Good sleep and up and rolling by 10:30am (chk out was 11am). We headed out of Zion and west to I-15. Funny thing is there is another part of Zion 45 miles away just off of the interstate. Kolob canyon is beautiful with clear bluebird skies and, oh yeah, all the roads in Zion are paved red. It's really pretty cool.
There is a 5 mile drive to the Kolob Canyons overlook and apparently very little of the tourist crowd bothers to visit.
The hanging valleys were intriguing and there are several hiking trails but we were headed home.
We wanted to skip Salt Lake City so after some map study we saw Great Basin National Park just inside the Nevada border. We headed north on Hwy 130 and turned west on Hwy 21 at Minersville. There is nothing out here. The couple of towns have warning signs that there are no services for the next 1000 miles so we fueled and went looking for a place to fill our fresh water tank. Minersville is a little podunk town with a big ass Mormon church and while I was turning around in the church parking lot I saw a faucet on an exterior wall so we pulled up and filled up. Guess I owe the next pair of 20 yr olds that ring my doorbell in white shirts and ties 5 minutes of listening.
Pretty long day but we wheeled into Great Basin NP about 6pm and backed into our campsite w/ a stream right behind the camper that we listened to splashing down the mountain. We even had a campfire and enjoyed a nice grilled chicken dinner in the fire light.
That evening we read in the park brochure that there is a cave there and they have tours. Now I have never been much of a cave person but what the hell, we're here. Lehman cave is a natural cavern formed by a bunch of different erosive forces.
Day 11
Next morning we headed to the visitor's center and signed up for the 90 minute, 0.6 mile guided tour. It was really cool. We were both stunned by the amazing formations. We took a lot of pictures but later when we were editing, the pics looked like stills from someone's colostomy.
We had a couple of good ones. This formation is called popcorn.
There were all the stalagmites and -tites and shields and a bunch of other ones.
The coolest one was cave bacon.
After we did the cave tour we took the 12 mile scenic drive up to Wheeler peak. This is high country, the summit on the drive was 10,800' and the surrounding peaks were 13,000'+, beautiful alpine ecosystem.
We broke camp and hit the road heading north. Not much on Hwy 93 through here. A long way between towns but we did find this guy. Guess he's the last pony express rider that never made it to the barn.
We kept heading north on Hwy 93 and on the map we found a forest service CG about 8 miles outside of Wells, NV. It was a bit of a hump driving to it, but Angel Creek CG was gorgeous. We literally backed into and aspen grove and set up for the night.
Day 12
The next morning I took a walk and admired the view. I've never seen aspen with so much orange and red fall color.
The CG is right at the foot of the Ruby Mountains that go up to 10,000 ft. I wanted a couple of more days to explore.
We hooked up and pulled out. West on I-80 and then north on NV Hwy 225 which turns into ID 51 at the border. Not much out here except the Duck Valley Indian Reservation that straddles the NV-ID border. We stopped in Riddle at the reservation store, fueled up and bought some piñones in the shell.
When we were down by Manti, UT we passed a guy set up on the side of the road with a hand painted sign advertising pine nuts. A mile later we wished we had stopped. That was our only regret on the trip; we hadn't stopped at the pine nut guy.
Anyway I'm wandering around the Duck Valley store and I see a sign listing lg and sm bags of pine nuts. They only had sm bags left so I got one and gave it to Jennifer.
Kept going north on 51 and turned west on I-84 and made it home to Eagle by about 6:30pm. Tired and happy.
It was a trip of a lifetime. Loved traveling with my wife and best friend. We were both filled with amazing visions and memories and we had our pine nuts.
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