The Great Basin

The Rocky Mountains National Park is another of the famed parks which we were expecting great things from, but similar to Yellowstone we were left wondering what’s all the fuss about. It's probably just a great place to hang for a while and soak in the scenes.

Looking east back down the valley in Rocky Mountain NP

 

The mountains are spectacular and the park contains some of the highest peaks in the US but like Yellowstone it’s commercialised and crowded, perhaps in Spring or Fall it may be better. We just don’t do crowds.

Looking south from near the highest part of the Ridge Trail

Many areas within the park are only accessible by undergoing extended hikes for many miles or you’re left with just a drive-thru along the very scenic Ridge Trail Road which takes you across the mountains from East to West or vice versa depending on your destination.

High up above the tree line the road continues with all and sundry

 

The Ridge Trail climbs to a pass in excess of 12,000ft, high above the tree line and into the most southern tundra in the Northern Hemisphere, spongy moss and stunted growth just like we saw in Alaska’s Denali NP.

Our highest moment at over 12,000 feet

We found a camp in the National Park campground on the western side adjacent the head waters of the Colorado River. Here it is just a creek before it heads southwest for 1,450 mile collecting water from other rivers along the way.



In winter this valley has about 50 feet of snow cover and is uninhabitable except for the hardiest of creatures and plants



 

 



Looking westward amongst the pine forests which are being attacked by boring beetles, digging not dull

A little further west we stopped a night in a free camp at Hot Sulphur Springs also on the banks of the Colorado snagging the last of only 11 sites. The name sounded interesting but again we were left wondering, what’s the attraction here?? as a lap around town revealed nothing other than a railway line within 50m of the camp. At least 6 trains blasted their horns during the night as they approached the adjacent road crossing giving us precious little sleep and a grumpy start to the new day.

A beaver pond and many dead pine trees in the background

 

The Colorado River at its headwater, just a stream here

Down stream about 30 mile and the Colorado starts to take shape

Again we headed west and managed to free ourselves from both the Colorado and its accompanying railway and found a camp on the Green River at the Dinosaur National Monument which lies on the border with Utah. The monument is a combination of a live dinosaur dig quarry and back east the Green River Canyon. The Green River is the main tributary of the Colorado running for 730 mile itself from Wyoming in the North to the junction in Southern Utah.

A baby Osprey caught crying out for more

 

A curious white tail prairie dog near Green River Canyon

 

We were advised not to miss the canyon so we headed back to the eastern end of the park 75 mile away along the road we had come the previous day. We were also told of the solar eclipse which was to occur that day at 1130 and given a couple pair of eclipse viewing eye covers. Our location was expecting 91% of sun cover by the moon as it passed between the sun and earth.

Looking east the canyon is breathtaking

 

The eclipse was amazing as we hiked along the trail out to the canyon, the sunlight dulled, all was quiet and it got quite cool, even the shadows become fuzzy. With the eye covers we could easily see the moon crossing and were very surprised that even at 91% the amount of light still present. The last solar eclipse in the US was in 1978 so it’s been a long time between events.

Watching the solar eclipse

 

The shadows became quite fuzzy creating feather like shadow rather than crisp definition. Many people noticed this peculiarity



The canyon when the sun was almost blocked out

The Green River Canyon was spectacular displaying the many rock layers which the river has carved through over the millennia. Rock layers which have been bent and buckled with pressure as the plateau rose 4,000 feet when the Rocky Mountains were thrust upwards. As the plateau rose the river continued its course cutting the canyon rather than divert around the uplifted area similar to the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon.

 

Full sunshine again and the canyon shows the extent of buckling and swirling erosion over the millions of years

The curved formation required huge amounts of pressure from below to bend the layers here, a fault line also exists running across the river and up the valley in the bottom left corner

Looking westward the river is 4,000 feet below the plateau which was once below sea level

 

The Green River is green because of the sunlight reflecting off the sediments suspended in the water

The western section of the park was amazing, to see a live quarry excavation with masses of dinosaur skeletons dating back 150 million years. The area was once at sea level where the dinosaurs lived and it is believed that many died in the muddy swamps. Their entire carcases were buried below silt layers preserving them as fossil remains.

A rainbow of exposed colours depicts a time line over 150M years

This rock is the oldest about 750M years and hardest in the park, it appears to have been drilled with a huge auger while in fact it has been carved by the Green River whirlpooling through the canyon

A Stegosaurus replica, these dinosaurs were well represented in this area



These dinosaurs were present in this area during the Jurassic Era and now found as fossils below the hills


 

Awesome creatures that ruled the world from 150M - 50M years ago

These creatures laid eggs and were warm blooded more like birds than reptiles

Lower jaw of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, old and broken teeth were renewed when needed just like sharks

The uplift of the Rockies twisted the landscape at 60 degrees and after eons of wind and water erosion exposed the sedimentary layers bringing the fossils to the surface and just below.

Embedded in stone this dinosaur was a meat eater

 

The rear socket is for eyes while the others are air sacks like sinus

 

The teeth are perfectly preserved in the stone

The Dinosaur National Monument and its campground were fantastic along with the rangers who were very helpful and knowledgeable, a great place which just happened to be on our westward passage. Another unplanned visit which paid off, we spent 3 nights here and loved the place.

A perfect backbone showing the interconnecting vertebrae 

Femur bone from a Brontosaurus, a massive vegetarian dinosaur 

In Utah now and again heading west, we are in the last month of summer so need to keep above 5,000 feet to keep cool, we cut south of Salt Lake City and find a roadside camp on a summit at 6,500 feet. The deep salt valley we crossed was once full of water prior to the mountain collapse further north causing a surge in the adjoining Snake River carving its valley which we saw at Shoshone Falls earlier in the year. The Great Salt Lake is huge and a great reminder of the forces which play in the creation of these marvellous landscapes.

Petroglyphs from 10,000 years ago when the first Fremont Indians arrived in the more fertile region

How many lizard petroglyphs can you find on this rock face

Across another valley and border we are again in Nevada and pulled into the Great Basin National Park thinking that we just crossed the “Great Basin”. We were thankfully informed that the Great Basin in fact covers an area in excess of the state of Nevada, half of Utah, north to Idaho and west to the White Mountains in California. We developed a much better appreciation for Nevada now, knowing that the basin is in fact defined as the area where water that falls as rain and snow does not reach any ocean.



Wide open plains between the mountain ranges used to be much more fertile than they are today and will become more arid as time goes by

Rock Glacier has almost fully receded and will soon only appear during winter

The mountains in this region were created when the plateau rose and buckled causing ridges up to 13,500 feet and valleys down below sea level. They formed in a north/south orientation and somehow not a single river was able to find its way out.

 

 



This tree is 5,000 years old commencing its life before the construction of the Egyptian Pyramids

This Bristlecone Pine is twice as old as Jen, so how old is that, well I'm not saying

The park surprisingly has an active glacier which we hiked to and a Bristlecone Pine forest with trees 5,000 years old. It is also home to Lehman Caves which are limestone formations carved out by water accessing the limestone layer well below the mountain peaks. It was another great find and gladly free of the masses. An oasis in the desert!!

Amazing caves

 

A little squeezy

Spectacular!!

Phenomenal  structures like these abound within the depths of these caves

The caves are only fully appreciated with good lighting something which was not present when they were discovered in the 1800's

The early visitors to these caves were pioneering people who thought it good to leave their marks and take souvenirs, many sad reminders remain within the confines of the caves

This creature is 1cm long and is considered the lion of the caves, very few things can live in the perpetual darkness, some come to sleep but very few to eat

We hit our outbound junction at Tonopha in western Nevada and avoided backtracking by using an alternative route around the White Mountains and arrived again at our favourite camp (3^rd time), Alabama Hills at Lone Pine, California, just below Mount Whitney in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It’s a Luna landscape at 4,300 feet and despite the heat is a great camp away from any other campers.

Our very own Stone Henge



Close to twilight the adjacent mountains almost glow


The next day we visited the Mt Whitney trailhead up the road at 8,500 feet and spent the day keeping cool before returning to our camp location. We considered the climb but found out that we needed to book 12 months ago, it’s very popular due to the short window available in summer only. The trail attracts people from all round the world and gets you to the peak at 14,494 feet and back after hiking 22 mile round trip elevating 6,000 feet. A bit more than our usual day hikes.

Mt Whitney peak with the last remnants of snow, much changed from our earlier visit in April

With a week to go before storing the RV in Bakersfield again and flying back to OZ we climbed the Sierra Nevada Mountains from the east along a very precipitous road we avoided last year due to bad wildfires in the region. We found a campground at 7,500 feet and despite the horrendous thunderstorms we endured comforting temps in the range of 25 – 10 Celsius instead of the 45 – 30 Celsius currently in Bakersfield.



Tucked up in the Alabama Hills

It was very pleasant for the couple of days before descending down to 450 feet at Bakersfield and the Southland RV Park. It’s hot but we need to get sorted so we cranked the AC up full bore to cope.

A woodpecker making hard work on a Ponderosa Pine

We have again had a fantastic 4 months exploring the best this continent can offer and seen some incredible places and wildlife in the short time, travelled nearly 15,000 mile. We will return next year in the northern winter and head south to the deserts, maybe even Mexico and beyond. Fools and their walls a hinder to no one.

 

    Fly For Now



 

Beers and Cheers from the Santa Monica Windjammers Yacht Club doing lines of coke as we wait to get high again at LAX

 J & J