Exploring Around the High Country East of Mountain City NV.

Friday June 13, 2014 Patsville Camp NV.

Making yeast bread sticks

Last night I made up some of these yeast bread sticks from some yeast dough I’ve been cultivating for about a week. I’ve had the dough kicking around on the van floor to let the dough get some natural yeast in it, in a plastic bag, of course. I was thinking tortillas, but that’s a lot of work, so I fried these in a little olive oil in my wok. The only work part was making the sticks, but that’s a lot like playing with clay in school,, making ropes, so it wasn’t much work at all.

As it turned out, they were quite good. I only have a few left.breadsticks

 

Getting some fresh spring water

I left camp headed south this morning, continuing on down checking out the scenery.

I noticed last night that my water supply was getting down a bit, so I stopped at a spring I had seen the day before on the way in.

I’m stopped at a spring to take on some fresh drinking water. I use these gallon jugs to keep things easy to deal with. I carry fourteen gallons when they are all full. springstop

 

It’s the good kind of spring with a pipe coming out of the side of a mountain. I cleaned the moss around the pipe outlet and then filled up four gallons which should be enough to get me through this trip, with some to spare.waterspring

 

Traveling down the road

I continued on down the road at a leisurely pace, heading mostly south, stopping along the way taking pictures and looking at stuff. This is one of the main roads in this area, so was in fairly good shape.roadview

 

Camp spot?

I’m always looking for future camp spots, so when I saw this spot I pulled in and looked around a bit to see how it looked.campspot

 

My view as I walked around the camp area. Lots of wild flowers are in bloom in this area.flowers

 

What can you imagine?

This old car caught my eye as I was walking around the camp area and I thought, I bet this was used by hunters a long time ago. I can just see them riding around in the open topped rig. Smoking cigarettes or cigars and drinking beers or stronger and shooting the bull and having a merry good time up in this area, hunting away. :O)oldcar

 

I ate some bread sticks for lunch there, then continued on down the road, heading  back towards the way I came in the other day, to Sunflower flat, just up ahead.highcountry

 

The sunflowers aren’t blooming yet, but most everything else is.view

 

Cruising along headed back to Duck Valley Reservation

Earlier, I had planned to camp up here someplace for another day, but I was enjoying  myself so much just slowly cruising along, I decided to go ahead and go back to the Duck Valley Reservation to check out another lake called Billy Shaw’s lake and maybe go kayaking?

Mary Louise at the visitor center

On the way, passing through Mountain city, I noticed the Forest Service visitor center was open, so I turned around and went back as I was interested in a forest service map of the area I was just in, as my Delorme topo software doesn’t seem to have a lot of the forest service roads on it.

I met Mary Louise there, a volunteer that lives in Mountain City. Great,  I can catch up on some of the local news and find some more things about some roads I’d been thinking of going up. She was very knowledgeable about the things I was interested in, so we had a good visit.

Headed to the Billy Shaw Reservoir

I continued on up to the Duck Valley Reservation and headed for a reservoir I hadn’t been to before, called Billy Shaw Reservoir. I drove out to it, and it was a one of the nicest ones I’ve seen here, but it was real windy, so I decided to head over to the Tribal Store to get some gas and a few groceries, which I did.

Wrong again, camping isn’t free on the Reservation

I did learn something from one of the local Indians I met at the reservoir. I thought camping on the reservation was free, but I was wrong, it costs six dollars a day. No one’s ever bothered me about it, so I never knew this. One pays at the Tribal store for camping and fishing on the Reservation.

This is the Tribal Store, gas, groceries, Deli and hardware store too.owyheestore

 

Patsville turnoff to camp

I got my stuff and was on the road south again, past Mountain City, to a place just south, called Patsville. I knew of a little, mostly easy to get to camp spot, just up the forest road a couple miles were I could spend the night.

I noticed this beaver dam as I passed by headed south on the main paved highway. That log looking thing is one of their dams. This is one of the forks of the Owyhee river.beaverdam

 

Right turn at Patsville

I took a right turn at Patsville and drove up the forest road past the mine reclamation area. Patsville is an old miners type bar, but hasn’t been open in a long time. This was also likely a much larger place when the big mine here was in operation. I stopped to check out this old cabin for a camp spot on the way in. It was nice, but there was no level ground so I headed up the road to a place I knew was good.oldcabin

 

Someone’s in my camp spot

Unfortunately, when I got to my camp spot, there were already two fifth wheels there with no one around. Darn. Don’t they know they are in my camp spot? :O) This road I’m on goes back up in the hills here to some real nice spots, but I wasn’t in the mood to drive them right now, so I passed the trailers and went up the side road by them about two hundred yards and camped in the trees. I heard them come back to their camp a bit a go, but if I’m quiet, they’ll never know I’m here until I leave in the morning.

My camp spot for the night

This is where I’m camped tonight n the Patsville Forest road a few mile sin.patsvillecamp

 

RVer’s visit this area from Wild Horse Reservoir NV.

I was looking at maps and it looks like most people that come to this area to check it out, do days trips from places like the Wild Horse Reservoir which is south of here and has camping for RVs and stuff. Most of the area I was just in can be seen with day trips from this reservoir and the few people I ran into up here were staying there.

Tomorrows plans

Tomorrow, I will go down to the Maggie’s Summit road, just south of here and check out some more forest roads I haven’t been on yet in that area. I plan to camp somewhere in that area tomorrow.

Nice day exploring in this area.

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