Today was another day that took longer than hoped. We got up a bit later than planned, got on the road latter than planned, got to the park latter than planned, and I’m about to go to sleep later than hoped. But, it’s OK.

After staying up getting my work done as much as I can (it’s in the hands of my teammates now… that sentence brings relief and terror at the same time), I woke up after another night of less than 5 hours of sleep (Lara let me sleep in a bit, you know, until 8). However, the stress of work behind me, I felt somewhat rested. We showered and packed up.

We left the motel an hour behind when we had hoped, but decided food (well, coffee in my case) was important. Fallon, being a small town, has very few options on a Sunday morning it seems. We opted for Jerry’s Restaurant. They were slammed. Breakfast took an hour (but it was filling and not bad). We then stopped at Telegraph Coffee next door for coffee to go – it’s really good (an it’s a bar by night). We finally left around 10:45.

We drove on, what Reader’s Digest dubbed, America’s Loneliest Road. It has traffic, sure, but there were long stretches where we saw no one and no sign of civilization save the road and power lines. It felt lonely (but not in a bad way). The drive offers fantastic views of the Great Basin and the random mountain ranges that exist in this desert between the Rockies and the Sierras. It’s worth it.

We eventually got to Great Basin National Park and stopped in the visitor center. We got the stamp, grabbed some swag, and got advice about the park from the ranger (who was also dealing with the fire alarm making noise for no reason; quoth the enunciator “bad trouble”). We drove in to what is the least busy park we’ve seen thus far. We drove up to the base of Wheeler Peak. The entrance is around 6000ft, the road ends at 10,000ft.

We thought about doing a hike, but it was late (4:45 by the time we got up), it was getting cold (40 degrees and falling), and the trail was 2-4 hours in an area already in some shadow. We opted to find a campsite. There’s a campground up there (at 10,000ft, that would be the highest we’d have ever camped), but we thought 25 degrees for a low is a bit too cold, so we opted to head down to the other campground on the road. It was, of course, full (12 sites in total, so, yeah, fills quick). We then went down to the other campground, off a 3 mile long dirt road (the nicest dirt road we’ve ever driven). We got the last available spot (and it’s actually a nice spot). It’s the first campsite we’ve been at in 3 years that doesn’t have bear storage boxes (no bears here).

We ate, did what we could to keep warm (ah, nights in a desert), and then looked at the stars. With so little light pollution out here, the views are great. My camera isn’t suited for this, so, I won’t even try to take one. There are so many stars that you can see, and the Milky Way is almost bright in the night’s sky. It’s cool.

We aren’t sure what we’ll do tomorrow. We know we’ll do the caves, but we aren’t sure if we’ll do the Bristlecone Pine grove at the peak (the trees up there are 3,000 to 5,000 years old). We might stay another night, or we may try to book it out to Arches, we’ll see.

Stats: 22 days, 10 national park, 1 lonely highway