April 30 Bryce Canyon to Ely, NV

What a pleasure to spend time with truck camper friends. Here we are camped next to each other at Bryce Canyon National Park. Roughly 2500 miles from our home in Maine we bump into friends from NH. Cell phones, IPhones, etc. etc. make it pretty easy but it’s still pretty unusual we would have been so close on this vast planet.

Usually when we see FarcticOx (Ted and Cheryl) it is in a group so we don’t always have time to chat. We met for coffee this morning and dragged out map books, map software, log books, Scenic Road brochures and plotted our way to new adventures. We didn’t really want to drive through big cities for a while and you have to admit that Salt Lake City is big. Found a great way to skirt the area and get to our next paleontology/geology destination.

They were staying a few days in Bryce to hike the more remote trails. We visited Sunset, Sunrise and Inspiration Points for a final look before wandering off. If you have never been to Bryce, it is one of the must see National Parks. If you are like us and “senior”, the entry fee with your senior pass is free and the camping is $6.50. Hard to beat!

We journeyed up to Utah route 50 over to route 6 and from there to Ely, NV. They don’t call 50/6 lonely roads for nothing. It is pretty rare to meet another vehicle coming towards you. Even travelling at our usual 55-62 depending on the roads, it’s rare to be passed.

We had planned on camping at the Great Basin National Park but had already hit snow a couple of times. The Great Basin is just that, a valley/depression between two mountain ranges, great in size and used for cattle ranches. Even on a Saturday afternoon we saw ranch hands out on ATVs riding the fence lines and stopping for repairs. Guess the days of carrying all that repair gear on horses is gone. The mountains just shine.

By the time we got to the visitor center to get campground info, there was a pretty good sized snowstorm up in the mountains where the camps were. We get enough snow in Maine so decided to go down to Ely, NV and try a casino for overnight. We did and laundry is done, slots played and lost and wifi is fast and available. Tomorrow off to Hagerman Fossile Beds and then a camp at Craters of the Moon in Idaho. Hopefully the weather will clear, warm up and we can spend a couple of days on the craters for walking and resting.