Sunday July 21, 2013 Hilltop near Mountain City, NV.
More four wheeling than I wanted to get to camp
Two posts follow, long.
I guess we should start with this morning, where I was camped near a spring on a hill near Jungo, NV.
I was up early around seven AM. I did what had to be done to get going in the morning and headed down the hill.
Right away, I saw my first antelope this trip. Two of them coming from the spring area.
These two antelope ran by me this morning.
The road to Winnemucca was a mine haul road. It was in fairly good shape, so I moved right along.
When I arrived in Winnemucca, I got gas and went to McDonalds to post. From there I got on Highway 80 East to Golconda where I turned off onto the Midas, Tuscarora Road and drove to the little town of Midas to check it out.
Midas, main street. Nice quiet little town.
Since I was in town, I decided to take a dirt road out the back and try to go around the big Midas mine.
The picture below shows a big air vent for the huge mine that is under all this. They mine gold, tin and silver and likely some other metals too.
This is a picture of the mines settling ponds where they extract the metal from the ores.
I was doing some four wheeling above the mine looking for a place to get back to the main road and it looked like I was going to make it,……..But?
Right at the main road was a locked gate, so I had to go clear back around though Midas to get out. That’s exploring.
This sorta fly landed on my van when I was going about forty miles an hour and stayed with me for a long ways, until I stopped and took it’s picture hanging there. It was about two inches long.
So, I continued on the Midas Tuscarora Road east to the Willow Creek Reservoir, where I stayed last time I was here last winter.
This is the view from were I was camped last trip.
It was still fairly early in the day, so I decided to travel on. Not a person at this reservoir, or almost anywhere for that matter?
While traveling along the road, I spotted this big camp. It turned out to be a a fire cook camp. There weren’t many people there, I think they were just cleaning up a fire as there wasn’t any smoke around.
I continued down the road until I hit highway 262 and did a left turn, heading north, where I took highway 11 until I got up to the Petan Ranch where I turned right, on to an old forest service road that I’d been up before, over ten years ago.
This is where I turned onto the forest service road, going though a gate. I’m headed up into the hills.
I only remember there being one bad creek crossing in the road, otherwise, it just had a bunch of rocks to drive over, but wasn’t too bad.
The road I was traveling to get up the hill.
More of the road, lots of rocks, but little did I know it would get worse.
It did get worse too, as I was heading for a steeper part, I noted that someone had done a forced turn around where there wasn’t much room to turn around and headed back the way they had come. OH, Oh, that doesn’t look good. Next thing I knew I was on a steep hill which had a lot of one foot or so boulders on it, and looked real rough, like I was going to have a hop pity time of it. Hang on I thought and went for it.
Well, it was spooky and we did do some hops, but the old van make it though to my relief. :O)
It looked like mostly little four wheelers have been using this road, mostly, so there was lots of trees and brush hanging over the road, so I got a lot more pin strips on the van sides, like maybe both sides, solid.
One place there was some green brush on the road, so I stopped to check it out .
Turned out to be fresh beaver work as shown below.
I continued on and went by one place I thought might be the old camp, but no, not yet.
I think the camp area is just past those big green trees in the photo below.
I’m up on the mountain tops now, so it is cooer and lusher and I find the old camp site in the Quaking Aspens.
Parked in the old camp site.
I must say that the road up was a lot worse than the last time I was up here. The bad creek crossing I was concerned about was fixed, but that was it. The rest of the road hasn’t seen much maintenance in a long time.
I’ll be going out the east side, likely later today, which has at least three ways out. I’m thinking maybe the one that goes to the Indian Reservation, maybe they take better care of their roads, since they use them? I won’t know which way, until I go up the road and check it out.
The is a nice camp although a bit rough to get to from the west side. It’s cool up here. Mostly no mosquitoes. I only had a few for about five minutes last night, which I killed and had none after that. There are lots of fly’s in the trees and grasses, but they seem to be doing their thing and are not a bother.
These kinds of four wheeling roads are not what I want to do out here, especially since I’m by myself, so I’ll try to avoid this kind of stuff on the rest of the trip. Of course, I was trying to avoid this kind of road before I got into it, but once you start on some of these roads, you just have to keep gong to find that turn around which isn’t there, so you just keep going until you find some trouble. That’s exploring. :O)
Had a nice day and a nice night too. Peaceful here.
I’m hoping to publish this at the Indian Reservation in Owyhee, NV. later today.
Note, that didn’t happen.
Monday July 22 2013 Owyhee, NV.
More Four Wheeling and Made it to Owyhee, NV.
I started out the day taking it easy as I didn’t have a long way to go today. So I took it easy and broke camp slowly, just enjoying the morning and the nice cool air up here.
I finally did get on the way down the hill around ten or so. It’s a nice scenic ride, but a little on the rough side. Most of it is four wheel, low range, low gear. Lots of rocks to miss, lots of wash outs in the road and over hanging trees trying to take my mirrors and kayak off the roof.
Here we are just after leaving camp.
It was very scenic up on the hill tops.
You can see where I was driving on the ridge top.
Some of it was pretty rocky, I had to watch where I put the tires to prevent tire damage.
The skunk cabbage is past it’s prime. The salt blocks are put out for the cattle by the ranchers that run the cattle.
This is the spot I finally entered the Indian reservation. Note the forest service caution sign on the right. Hard hat area, Really. :O)
The Indian Reservation road, down the hill wasn’t any better than the forest service road, but it worked.
Some more of the scenic roads I was taking. There were quite a few of these water ditches I had to keep out of.
I was almost to the bottom of the hills when I spotted this antelope.
And Indian’s have horses too, almost down now.
I made it down the hill. It took a little over three hours of driving. I came down on a road called Sheep Creek Road, which came into highway 11 right near Owyhee, NV.
I went over to the school to see if I could get any internet access, but I couldn’t get any connections.
So I drove north about five miles to the store and gas station. They said the internet cable to town was cut and no one had any internet.
So I went about another mile north and turned left onto Mountain View Lake, which has free camping and launching. Ops, correction, found out later that it’s six bucks a night to camp anywhere on the reservation, paid at the tribal office at the store, where you can also get gas.
This is my camp site at Mountain View Lake.
I was pretty beat by the time I got to the lake, so I took a nap for quite awhile and had something to eat. I sorted blog pictures as there was a bunch of them.
I decided to put my boat in the water around seven pm as the sun would be starting to go down.
There was a little cove right by me and right away I saw this critter. A muskrat, maybe?
I paddled around the shore line on the south end. Lots of birds and tall green reeds, or whatever?
As I was out on the lake, the sun started to set, below. The wind was up, but it was mostly a warm breeze.
One last shot of the sunset, just before I headed in for the day.
Not sure what I’ll do from here tomorrow. Likely try and post at Owyhee and then continue on my trip to Jarbidge.
Had a rough, but nice day.
As a side note: When I arrived yesterday in Owyhee, the internet was out and I found out later the line in was cut.
I stopped to got gas at the store just north of town and asked and they told me I could likely get internet at the school computer building. Once I found the building, I entered, where it is cool and I’m posting this.
I’m headed over to Jarbidge which likely won’t have any internet, so it might be up to a week before I can post again, as I’ll likely have to go to Twin Falls, ID.
I’m headed south to Mountain City now and taking the road just south of there, eastward, Sunflower flat. I may stay up there at a little lake.
Good breeze today, not too bad.