Ruby Mountains Rest Day

After a long hike in the lovely Ruby Mountains of Nevada, we needed a day off. We also needed to see a few other places in this area that didn't involve any hiking. Our Boondockers Welcome host recommended a few other stops, and we went to all of them. Sandy told us that the Lamoille Presbyterian Church was the most photographed church in Nevada. It's twenty miles off the interstate, but was on our way to lunch at another recommendation--O'Carroll's for locally-raised beef burgers.

When we were taking pictures of the church, we noticed a young buck in the yard next door.

Then a second buck stepped out of the shady corridor of the church . . .

and gave us a nice photo as he jumped over the white picket fence.

Sandy also recommended the California Trail Interpretive Center. The California Trail parallels I-80, and it was a good reminder of the trials of the settlers crossing this desert of Nevada.  

By the time they got to the middle of present-day Nevada, they had crossed the Rocky Mountains (that we have crossed) and the salt plains (that we have crossed) and were in the middle of the very dry Great Basin Desert. But instead of an air-conditioned pickup and a solar-powered trailer, they had oxen pulling very hot wagons with everything they owned inside. Instead of riding in that pickup, most of the time they walked beside the wagon to take the weight off the heavy load the oxen had to pull. They "hiked" every day similar to the hike we did yesterday, but they didn't get rest days like we were enjoying this day. This was a reminder that we certainly weren't as tough as those pioneers! Denisa did the scavenger hunt in the interpretive center, and we both thought this was a great free activity for a rest day.

Elko, Nevada, was the nearest town to our camping spot, and they host a Basque Festival every summer. We had to do some research to discover that the Basque were Europeans settlers from the area around the Spain/France border. So on this rest day we went looking for some local Basque food. We ate one Basque Pork Chop dinner at a local diner that was big enough to fill both of us on this rest day. We stopped by the local library for a little air-conditioned computer time. Then we were back to our trailer with its view of the Ruby Mountains, and flocks of quail to entertain us.

 

We sat in the outdoor chairs provided by our host and spent part of our evenings watching the flocks. We love the males' stylish top hats, and the way the females were pretending to ignore them this time of the year.

Sandy feeds and waters all the critters, and we could tell that they felt as welcomed as we did for our three-night stay near the Ruby Mountains. 

This was a great Boondockers Welcome site, and we cherished the last sunset over the Rubies. It's funny how travel expands your knowledge and love of the land as we wandered through more of God's wonders. Just a week ago we didn't even know the Ruby Mountains existed, and now we're already missing them like an old friend. 

A little two-mile hike in the Ruby Mountains

It was easy to get up early this morning, because our brains were still in Mountain time, even though our clocks were showing Pacific Time. We were up early enough to see the early sun turning the Ruby Mountains into the ruby red shades that the locals love. In all our travels, we had never heard of the Ruby Mountains before this summer, and we couldn't wait to see them up close.

We started the morning in the flat nondescript desert landscape of Elko, Nevada. But when we drove up the nicely paved road into Lamoille Canyon, we started seeing the Ruby mountains rise around us. What a big change of landscape in just a few miles! We were going on a little two-mile hike up to Lamoille Lake on this beautiful blue sky day. How many miles do you think this two-mile hike would really take us? Keep that estimate in mind, and we'll compare notes at the end of the blog.

We arrived to find that they were repaving the trail head parking lot, and we would need to park about 0.7 miles back down the road. So we started our day with some pavement hiking. That's not bad--that just brings us up to 2.7 miles.

We decided to make this into a loop hike, so that will add a little to our 2-mile hike. We started out on the Stock Trail toward Lamoille Lake this morning.

It got steep in a hurry, and it wasn't long until we got good views of the mountains around us. 

We started at an elevation of 8,644 feet and temperatures in the 40s this morning. We were glad for the sunshine and its extra warmth--that's something you don't usually hear on a hike in July.

The wildflowers were out in force. We were used to seeing purple columbines in the mountains, so we really enjoyed the yellow and ruby red version we were seeing in the Ruby Mountains.

We knew we were getting close when we found the water that flows out of Lamoille Lake falling down the mountain.

We had completed 2.7 miles when we found Lamoille Lake!

But of course we had to hike around it to see the lake from all its angles. It's bigger than the pictures make it appear. Can you see Denisa in the picture below?

Probably not, so she's circled in red in the picture below.

All this hiking around and taking pictures was adding to our hiking total. We were up to 3.1 miles already.

We only saw one other hiker this morning--a person that told us that after seeing Lamoille Lake we should continue up to Liberty Pass for some beautiful views. So we took that advice and headed up . . .

and up over the lake . . .

towards the saddle between the two mountains.

That would add another 1.6 miles to our total--and lots more elevation gain.

But we found some more unique wildflowers that love this high elevation and the lingering winter moisture.

We were so high that our trail was covered in snow close to the pass.

But we eventually made it to Liberty Pass at an elevation of 10,400 feet. We were glad that we got the advice to continue to the pass, and now our total was 4.6 miles on the trail.

We met our second group of hikers, and their advice was to continue just a little past the pass, for a peek at Liberty Lake.

We were hiking on some steep rocky ledges for those nice views on this beautiful blue sky day. 

If we hiked just a little further, we could get an even better view of Liberty Lake. That brought today's hike up to a nice round 5.0 miles, and seemed a good place to turn around.

Now we had to hike back up-hill to get back to Liberty Pass, and the views heading back to the pickup. We were at 5.4 miles.

That would take us back through the snow, and to the tiny arctic flowers that live in the tundra. While they look like a big bouquet, you can see that they're barely the size of a hand.

It was a nice down-hill walk back to Lamoille Lake.

We had this beautiful place all to ourselves, and it felt nice to soak our tired feet in that ice cold water.

We're 7.3 miles into this hike and our feet appreciated the cold water bath. The last time we sent a picture of a beautiful mountain lake to our family, our daughters-in-law said they would love to jump in and take a swim if they were there.

So in honor of his daughers-in-law, Mark jumped in and took a swim. You can see the snow goes right to the water's edge, and he confirmed that the water was as cold as snow.

We were going back to the pickup, but this a loop hike had new things to see on the way back. We were heading back on the Dollar Lakes Trail.

Some of the Dollar Lakes were bigger than others, but they all had mountain backdrops . . .

with a bit of snow still remaining on those mountains in July. . .

and wildflowers enjoying the moisture at the shores of the lakes.

What's the cost of seeing yet another Dollar Lake?

Priceless! We have wandered into many more of God's wonders on this little two-mile hike!

After we ran out of lakes to entertain us, we still had another two miles to get back to the trailhead. But we enjoyed the views as we headed to lower elevations and back into Lamoille Canyon.

We were at 9.5 miles when we got back to the trail head, where the heavy equipment was making fast work of this paving project.

We were so impressed with this Lamoille Canyon Scenic Byway even though few people seem to know about it.

After the trail head, we had another 0.7-mile highway walk to get to our pickup. We met a couple finishing up a four-day hike on the Crest Trail that had an even longer walk to their vehicle. So we gave them a ride because their feet were more tired than ours. We finished the day with 10.2 miles on this beautiful day in the Ruby Mountains. Was that the number you estimated at the beginning of this blog?

This area was as pretty as some national parks we have visited, and we only saw a handful of groups on the trail all day. When we mentioned to our camping host that it could be a national park, she said, "Shhh! We don't want the crowds. So don't tell anyone!" So don't tell anyone that they had great roads, nice parking, charged no fees, and there were no crowds here in the Ruby Mountains. And we highly recommend a little two-mile hike up to the lake--that might grow to 10.2 miles because it was such a beautiful place.

The differences and similarities between Utah and Nevada

We enjoyed our time in Utah, but we had another moving day. As we journeyed out of Utah and into Nevada, we wanted to tally a few of the differences we found between these two neighboring states. 

After three days at a no-hook-up camp site in Utah, our solar and battery were still going strong. In fact, it was so strong that we used our electric induction plate (rather than gas stove) to cook breakfast. That brought our battery to its lowest reading thus far--84%.  There's also a reading that estimates approximately how long you will have battery power if the current situation continues. The monitor indicated that we would have power for "infinity." Nice! 

During our drives around Salt Lake City, we found out that I-80 east of the city was rather steep. So we opted for the less steep (but a little out of the way) drive down Highway 189--also known as the Provo Canyon Highway.

Utah had the beautiful Wasatch mountain range of the Rocky Mountains, so that was one difference between Utah and mountain-less Nevada. It was fun to get one more peek of the highest mountains of Utah as we made our exit drive. We also drove by Bridal Veil Falls, which was so crowded on a Sunday afternoon. We can report that it was empty on a Monday at 10:30.

While traffic was light on Monday through the canyon, it was heavy when we turned north onto I-15 and drove from Provo to Salt Lake City. We wish we could stick around four more days in Utah to celebrate "The Days of '47." We've heard that this city has a great celebration to commemorate the day in 1847 when Joseph Smith determined "this is the place!" They even made a public park where he said those words in 1847. The park was named, "This is the Place Park."

We turned west at the southern end of The Great Salt Lake, and got a glimpse of the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere.

We also got glimpses of the long trucks that were allowed on the highways of Utah. Double trailers were the norm on roads here. But instead of a difference, we found they were also allowed and very evident in Nevada as well.

The thermometer told us that it was 94 degrees, so why was the ground covered with white snow? That wasn't snow. The Great Salt Lake is shrinking, and it was surrounded by miles of salt brine that just looks like snow.

As we drove down the highway, we had briny water on both sides of the road. The telephone poles and fence posts were coated with salt. It was time to keep the air-conditioner on and the windows rolled up because that salty water was stinky!

We also found a pot ash quarry, where super-sized diggers were transferring the white pot ash into conveyer piles to be trucked out of Utah.

In the middle of the salt flats in this barren western edge of Utah, we could see something tall and strangely out of place on the horizon.

This is "The Tree of Utah" found on the north side of I-80. This 87-foot-tall sculpture was created by a Swedish artist in the 1980's and gives passengers traveling this lonely section of the interstate something to speculate on like, "what is it?" and "why is it here?" The tree had six spheres that were coated by rocks and minerals from Utah, but we don't know the meaning of this lonesome tree.

The last Utah stop was the Bonneville Salt Flats. It was fun to get out of the pickup and actually walk on this white crust. The salt flats were formed from the ancient Lake Bonneville, and we liked the interlocking shapes that formed as the last of the water evaporated. 

Its claim to fame is that most land speed records have been set here at the famous "measured mile." Approximately seven miles away (but well in front of those hills behind Denisa) a race course is laid out. It is approximately 80 feet wide and ten miles long, with a black reference line down the middle. It was there that land speed records of 400, 500, and 600 miles per hour were broken.

The white crusty ground looks like pure salt, but we weren't brave enough to taste it.

We could have walked to the mountains to the north, but they were further than they look. The Bonneville Salt Flats were 30,000 acres of flat-white-nothing-ness. 

Just past the salt flats, we were welcomed to Nevada--the fifth state of this summer adventure. We were also welcomed to mountain time zone. That was another difference between Utah and Nevada--an hour. We also saw a continuing string of casinos as we crossed into Nevada. It seemed to us that another difference was the conservative morals of Utah vs. the casino lifestyle of Nevada.

Close to that border, we changed from salty white landscapes to desert dirt. This is the Great Basin, where rain seldom falls. The rain is stopped from the west by California's Sierra mountains, and from the east by the Rockies. It was so barren that the usual sage brush doesn't even thrive in Nevada. While we didn't see any wildlife that would want to call this home, we thought it was interesting that Nevada had installed wildlife bridges across the interstate to give them safe crossings.

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But one thing that was the same in both states was the nice people. We travel without water in our tanks in order to keep the trailer light. So we needed to add water when we arrived. We found that the Chamber of Commerce in Elko, Nevada, allows campers to fill water for free right by the painted cowboy boot near the chamber office.

Our first camp site in Nevada was also our first Boondockers Welcome site of this trip. We've been members of the Harvest Host/Boondockers Welcome organization for several years. When traveling in the northeast we used it extensively, and now we're planning to use it in the west. People (usually RVers) allow RVers to spend the night on their property for free. We have the phone app that tells us approximately where these sites are located, and a way to contact them for permission to stay. Our site for the next three nights is on an acreage beside Sandy's home. It offered shade, and she had set up an outdoor table and chairs for us to use. We enjoyed getting to know Sandy during our stay! You should also notice that we have views of the Ruby Mountains.

We had never heard of the Ruby Mountains before, but we were anxious to get to know them. While we enjoyed the mountains of Utah, we thought another difference was that Nevada had no mountains. But we were glad to find out that we were wrong!