Great Basin National Park

Over Labor Day weekend, we decided to go over to Great Basin National Park. For those of you who have never heard of it, or don't know where it is....well, you should. But to clarify, it's on the Utah/Nevada border 63 miles south of Ely and 88 miles west of Delta, with NOTHING in between. Literally, if you didn't fill gas in either of those spots, you might be in trouble (imagine the old seminary movie The Pump)!

Well, it was quite a fun ride, we got to drive through Eureka, kind of a ghost towny place, with a totally nice highschool, elementary school, and "grade school." We also were able to go 80mph the whole time on this small road and didn't meet too many cars on the road. It was really pleasant.

Here is our stove that my awesome sister Sarah found on clearance at Target for $16. Now, I'm not a fan of Target, especially the one here in Sandy that redid their interior and doesn't sell watch bands anymore but you just can't beat $16. Thanks Sarah!

We were really glad we decided to go to the basin because it was absolutely gorgeous! We were not expecting the views we saw. The mountains were majestic (and I'm quite biased towards our own mountains here on the Wasatch Front). On Saturday, we hiked to some alpine lakes and on to a bristlecone pine forest. The bristlecone pine is one of the oldest living organisms on earth. Some of the pines are over 5,000 years old and they are gnarly looking.



After hiking we took a tour of Lehman Caves. It was pretty neat and very big. One of the most important things we learned is that if you are in an earthquake, it's actually safer inside limestone caves than you are on the ground. That reassured me since whenever I went through Nutty Putty caves I always imagined earthquakes and getting trapped inside the earth. I don't think Nutty Putty caves are limestone but it did make me feel better! Sunday we spent the morning hiking Wheeler Peak. It's Nevada's second highest peak, reaching 13,063 ft. It was probably the hardest hike I've ever been on. The last 2000 feet of elevation are extremely steep and it doesn't help to have gale force winds to hike against. They were freezing and could almost knock you over. I was so mad because I was watching this lady in a pink shirt the whole time and we just couldn't catch up to her even though we should have. She was just wearing shorts, a long sleeved pink shirt and she wasn't even carrying water. Seriously, she shouldn't have been on the mountain yet we couldn't pass her until going down (then we creamed her!) Meanwhile, I had on a t-shirt, long sleeve shirt, soft shell jacket, pants, Pat's knit hat and the hood to my jacket, plus gloves. Oh well, we made it to the top and we literally were walking through the clouds. It was pretty neat. We recommend heading out to Great Basin National Park to anyone who might be interested. It's beautiful, not too far away and there's lots of fun things to do there.
You can see more of our pictures in the album on the side or click this link to watch a video of the Wheeler Peak hike.