From mountain top to desert basement

Over two days, we traveled from Great Basin National Park in eastern Nevada to Death Valley National Park in southern California. Great Basin is described as a “desert mountain island”. There are many high desert basins between the Sierra Nevadas and Utah’s Wasatch mountains. On the road to Wheeler Peak, we started with desert sagebrush and ended over 10,000 ft, passing aspens in snow on the way.

I have to throw in a shot of Wheeler Peak (13,063 ft).

I hadn’t seen the really ancient Bristlecone pines that Steve had (on a previous RV trip with the boys in 2002), and since his ankle was still bum, he again sat in the car and read, while I hiked up to a grove of Bristlecones.

The trail was a bit challenging at times, to say the least.

I was waaayyyy above the desert basin we left that morning -

Bristlecones are some of the longest lived life forms on the planet. A number of trees in this grove were over 3,000 years old.

I thought their branches looked like bottle brushes, and you can see why they have the name, bristlecone:

the bristlecone is on the right, and a limber pine is on the left

This one looked nearly dead, but there were still live branches on it. It’s 3200 yrs old.

Another natural work of art:

Nevada is pretty empty -

Steve was kept entertained by tracking how many miles of absolutely straight road was ahead of us.

yes, I stood on the center line of the highway, with no cars for miles

There were numerous stretches of 15 - 20 miles without a single curve or bend, and the longest one was over 23 miles!

Death Valley actually was quite hilly…

…and had some gorgeous formations.

You could be looking at a moonscape in front of you, and when you raised your head you saw the “Artist’s Pallete”.

On to the basement -

You could walk for however far you’d like on the salt flats.

Interesting salt patterns:

Not sure how to end this post, I’ll include a couple of shots from Yosemite, where we spent a couple of days with our son, his wife and friends.

Late afternoon light on Half Dome -

Until next post…