19-20 March 2024. America’s Lonliest Road and Great Basin National Park

On Tuesday I headed east towards the Nevada/Utah border via Highway 50: Americas Loneliest Road.

In July 1986, Life Magazine dubbed Nevada's Highway 50 the "loneliest road in America" claiming that there were no points of interest along the route, and warned readers not to risk traveling it unless they were confident of their survival skills. Although the Nevada tourism board will claim otherwise, there sure is a lot of nothing on this road! I traversed more than 250 miles on Highway 50 - don't be fooled by the word "highway" – it is a 2 lane road, one lane in either direction with not even a spare inch as a breakdown area on either side. Often I was in expensive flat areas with mountains in the distance, then reached and climbed over the mountains, headed down the other side only to traverse another large flat expanse and repeat the process. There was one town about halfway to my destination called Eureka; there were a couple of stores and a gas station (all of which looked vintage 1940 and abandoned) but that's about it. I traveled through some interesting salt flats, saw tumbleweed swirl around in dust devils and enjoyed the beautiful snowcapped mountains in the distance. My destination was a motel on the Nevada/Utah border which is about 15 miles from Great Basin National Park. My motel had a very small restaurant and a gas station and a few items for sale in the lobby, but those were the only services for 88 miles in either direction. it sure is remote!

Then on Wednesday morning I got to the Great Basin NP visitor center early and was lucky to get off the wait list and took a cave tour at 9 AM (tours are limited to 20 people and it's spring break week so 3 families basically filled up the queue - funny to be on a waitlist when you're in the middle of nowhere!) I had been to 2 other national parks with caves: Mammoth (the longest cave network with over 600 miles of underground passageways but no formations, just a smooth hollowed out tunnel) and Carlsbad Caverns (which featured enormous interior caverns the size of a football field or more with huge features). Great Basin has "Lehman Cave", a small narrow cave filled with thousands of stalactites, stalagmites, "soda straws" and columns.

The tour wound through narrow passageways requiring visitors to turn sideways and duck. It is definitely not suitable for anyone who is claustrophobic. Sadly back in the day before the cave was protected by the National Park Service, guides used to tell people "if you can break it, take it" resulting in a lot of destruction of stalactites which take hundreds of years to form. The guide pointed out a stalactite that had been broken off in the early 1900s and barely an inch of super thin (way thinner than a pencil) new stalactite had formed. Bummer.

After the cave tour I went to 2 different places to do a little hiking. Unfortunately, both of the major park roads were closed a few miles up because of snow in the higher elevations. I parked at the closure and hiked up with 2 "friends" I had met on the cave tour. Views were ok but nothing spectacular.

I headed over to the second access road and set off again. Here I was able to hike up and round the corner of the mountain which provided a view of the Great Basin. The Great Basin (for which this national park is named) is an area where all precipitation in the region evaporates, sinks underground or flows into lakes (mostly saline). Creeks, streams and rivers find no outlet to either the Gulf of Mexico or the Pacific Ocean. So as you might guess, I was looking over a vast expanse of flat nothingness. Quite a different view than in Maine though!

I headed back to the car and took off my muddy boots and made the 4 hour drive to Salt Lake City (with an additional hour lost to the time travel from the western to mountain time zones). I will be in Salt Lake City for the next 4 days dog sitting.

Photo note: you can see I've had beautiful weather – endless blue skies! You can also tell if I take a picture through the front car window – it adds a greenish tint to the images that I have trouble removing on my phone. If it's crystal clear it means I pulled over and got out to take the picture and if it's green it's from inside the car.