Land Cruising Nevada 2015 "are you driving a Subaru or a land cruiser"

[spressomon]

Been waiting for an explanation of the title but figured it had to be a 100 reference

It was one of those 'humble pie' moments for me. It was late in the day and we were trying to get to Big Bend CG. The wind was blowing a bit more, with threatening rain, etc., than we would have preferred for camping on the sage flats and Big Bend promised to be the shelter we wanted, being surrounded by tall old aspens.

From the northwest we had a couple trail options that led to the camp spot, including the shorter path I chose. Generally the trails, even with moderate rain fall, although muddy had a solid base instead of bottomless goo. Well...about 1/2 mile in on the short cut trail, and about the same distance in front of our cadre, the trail surface, started to get slick...but forward progress kept me optimistic we could punch through and get to camp without further delay .

Cruiserdrew's (Andy) voiced cracked over the 2m with a bit of impatience and consternation...and I popped off/back something like: "...I told you this time of year would more than likely, given my experience with same in year's past, be muddy, etc., and we weren't driving Suburus but Land Cruisers...". It wasn't 30-seconds after that all forward (and reverse) progress was halted with me sinking a foot or more into what seemed like bottomless goo and clay. "Not good" or something to that effect was about all I good muster after Andy asked how the trail work was going...

We spent the next 2+ hours getting my rig (and Tom's) extracted from the uber slippery gray clay goo...not good. We had to use all our winch extensions, tree straps connected together, etc., to get my rig pulled back to terra firma. One less piece of gear, even a bow-shackle, and I would have been forced to wait until weather conditions turned hot and dry...that would have allowed me to drive out instead of being winched out. But that would have been days or possibly weeks given the unusually wet spring we experienced!

Of course, Andy being the consummate professional and all around sane guy he is, didn't rub any of this in...no salt atop this fresh wound to my pride! He's that kinda guy!

Humble Pie...this time not the band but my personal condition and campfire fodder for future trips

 

[concretejungle]

After reaching Colorado my goal was to hit Glenwood Springs to meet up with Cameron. He and his son were on their way from Memphis and I thought that taking them across US-50 through UT and NV would be killer. Glenwood Springs was a good meeting spot. Again, this is another cool place that i have stopped pretty much each time that i've headed out west. It's right off of I70 and it's got a lot to do and see.

While waiting on Cameron i explored a bit and found the Transfer trail just outside of town. A quick scan of my Motion X GPS showed that there were trails everywhere! I'm sure i could of stayed there for days and road trails. I decided to head up the trail to crest the top of the mountain while i waited and just see what this trail was like. It was pretty tame, at least the small section i did. It was rocky, took 4x4 and had a few great views. I stopped at the top, made some lunch and chilled for a bit. As i was there, a storm rolled in on me and lightening started popping everywhere. I decided it was time to head back down the mountain and meet Cameron. He was getting into town a lot quicker than i thought, so we met up, grabbed a few burgers to grill and camp up on the trail somewhere.




I guided him to the trailhead and we headed up. It was getting dark quickly and we both kind of realized that we had a whole week of wheeling ahead of us and we should most likely just camp at the bottom of the trail since we had to head out that way in the morning anyways to jump back on i70. So we turned around in a super soft spot that i almost got stuck in. Cameron turned around and got hung up on a really large, slick and muddy berm. I couldn't believe it, we were not even in Nevada yet and i was pulling cable. This should be fun!

After about 5 minutes of excitement, we headed back down the mountain and set up camp. We cooked some burgers, ate, Andrew watched star wars on my iPad while we cooked and then we crashed. I had the awning set up in case of the rain..... well, i learned a very valuable lesson that cost me some money. When you have your awning set up and you are expecting inches of torrential rain, make sure it has a little pitch to it. If your awning doesn't have a pitch to it, there is a REALLY good chance that in the middle of the night you will be awakened by your awning collapsing with hundreds of pounds of water on it. I had one of the side poles buckle and the awning fell down. I looked out from the RTT and said there is nothing i can do now, i'll take care of it in the morning.

Luckily we were able to bend the pole back to where we could use the awning the rest of the trip but that was a solid lesson learned.

 

[Cruiserdrew]

Regarding the Subaru meadow routine-on the map it looked like a good track, but the reality it was a muddy path that was deteriorating as we proceeded. I'm glad Dan got stuck where he did, or we could have all been stuck in the goo with no options. It was bottomless sticky clay/mud that was hard to even walk on, let alone drive 6000 pound trucks on. When Tom got stuck trying to winch Dan, I thought it would be one of those crazy routines were each of us would get stuck in turn, trying to aid each other. Funny. Cameron and ALex were on mud-terrains, and had a little better traction than Tom, Dan or me - on all-terrain tires. And just for the record, I used to drive a Subaru.

As another bonus, Dan getting stuck, made us backtrack a couple of miles to one of the high light campsites of the trip. Flat solid ground, fire ring, babbling brook over it's banks due to all the rain and plenty of room for everyone. We cooked up some quick dinner as the sun went down, and had a great fire and talked story. It threatened to rain on and off, but never really did. I slept like a rock that night as we were all pretty worn out. Not a single other person passed by. I think we were basically alone in that entire area, because the next day we traveled for hours before we saw another truck.

Alex-thanks for the photos. Get someone to show you how to use the "insert image" tab so the pictures get pulled into the text. Those drop box pictures require a log in as set up now. The google pics thing might work a bit better.

 

[concretejungle]

this is a little out of place, but i forgot to mention that when i was heading through Denver, i decided to check out Slee's shop. He is not too far outside of denver and so i headed his way.

My CC was smoking in my back pocket as i pulled in....

Checked out the place, brushed my teeth in his bathroom ( ) and then purchased some adjustable pan hard rods. Had them toss them on, and then back on the highway i went.

Next stop was glenwood Springs where i would do some "adult shopping" and wait for cameron.

 

[FJ60Cam]

I'm not familiar with linking a pic from Dropbox, but I went to your link, right-clicked on the picture, copied the address, and inserted it into the image URL on the mud editor.

 

[GLTHFJ60]

I'm not familiar with linking a pic from Dropbox, but I went to your link, right-clicked on the picture, copied the address, and inserted it into the image URL on the mud editor.

Beat me to it. I did the same thing and edited your post above Alex.

 

[concretejungle]

The next morning, we woke up to a completely soaking wet mess. Just trying to pack up was like a mud wrestling competition. I was a little bummed about the awning but I was also ready to move on and hopefully drive away from this damn rain! I'm sure we would exit the rain, i mean, we were heading to the desert.

We packed up, drove back down the road, grabbed some starbucks and jumped on I70 again. Today we were heading across US50 aiming for Sparks, NV.

In my mind i was wanting to camp out at the hot springs between Austin and Eureka, NV. Me and my dad stopped in for a short time on the way back from the Rubicon and i thought it would be a killer place to camp.

As the day continued and the highway continued, it was hit or miss rain showers. Some clearing, then rain, then clearing, then rain... As we got deep on US50 i realized two things. First, there was WAY more traffic on this road than i ever expected or remembered in the past. Second, there was no way we would make the hot springs or the sand dune before dark... and, it was raining.

Cameron came over the radio at some point that evening and said he was flying blind. Trying to figure out what he meant, he said he, out of pure ninja skills, had dropped his iPhone precisely into his open cup of water in his center console! He said with the dark of night, all of a sudden there was a nice glow coming from his cup of water. He realized it was his phone shutting off!! Great!

So plans now had changed. Pasquale was already in Sparks, NV with a hotel room and Cameron really wanted us to make that. So, i kind of reluctantly agreed. No sense in trying to set up camp in the rain, in the desert, in the dark, only to have to get up the next morning and drive another 3-4 hours to meet the group.

So we pushed on to Sparks. We arrived really late at the hotel. I was dazed and tired, so i checked into the room and fell asleep.

 

[concretejungle]

The next day we woke up and i headed down to get packed up and see what everyone was up to. Today we should be meeting Tom and Andy so we can head up into the desert.

I showered up (not knowing when i would get a shower again this was key) and headed downstairs. Pasquale was already out and about, so i decided to hang with Cameron and head over to the Apple store to work on his phone issues.

After some time at the apple store, we headed to whole foods to pick up some overpriced food (that was all gluten free, hormone free, cage free and humanely harvested) for the trip and meet Andy, Tom and Pasquale who were already at the local brew pub washing down lunch. We raced over, crammed some food down and hit the road.

We all gassed up and then Tom realized he needed a new driver for his GPS to work correctly. We pulled into McDonalds to use some WiFi, took care of business and then headed north.

Today's goal was to run up to Planet X Pottery and meet up with Dan who was hanging out there.

This last shot is looking back at the small town of Gerlach, NV. Not sure what they do there other than say hello to folks heading to and from Burning Man. Either way, what a stress free little town.

 

[GLTHFJ60]

Alex, click on the dropbox picture so that the picture is the only thing showing in your browser. Next, right-click on the image and click "Copy image URL". Take that URL and paste it inbetween the following IMG tagss (replacing "{" with "[" and "}" with "]"):

{IMG}{/IMG}

 

[concretejungle]

We finally got our tires off pavement and onto a gravel road.

One thing to note here is that i was expecting complete and utter desolation with absolutely no one around us. After all, last year in Southern Utah that was pretty much the case... i remember seeing a few people at the entrance of elephant hill and then as we exited hole in the rock we saw a group of jeeps, other than that, no one!! This week was just a little different. It was a holiday week and so this killer lake (Pyramid Lake) was amazing. It was also somewhat easily accessible compared to what we were about to embark on. So, there were quite a few campers and a little traffic on this little section of our trip. Lots and lots of campers packed onto the lake shore. I personally thought why in the world would anyone want to come out to such a remote place and park next to each other like that?!

 

[GLTHFJ60]

No sir.

 

[concretejungle]

Next stop, was planet X pottery.

I was not sure what to expect to be honest. I thought to myself, aren't we heading out into the desert? Why is there a pottery place out here?! We started trying to hit up Dan on the radio as we continued out further towards the desert. Traffic was getting less and less and i was finally starting to feel the groove that our group is known for. We all seem to instinctively fall in to line exactly where each of us feels comfortable. I usually am at the rear of the pack because i like to try to take it all in and also like to snap a billion pictures. Pasquale has a much stronger radio that i do, so he usually is tail-gunner. Between us two, we really have a good un-spoken pace that really works well.

Next thing i know we are pulling into this little oasis on the edge of the desert. As we pull in i'm fascinated.

This place is off the grid and on the edge of the desert. They were having a pottery sale.... this to me was like an oxymoron to be honest. I thought who in the world would just randomly pass by this place and see a sign for pottery sale... it's like one in a million chance. Most likely it was a really good excuse for friends to get together, have some drinks and food, share stories and look at their pottery creations. It was really cool.

I walked towards the rear of this little oasis and stared out over the desert. I stood there in silence and just listened...... nothing! No horns, no cell phones, no sirens.. we were finally "getting out there" and i was stoked.

 

[GLTHFJ60]

Try opening this thread in an "incognito" or "private" browser window. Maybe you can see it because you're logged into your dropbox account?

 

[TrickyT]

I tried logging in to my dropbox account, but still can't see any of Alex's images.

Alex, can you set your dropbox sharing permissions to "anyone"?

 

[concretejungle]

After meeting Dan for the first time and letting Andy and Tom convince him that his best course of action was to meet up with us the next day, we all departed.

While the guys were getting rounded up to get back on track, i was talking to a couple of locals who were from the little town of Gerlach, NV. I was trying to make sure i was pronouncing the name properly. They gave me a very small history lesson and told me how to say the town name and then pointed to what in my east coast mind was just "over yonder" at the town of Gerlach. That's the last stop for us to get gas before heading further up into the black rock desert. This was another kind of cool moment for me since i could see the water tower of the town they were pointing at. Visually i thought "heck that's just a stones throw away".... not so much. Your distance estimations seem to be waaaaaaay off out here. The flat land and the big mountains are deceiving. It took us like 20 to 30 minutes of 65 MPH driving to get there.

We entered this small little town and i didn't see a soul! Not a single person out and about. I guess everyone was napping or something. We did a complete circle of the town which took about 2 minutes and found the only gas station. No one was there but the pumps were on. So we all took turns gassing up.

I assume that this town is the gateway for the burning man festival. That's probably pretty much all it has going for it. Not trying to knock the town but i have no idea what they would do otherwise.

 

[GLTHFJ60]

Set the dropbox album to "everyone" and give us the link to the album!

 

[spressomon]

No issue here viewing the photos in Dropbox...but not the photos contained within posts 43 (some), 45, 48, 49; (just see blue ?)

FWIW I just scale/downsize the photos for 'MUD threads (via iPhoto typically)...not as nice as the full res shots but better than nothing.

 

[Cruiserdrew]

Alex-as a test, send me a couple of photos as an attachment, I'll upload to photobucket and post on here. If I can get that to work, for sure you can with your mad ninja iPhone skillz.

ie please don't give up.

 

[spressomon]

Ok...well here are a couple of the very few pics I took...

 

[concretejungle]

After fueling up we headed out of town. Each of us had an extra 15 gallons of gas on our bumpers or being stored in some fashion. Two of the guys had an extra gas tank which after the trip i believe is the absolute best. Perhaps it's time to start working on dual tanks for the 80.

It was getting later in the evening and usually sometime around 4 we as a whole will vote on whether to keep going or stop at a camp spot. This evening we decided to go ahead and stop for camp, eat some amazing food and get some rest.

we pulled off the road and drove up into a clearing, set up camp and all enjoyed an IPA then some wine, then some cheese and then some amazing dinner.