Great Basin National Park and the Lehman Caves. Sept 27 - 29

We hit the road from Ely at 8:30 am and headed 2 miles back to town to fuel up the car and MH. Diesel is $5.31 at the Chevron Station. With that done, we headed back down Highway 50 towards Baker. It's a short run today of under an hour. The highway meandered around 2 mountain ranges before decending on a slow 40km/h ride down into the other valley. 

Winding back down into the valley.

We arrived way early, at 10:15 am, but were able to get our spot. Not much of an RV Park! Just a big gravel parking lot, but it does have full hookups with 50 amp. We have an open sky though, so hopefully we get our DISH operational here with a phone call. (Update, Ray got it working on Thursday but not to the rear bedroom TV so we will probably still need a technician in St. George, Utah, our next stop.)

After lunch we headed back out to the Visitor's Centre to get our annual pass, but they sent us into the park to the other Visitor's Centre for the Lehman Caves to collect the money. After sorting that out and a quick walk through their exhibits it's off to do the Wheeler Peak Scenic Drive. A 12 mile paved road that climbs up the mountain to 10,000 feet. I stopped for Ray multiple times for his pictures. Sure is pretty up there.

Mountain Mohagany trees

Groves of Aspen Trees

Aspens 

Upper Lehman Campsite

This is the start of the trail to the Bristlecone Forest, about 3 miles return with some elevation. We opted not to go, especially with my foot.

Great Basin Bristlecone pines (Pinus longaeva) are remarkable for being the oldest non-clonal species on the planet. This strange tree, shaped by the wind, snow, and rain has survived over thousands of years, overseeing the rise and fall of great empires, growing through ice-ages and catastrophic volcanic eruptions. But their ability to survive these harsh environments and adverse growing conditions is exactly their secret to great longevity.

Apparently a year or so ago, they tried to transplant one by the Visitor's Centre but it died because the conditions were "too nice". That experiment did not go as they had hoped.

Back down the road, we stopped in the campground to see if we could spot Lehman Creek  going through the campground, so pretty.

View of the creek from Upper Lehman Campsite

View of the creek from Lower Lehman Campsite

Back home by 3 pm so I could get my foot up and on ice. It is slightly better today. Hopefully when I wake up tomorrow I can walk normally for our cave tour.

Another quiet evening for both of us as the TV issue still not solved. 

Thursday morning we were up at our usual time, Ray at 5 and me at 6 lol. We both had coffee and then headed out at 7:45am up to the Lehman Visitor's Centre to get our tour tickets and have breakfast at their cafe. Unfortunately the cook didn't come in so a chocolate chip cookie it is. My foot is much better today and I wore my Teva sandals that are adjustable. Good thing as the tour went on I loosend then twice to ease the swelling. :)

Ray took a walk around to get some pictures. They have an amazing apple and pear tree that are just loaded with fruit.

The historic Lehman Orchard, which covered more than seven acres, included apricot, pear, peach, and apple trees. As part of a recent orchard restoration project, a water-wise irrigation system was installed and new apricot, apple, and peach trees were planted to help preserve the orchard for years to come.

Next to the Lehman Caves Visitor Center sits the historic Rhodes Cabin. The cabin was built in the 1920s by Clarence and Bea Rhodes, who were Forest Service custodians of Lehman Caves at the time. It is one of several built to provide accommodations for visitors to Lehman Caves. Today it contains interpretive exhibits.

The cabin measures 19 feet long and 11 feet wide with a front door, a side door, and four windows. It has been moved from its original location, restored, and placed on a concrete foundation. The logs, originally chinked with mud and concrete, are now chinked with cement made to simulate mud. The original roof was plank and sod supported by log beams, and the original floor was dirt.

Rhodes Cabin

Our tour started at 9 am.

Ray doin' Ray lol

These cave shields are quite spectacular and Lehman Caves has them in abundance (504) compared to the 5 in Carlsbad Caverns.

These pools of water were not there last year as it was so dry, but with the abundance of snow this year, the water is back.

Here is a link to Lehman Cave Part 2 showing the Grand Palace that we went to. Amazing.

Lehman Cave Tour Part 2 Grand Palace Just over 9 minutes long but really well done.

We decided to try out the Border Inn Casino for lunch. As soon as we walked in the door and smelled the smoke from cigarettes we turned around and came home. Nacho's it is for lunch.

Ray spent the afternoon playing with editing the pictures as I worked on laundry, baked 2 loaves of bread and made our meatloaf for supper. Yes my foot is much better :) Ray got the TV going in the main cabin but not in the bedroom, but everytime you shut it off it goes through the whole initializing sequence that takes about 10 to 15 minutes ... so we will have to get a technician to get this fixed while in St. George next week.

We sat outside for an hour or so with our neighbours, Bill and Zo, who are on their maiden voyage in their 24' Lance trailer from Bend Oregon. They have camped on and off for years in Airstream trailers. Of course Ray brought out all of his Benchmark Atlas's to show them stuff. They were very thankful for the extra information as they like to hike and get into the back country. We may see them in St. George as they leave today and we leave for St. George tomorrow and they are at the same resort. Of course I didn't think to take a picture of them lol

Friday morning, another sunny day. It's going to be another hot one. We left at 10:30 back up to the Lehman Caves for our Lodge tour at 11 am.

This tour basically took us the same way as the Palace tour minus the Palace. The only difference is not going as far as the Palace Room and we didn't stop in the Lodge Room on the way back. It's good for Ray though, as he could see where he went wrong with any lighting of pictures yesterday. These Caves are much more decorated with cave shields and stalagmites and stalagtites, etc. than any of the others we've seen. The biggest difference is these caves started from marble not limestone like Karchner  or Carlsbad.

The picture below is the natural cave entrance that is closed up for people, but bats still can access the cave. Since this entrance was sealed up for quite a few years after they made the man made tunnel there are only about 200 bats now returning after 10 years.

"Ear Canal"

These reminded us of octupi.

The bulbs are what they call Turnips.

Spoke to a technican in St. George and found out we were "sold" a completely incompatable system for what we wanted and used previously. Now we have to buy another traveler system with a dish and use our old receivers to make the system work. They sold us the other receiver for the bedroom and there is no way it can work separately from the front system as the King Pro One that was put on our roof can only see one satellite at a time instead of 3 like the previous larger dish system!!!!! OMG! We were not even advised that BMT was going to do this and when we went and checked on the roof repair it was all "fait accompli!"

We have spent a bunch of money we did not need to. The guy said our traveler system being as old as it was would probably fail soon as he has had quite a few do that in the past year and Winegard does not warranty them anymore. Fortunately we still have our old receivers for Dish that will work so we will need to get the "new traveler and dish" at a huge cost. Very very pissed at BMT.

Ray decided to head out after this great news .... and relax and reset so he went to find the old ghost town Osceola, 30 minutes down the highway. No snakes today lol 

Notice the turntable in the background

            Some one would pay a lot for this beautiful barnwood.

Ray caught the back end of this "Big Ass" squirrel.

BUT ......... flat tire 4 miles from the pavement. He was able to limp to an oldtimer's house and he helped to pump some air into the tire. Ray made it to the pavement where he had to move all our electric bikes out of the back to access our pump and found we had some of that foam you fill the tire with. That enabled him to drive the 30 minutes back only losing 2lbs of pressure.

Here is the road he had to come down from the ghost town.

Needless to say he did not have a great time this afternoon. Apparently the road up to the ghost town was kinda knarly I suspect. He managed to scratch up the car a bit with the overgrown brush trying to turn around. The things we do for pictures. lol

I kept the home fires burning ... made a batch of chocolate chip cookies after he called me. Chocolate makes everything better. :)

Tomorrow, as it is our day to leave, we decided that Ray will follow and I drive the car and stop periodically when the dash indicates low air pressure and fill as necessary. We altered our route to St. George slightly to go to Beaver, Utah. There is a tire shop open on Saturday, then carry on to St. George. If the tire doesn't make it that far we will have to put on that small spare tire and carry on.

Stayed tuned :)