In later years—in the future of the 1976 "present" of these ongoing thesis-hunt stories—I made my way back into the Palmetto-Magruder area barely a handful of times.

December:

When I pulled up to Lida Summit two years ago—I was on my way to a property examination and had decided to check out the Lida and Palmetto areas—I stopped right in front of...a roadcut!

Back on a Sometimes Muddy Road

Well, I'm back at the place I was working at about two years ago (see these three posts for more info), spending more time on a back paved road and on dirt roads than I was most recently while on the road to work (I'm still driving on the interstate some, but a lot less than during the last two years). I find that I prefer the back roads and the dirt: I feel a bit like I'm going out in the field every day, although I'm really not.

It means that the road is sometimes wet, muddy, snowy, icy, or sometimes it has been recently sprayed by a water truck or recently magged. I decided to take a few pics of what that looks like on my jeep (in this case, the road had been sprayed by a water truck to keep the dust down). I wasn't actually on the road to work when taking the pictures, but instead had pulled over on a convenient side road while traveling elsewhere after a couple/few days at work. Consequently the tags include two locations; the post location (below) links to the photos.

The front of said jeep, the Eugene Mountains in the background.

The right side, with part of the East Range in the background.
The rear tire looks low, but isn't.

The rear and left sides. That's a high part of the East Range with the snow.

And the door handle area of the left, driver's side door.

One Year Ago Today Compared to Last Month: Mud and Snow v. Mud and Water in the Fernley Wildlife Management Area

A year ago today, a thin snow highlighted some Lake Lahontan shorelines on basalt-capped hills out in (or near) the Fernley Wildlife Management Area (FWMA):

Snow on low hills across the dark brown playa in part of the Fortymile Desert on January 5th, 2013.

About a month ago, there wasn't any snow on the ground, buy the playa was dark brown, muddy, and in places very wet.

The same two hills on December 3rd, 2014 (location near Milepost 59 on eastbound I-80).

There was quite a bit of water near the main part of the FWMA a month ago; photo looking southeast toward Hazen from eastbound I-80
between Mileposts 55 and 56.

The roadside marshes were full of water a month ago (near Milepost 57).

A second view of the marshes near Milepost 57.

I'm always pleased to see a lot of water in the FWMA area and roadside marshes. I'll get a chance to see them in a week or so. I wonder what they'll look like then! Hopefully the water table will still be fairly high. And hopefully the marsh and water birds will be swimming, wading, and having a great time!

Back to Midas

At long last, we're back on the Tuscarora Loop, with the turnoff to the small town of Midas just up ahead. On our loop trip, taken way back in early June, MOH and I passed Midas by, in favor of making it all the way to Tuscarora. At the time, I had been to neither place, but Tuscarora seemed more out-of-the-way, and therefore more exotic, so down the road we went.

We came back in mid-July, and instead of following the main road, old S.R. 18, to the right, we took the side road up the canyon to the left.

Signs at the turnoff to the Midas road.

Sign at the entrance to the town of Midas, and green trees.

Acme Beer sign, reportedly dating to about 1936.

I was on the lookout for a bar that had been open in 1979 or 1980, a bar I knew as Kirby's Midas Bar, a name given to me by a friend of mine, a young woman who was working as a geologist while staying in Midas in a company trailer. Seeing the old sign for Andy's Midas Bar made me somewhat hopeful about finding either Kirby's or Andy's bar, although Acme Beer dates back primarily to the early 1950s and before. Acme Beer did have a short revival in 1975 to 1979; could it have possibly been being sold in Midas while my friend was in town?

While in Midas, my friend could make or receive phone calls on one of the two phones in town, which had the phone numbers of Midas #1 and Midas #2. Phone numbers like these were fairly common in the 1970s and early to mid- or late 1980s in the small, outlying towns of Nevada. These numbers confused operators outside the state to no end. To place a call into Midas or Getchell, for example, you would dial 0 for an operator and then ask for Midas #1 or Getchell #2 as needed. If dialing in from out of state when trying to reach one of these types of numbers, one learned quickly to ask the out-of-state operator for a Nevada operator, because many outside operators didn't believe that phone numbers like that could even exist.

While I was looking for, and not finding, the bar I'd heard of long ago, MOH and I were hoping that the one known-to-be-operating establishment in Midas, the Midas Saloon and Dinner House, would be open, but it wasn't. This became a concern during a later, uphill, in-the-rain adventure of ours.

Mine dump, ore cart, and portal (?) a little ways up Midas Creek.

Old cabin, garage, or storage shed.

Road to somewhere.

After a quick pass through town, we headed up the hill to the west on this relatively innocent-looking side road. The partly cloudy weather became more and more threatening as storms to the south moved in, creating an unexpectedly muddy situation.

In the morning...

In the morning after I wake up—while I'm drinking my first, second, and maybe third cup of coffee—I often think of things to write for the blog, how to write them, maybe even what pictures to use.

I also think of things to write while I'm on the way to work, bouncing around in the front seat of a pickup truck (actually, the ride is usually pretty smooth and solid, I just thought bouncing just sounded better). A moving truck is not a great place for writing (there is *some* bouncing), especially because all I have is my semi-smart phone; perhaps if I had a tablet...

My thoughts while riding or driving into work typically run along the lines of...well, maybe it's time for some drilling stories...let's see, there was the guy who yelled and threw things when he was mad at his helpers, which was almost all the time. Ugh. Or, there's a story or two floating around about drill rigs brought onto staked claims in order to make a discovery before the company that owned the claims, thereby being able to, hopefully, make claim to at least some of the already staked ground.

And then, once again, I'm back here at my computer, it's early morning, and the briefest hints of coffee are trying to course through my veins, trying to rev my brain. Ideas are at a standstill; I don't get very far...until I'm back on the road and the ideas start popping. Another story, or general story idea, will come into my head: mud and getting stuck stories. Hey, there's one just over that not-so distant hill! It happened not long ago, and, remarkably, I have a few photos for it! And not too much farther down that road and over the next hill or two to the south, there's a mud without stuckness story...and that leads to a more typical claim jumping story...which leads to another claim jumping story out of sight from this road but down a road I was writing about last fall and winter before I got distracted by our recent move.

But then, I'm sure I'm missing something...maybe it's the details...because when these ideas start while I'm on the road (any road will do, me driving or sitting as a passenger, either way), other ideas come in and crowd out and confuse the first ideas, which then sometimes include other people's stories: other accounts with drillers, other encounters with mud, other overstaking problems. Which story to tell? What details to use? And, without a tablet, and even with a small notebook, how will these stories make it from barely incipient idea to fully written account?

One story would be about the driller (and set of helpers?) that got thrown off a job down in the south-central Mojave one spring (I hope it was spring and not summer) for showing up to work drunk and carrying a small flask of whiskey or JD. The driller that came to replace him had an interesting time using one of the two only pay phones in town—and so did I, although I used the other of the two pay phones in town—but the guy that had real problems with the one pay phone, which was sitting there on the corner of Main Street and the cross street that formed the junction that made the town, was one of our claim stakers, who was out there running a soil grid across the claims he was staking. And his problems with the pay phone had something to do with the druggy nature of the town, the drugs being the second main reason for the town, the first reason being the intersection of two sub-major (major in the Mojave) roads.

And so the ideas come and go, just like that, while I'm sitting here in the morning partly coffeed up, glancing constantly at the clock so I won't be late: sometimes the ideas get written down, sometimes they don't. These kinds of stories generally don't have photos to go with them, and the Mojave stories are not likely to have photos any time soon or in any systematic fashion: collecting the photos would take almost as long as the original years of exploration.

And now, with one last chug of ever-so-good nice-and-hot coffee, I leave this post behind and start getting ready for work.

One Year Ago Today: Almost Stuck!

The day was dark with rain and snow, but we headed out anyway, thinking that we could visit the museum in the small town of Cherry Creek in eastern Nevada. We made our first stop on the side of the road to check out this large antelope herd. Antelope can often be spotted between McGill and old Schellbourne Station.
Cherry Creek, the town, is located on the eastern range front of the Cherry Creek Range, where Cherry Creek, the creek, comes out of a small gap in the mountains. Structurally, Cherry Creek looks like it's situated where the north Egan Range runs into the Cherry Creek Range, but the northern end of the Egan Range as named is located in Egan Canyon, the next gap to the south (MSRMaps location showing the regional Basin and Range structure).

That's State Route 489 (above) cutting across Steptoe Valley toward Cherry Creek. The parallel white lines along the road in the center of the valley are patches of snow; standing water can be seen south of the paved road. This possibly intermittent lake or wetlands has recently appeared to be contiguous with Goshute Lake several miles to the north. (This year's so far extra-dry winter might have changed the extent of the southern wetlands.)
This is most of the small community of Cherry Creek. The museum wasn't open, the light was flat and dark, and we didn't spend much time looking around.
It could be a nice place to live, if you like beautiful scenery, out-of-the-way places, and long drives to market.
We hightailed it back to the center of the valley, where we decided to drive south along the historic Nevada Northern Railway to check out a boxcar or other railroad-related artifact we could see off in the distance. The road was well graveled and dry to begin with; the yellow line in the Google Earth image above shows our traverse from the paved road southward.
We made it about 600 or 700 yards before deciding not to go any farther. At this point, the road was turning into a watery mudhole, with no end in sight. In fact, we'd already driven breathlessly and unwittingly through mud we initially couldn't see the end of, and we had come to this short semi-dry spot. The rail, just off to the left in those prickly bushes, prevented any turnaround options, so I decided to back out.
Backing out meant going through a long stretch I shouldn't have driven through in the first place, but had started into before I could stop, then kept going through while hoping for a break in the mud and a turnaround spot. You can see the closest mud hole easily, a second, even larger hole beyond that, and a hidden muddy spot between the two more obvious holes.
Looking at this after driving backwards through it, makes it look pretty tame, but the truck kept getting pulled sideways into the deeper parts of my own tracks, while I tried to stay to the side on the dryer ground right next to the bushes. Consequently, we experienced a bit of fishtailing, and my dual tracks look like a mess of incompetent driving.
Backing up even farther, the road looked good as we went in, just slightly muddy.

Mud is a deceptive thing to try to drive through. Often, one can see a weakly muddy road ambling off in the distance, and this light mud goes on far enough ahead that one can easily get started into what turns suddenly, or gradually, into heavy-duty, very slippery, or deep mud. Getting out and walking an unfamiliar road is recommended, but one usually only walks so far ahead before deciding that the coast is clear: let's go ahead and drive! Incipient or weak mud might suck you in (so to speak), then suddenly, just around the corner: OMG! You're suddenly stuck if you stop, maybe not stuck if you keep going, or maybe staggeringly stuck far from solid ground if you keep going.

If stuck in winter, waiting until the big freeze early in the morning can be one way of getting out. Sometimes a longer waiting period (say months until spring or summer) is required, along with heavy equipment (a D-8 or D-9 dozer). With all the large bushes along our road, we would have been able to build a road under and behind my truck; this procedure often requires multiple jackings-up of the truck (jacking-ups?).

We weren't far from a routinely traveled road, so if badly stuck we could have walked out (in miserable weather) and hoped that whoever we flagged down could have rustled up a dozer: mechanized extraction is easier, though more costly, than building a road by hand. Overall, my getting stuck preferences include better weather (not too hot, not too cold), and I much prefer to be paid to get stuck and unstuck — rather than to be doing it on my own time — a preference come to by many years of off-roading as part of my job.
After backing through the mud, I finally reached a wide point in the road and turned the truck back to the north. An old pump house from the historic Cherry Creek Station is mostly hidden behind the truck; the remains of the water tower can be seen to the right.
We didn't spend much time looking at the base of the water tower at Cherry Creek Station. Maybe we'll go back someday, preferably when the sun is out!