Diamonds, Trip Report

This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

Leave a comment

Last night Dave got awesome at the Pot Belly.  He wanted Jody so bad.  Jody is the only women in town.  Let’s put it this way: There are not a lot of women in Red Feather Lakes, but there are tons of them.  When we got Dave back to camp he just couldn’t shut up about Jody.  He was in love.

After Dave passed out at about 10pm the rest of us ate a late fire-cooked potato and sausage concoction dinner and joked around.  Aren put music on his Archos (an entertainment tablet of some kind) and set it on the canopy of the camping chair above him.  We laughed, then we laughed harder.  Aren was leaning forward to grab a bottle of wine from one of the others when his Archos fell into the campfire.  Aren screamed like a scared child and dove into the fire to save his technology.

All was well, the leather case had a couple burns. But the machine itself was just fine.  After we chuckled about the potential disaster our meal and chatter continued.  A few minutes pass and Aren yelps again.  In the curfuffle no one noticed that Aren’s cell phone fell into the fire as well and now it was shooting flames!

Aren’s first thought when he saw it was, “That’ strange.  That log as a micro USB port just like my phone… weird… Wait, that is my phone!”

Using his foot Aren kicked the phone out of the fire and his brother Lars grabbed it with the cooking tongs.  The phone is obliterated.  Aren’s great misfortune continues, and yet, he is having the time of his life.

This morning we awoke, made breakfast, said our goodbyes to Lars and Echo, and set about filling in the pit.  We don’t want some cow drowning in our handiwork.  Caving in the sides and tossing the boulders we worked so hard get out back in; Mud was freaking out.  This was the greatest day in his life–a six foot deep hole all to himself with things being thrown into it, what is not to love?

After the hole got filled we cleaned and loaded the dredge into my truck and then kicked the ball around for a couple hours.  We find ourselves back at the Pot Belly filling our bellies and using the Internet once again.  Tomorrow: Deadwood.

Diamonds, Trip Report

Erik Brains a Chipmunk

Leave a comment

The day starts like any other.  We wake up, sloth through breakfast, kick a ball around, throw a stick for the dog, and make our way to the pit to suck up some diamonds through the dredge.

Mud has begun to love the pit.  Toss a rock in and he jumps into the six foot, opaque abyss and starts diving for the stone making silly sounds while barking/wimpering under the water.  This routine is what takes place while I coat the dredge with the grease for the day and the others prime the pump.  When the dredge starts up we begin sucking up the blue, rich clay that is the trademark of weathered kimberlite.

Deeper, we hit pockets of bright blue sand that iridesces with mica.  Some of the coolest, most beautiful looking soil I have ever seen.  It looks as though it should be pungent with bitumen but it just smells like dirt.

My diamond tester has begun to go on the fritz and Aren sent a message to his brother Lars and Lars’ girlfriend Echo to grab us a new one on his way out to meet us at our gypsy camp (by gypsy, I mean “white trash mess of a camp”; we are disgusting).  My trailer (the Honey Badger) is ghetto enough as it is, but when covered with a torn green tarp with the bed of my truck as a makeshift kitchen and Dave’s Jeep acting as a contact point keeping the tarp suspended it looks pretty shabby.  Add to this the empty beer bottles, and coke cans spilling out of recycling bins and strewn about the camp, the torn apart dog toys, the camping chairs that are usually blown over by the regular thunderstorms that make us cold and wet; we appear to be the slobbiest of refugees.  The forest rangers avoid us… For we are “The Undesirables”.

By the the late afternoon, after Erik, Dave, Aren, and I call it quits in the pit we begin our afternoon routine of farting and telling jokes when Erik spots his nemesis: a chipmunk he keeps calling a “squirrel”.  Erik asks Dave, “if I kill this squirrel will you gut it?”

Dave: “You bet.”

Erik: “I’ll be back in a minute without a squirrel.”

A few seconds pass and Erik shouts, “Holy shit. I just got it!”  None of us really believe him, but his excitement got me curious,  Sure enough there is a chipmunk on its back going through the last few twitches of life with serious head trauma.  Erik has become the first man to brain a chipmunk with a rock in probably 150,000 years.  Erik is now closer to our ancestors than any of us ever will be.

Dave is a squelcher.  He refuses to clean the carcass so Erik and Aren begin the task with Erik doing the dirty work and Aren giving him directions using the knowledge he gained from doing the same with pigs when he was 13.  Erik saws off the head using a steak knife.  It does not go smoothly.  The chipmunk does that dance those lipstick-clad models do in that Robert Palmer music video; rhythmically turning side to side while being very slowly decapitated.

The steak knife will not do.  Erik goes back to our mining camp and retrieves the box cutter we purchased to cut away the bad sections of the pressure hose on the dredge.  Next, utilizing the new sharp tool, Aren tells Erik to cut off the pelt and gut the sucker.  Erik is the protégé, Aren the master.  I over hear important tidbits of advice like, “now cut along the inside of each arm and peel it back.  There you go!” And, “No, no. Cutaround the butthole!” When it is all done Erik puts the little bugger in a plastic bag and invents a marinade to soak it in.

This is when Lars and Echo arrive with two new shovels (we keep breaking them) and a Presidium diamond tester, just as Dave and Erik are burying the unused remains of the Chipmunk (the head and guts).    The story gets recounted to our new gypsies.  I liken the deceased to one of the effete chipmunks from those old Looney Tunes cartoons where they always talked about furniture and decor.  I think one of them is named “Clarence”.  Everyone concludes that Erik has killed Clarence.

The presidium says that everything we have found is not diamonds.  Uh oh.  I don’t believe it.  I think the presidium needs faceted stones (cut stones, not rough like what we have) to get an accurate reading.  I will get conclusive data when I am able to polish a “window” into several of the tones when I return to Seattle.

We kicked the ball around for a while, and when it got dark we built a fire.  Then Erik grilled the Clarence to well-done and it was passed around.  Not much meat on chipmunks, but Erik’s marinade was delicious!  Everyone had a piece and strangely I bet we all wished there was more to go around.  I can now say that I have eaten a chipmunk killed with a rock at 20 feet.  We have become mountain men at last!

The next day (today) we awake and the wind is wild, the sky is full of lenticular clouds (the ones that look like spaceships) and we sloth through until the afternoon to begin work on the pit.  The dredge (recently renamed “The Target of Opportunity) isn’t having much suction.  We look at the engine, add oil, and things get a little better but not like the “old days”.  Ideas are thrown about: the intake is clogged, the hoses are clogged, the depth of the pit is making it too hard to get good water flow back up the eight feet to the sluice box…  I finally conclude that the impeller in the water pump is shot and we probably need to rebuild it.  Thus, sucking sucks.

We should be moving six thousand pounds of Earth an hour.  Instead, we are moving dozens of pounds and hour.  That might be it for diamond mining on the trip as the impeller will need to be rebuilt and that will take a couple of days to find the parts and/or a shop to do the work.  The afternoon thundershower moved through, Lars and Echo made delicious chili and we moved on to the Pot Belly for billiards, drinks, fried pickles and the Internet to make this post.

Tomorrow we’ll clean up the mine site and try to return it to it’s natural state as best we can.  Then it will be time to bid adieu to the mountains of Colorado and push north to the Black Hills for the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.  Our adventure is far from complete and further debauchery is assured!

Diamonds, Trip Report

We Got the Band Back Together.

Leave a comment

Awake high in the hills overlooking Canon City we rolled into town and headed for the local BLM office.  The forest ranger inside called for the local BLM geologist to help me look up the claims in the area we were headed toward.  Out came a pretty young thing–she had a very familiar face.  After being the most helpful US government bureaucrat I have ever experienced I asked her about getting some maps.  The geologist asked the forest ranger and the forest ranger had one useful map but none of the topos I wanted, so she inquired if I was local and knew where a certain map shop was.  I told her no, and that I was from Seattle.  To which the geologist asked if I was from Bainbridge Island.  She was Amy Titterington. A girl in the class behind me in high school!  No wonder she looked so familiar… Duh!  She was thinking the same thing about me too.  Thanks for the help, Amy!

We left the BLM office and drove North to Denver to meet up with Aren and Erik.  It was a hot morning in the 90s and a bland drive being on the boring side of the Front Range.  We arrived in Downtown Denver in front of Aren’s Brother’s Apartment about Noon and we all got some lunch at a pub called Park & Co.  The food was good and our waitress happened to have gotten her degree from UH Manoa so everybody had a Hawaii connection.  The waitress thought our Hawaii meth jokes were hilarious.  They are.

We said adieu to Lars (Aren’s brother) and his girlfriend Echo and drove towards Ft. Collins.  We spent some time in Ft. Collins stocking up on food and gear.  Dave decided to push on ahead and set up camp before we got there while Aren, Erik, and I did some shopping.  I gave Dave my Colorado atlas and off he went.  About an hour later we followed North on US287 and then turned off on Colorado Road 80 (we drove this road last year too).  It was dirt, the we split onto an even rougher road and studied our GPS intently as we didn’t exactly know how to get there, even more so since Dave had my map.

Eventually we got to the Creedmoore Lakes Campground–I mean parking lot.  There was nothing there to indicate that it was an official campground; just a flat patch of dirt.  There was also no Dave.  Uh oh.  We set up our tent and crashed for the night right there in the parking lot.  About midnight we heard a truck coming down the road.  I jumped out of the tent thinking it was Dave finally finding us, but no, it was my cousin Sam!  We set up Sam’s tent and crashed again

In the morning we awoke and slurped on cereal and breakfast bars, when Dave finally showed up.  He drove about a hundred miles too far to the West the previous day and the dirt road he found us on was going to be his last stop before he gave up.

I decided we were going to try one of the “Lost Lakes”, a group of kimberlite pipes about five miles to our East for our first day of dredging.  The drive was green and lush, I think this part of Colorado has received a lot of rain since the fires in June.  The first couple of Lost Lakes were dry but the third one had water and that is where we set up shop.  The lake is more poop than water thanks to an endless supply of thirsty cattle that relieve and refresh themselves daily there.  It was gross.  It is gross.  It will always be gross!

With the dredge set up on the Northeastern shore of our lake I loaded up the sluice box with my petroleum jelly and Crisco concoction (diamonds are hydrophobic and love grease) and we started sucking.  It was late in the day so we did about three hours worth of mining and called her a day.  I scraped the goo off the sluice box into a pot, filled the pot with water, boiled it, and then set the pot to cool in the lake.

We decided to move camps to the lake since it’s next to our minesite and nicer than a dirt parking lot.  When we finished relocating the grease had settle in the pot and I checked our fist day’s spoils.  Diamonds!!!

We got about three carats of diamonds that first day.  Solid!  That makes up for the poo we get to muck around in.  It doesn’t take long to settle into a routine.  Throw sticks for Mud, eat food, tell fart jokes, suck some mud/poop out of the pond.  The clay in our hole has proved problematic but once we got passed it we started into actual kimberlite blue clay itself.  At the end of day three we now have about 15 carats of diamonds with several stones pushing 2 carats each!

Today was day four of mining and the pressure hose in my dredge sprung a bunch of big leaks. Into Red Feather Lakes we traveled for repair supplies, a blog post, and probably the rest of the afternoon lost to the bar and its pool tables.

I have photos but I forgot my camera back at camp so those will have to come later.  Sorry, I know many of you want to see some diamonds; soon, my friends.  Soon!

Trip Report

Heading up to Colorado Territory

Leave a comment

This is being written utilizing a phone, thumbs, and no spellcheck; please bear with me…

Last night I was attacked by flying ants. They like my hair a lot, but at least I got to sleep on a Futon!

I awoke about 7:30, grabbed a much needed shower, and then chatted with my brother about life. Boulder is a pretty cool place and I need to spend more than two days there.  Especially since Loch made Dave and I waffles and I got to have some deliscious agave syrup on mine!

We had a nice morning at the Wade compound. Our bellies were full, Mud was thuroughly humped by Loch’s dog Ralph, and it was time to push on.

We got back on SR-12 and headed North this time. The first leg of today’s journey was going over Boulder Mountain. The trucks didn’t have much oomph this morning but after an hour we cleared the highest summit of our trip to date at 9600ft. The view from the top was spectacular (as to be expected). The drive down was quicker and at the bottom we turned East onto SR-24. This road is beautiful. We descended through Capitol Reef National Park and the reds exploded all over the place. Narrow Canyons, red rivers, lush trees; a sight to behold. The only issue were the terrible drivers towing boats back from Lake Powell. They like to drive in both lanes.

As we exited Capitol Reef, we entered the Moon! Erie gray mounds of eroded soil. No vegitation or signs of life save for the road we were on. Eventually we came to a really rad ghost stone building. I don’t know why it was there or what it had been used for, but it was nice to look at.

We went through Hanksville where we crossed Dirt Devil Creek and headed North through the San Rafael Desert. After the landscape we just saw everything was just boring… And hot.

We got to I-70 and went East into Colorado where the temperature was 99 degrees. Mud was quite the panter. About 50 miles into Colorado US50 splits off into Grand Junction. I had heard things about the disgusting sprawl that is Grand Junction. Those rumors were not fair. Grand Junction is much worse. If I could give an award for the shittiest, most poorly planned city in America the award would be called “The Grand Junction Award for Never Meeting a Stripmall We Didn’t Like.”

Why on Earth did my hometown of Bainbridge Island hire as our city planner the former planner for Grand Junction? Was the planner for Houston, TX or Stockton, CA not available?

Outside of that shithole we drove through some more thundershowers and entered the Rockies. A restful stop at Blue Mesa Lake where Mud chased sticks and stones into the water we climbed all 11,300ft of Monarch Pass (what may be the highest pass of the entire trip).  After Monarch we made our last push to our campsite outside of Canon City, CO.

Tonight I am sleeping in my truck because of lightning. I still have flying ants ambushing my head. I dislike flying ants.

Ghost Towns, Trip Report

Ucame, Utah, Uconquered

1 Comment

After I posted last night’s entry I headed West out of town to look for a spot to lay my head by the road.  I found a nice gravel pit right by the “Welcome to Ely” sign.  I was too tired to setup my cot so I slept in the passenger seat of the truck.

There is a big open pit mine up the hill and I could see the lights of the giant Caterpillars hauling ore all over the mine site.  It was hard to hear, but I could feel when one of these huge machines would dump their load of processed ore adding to the man-made mountains that the tailing piles began to resemble.  Ten minutes would pass and I would feel a rumble through the body of my truck.  Another load down.  Another day closer to the depletion of the ore body.

Mines are like a kitchen timer.  Once the claim is staked it is only a matter of time until they have gotten every last drop.  Ding!  Put a fork in it, this turkey is done.

All these ghost towns I have been visiting were so abrupt and seemingly spontaneous in the origin and boom times.  Two years later the thousands of people who live there are gone onto the next big thing.   Unionville played out?  Go to Virginia City.  The Comstock load run dry?  I hear there’s a stike up on the Colville Reservation in the Washington Territory.  Colville all done?  Word is the Canucks found gold on the Frasier.  And so it goes…

It is mind boggling to think that if every single ghost town in Nevada had it’s peak population today the state would have somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty million residents and be the second most populous state in the union.  The fact is Nevada never had that many unique residents.  The people from Goldfield, moved to Elko.  The people in Elko, moved to Pioche.  The people in Pioche were probably murdered, since that is what Pioche did best back then; kill new comers.

Night of dreaming about these has-been mining towns came to an abrupt halt with a loud knock on my window.  Freaked out and startled, I awoke and my eyes saw nothing, just inky blackness.  Then I realized I still had my sleeping mask on (yes, I sleep with a sleeping mask, because I am a weirdo; and when I fall asleep my eyes open up, ok?) so I removed it and saw Dave’s smiling face and his big brown dog named Mud.  I opened the door and gave Dave a hug from the confines of my car seat, only then realizing that Dave may be the first man I have ever hugged while technically not wearing any pants…

It was early, not even 7am.  Gross.  I threw on some shorts and our new caravan of two vehicles drove into Ely in search of some breakfast.  We found it at the Silver State Cafe and dove in.  The waitress, who I don’t think was too bright, but nice, informed us that there was a tire shop called, “The ‘Super 8’ or something,” just down the road.

By 8am Dave, Mud, and I were waiting outside the “Big 8 Tire” for the lads who would make the Honey Badger’s gimp knee ready for the playoff drive.  The mechanics wasted no time beating the holy hell out of the trailer’s tire with various sized sledge hammers until the biggest sledge I have ever seen finally got the rusty rim off the wheel hub.  Why didn’t they just start with the biggest sledge first?  Why work their way toward the inevitable and take the long route?

Whatever.  An hour later the Honey Badger was holding 40psi and was ready to roll.  Away we drove.  See ya later, Navada; we’re Utah men today!  A couple more mountain passes and desert valleys (aka hundreds of miles) and we arrived in Delta, UT.  We made a stop at the Thriftway for ice to refresh our coolers and studied a map of the state.  I decided we should head South to Boulder, UT and pay my brother Loch and his wife Kelly a visit.

While ironing out the details of our route we heard girls yell “HELLO!” and turned around to see the sliding window of the drive-through SnoCone stand slide shut.  Delta is very Mormon; they don’t do drive-through espresso here.  After our brief distraction we returned to our geography lesson.  “We like your dog!”  A quick turn to see the window shut again.

If the ladies running that SnoCone stand want some of the these lads, who are we to argue with their marketing genius?  We went to get a SnoCone.  The window slid open and there were two 12 year olds.  Lame.

What’s the deal with child labor laws in Utah anyway?  In Washington when you approach a drive through stand their is a young lady (of legal age!), wearing a bikini ready to serve coffee.  In Utah, it’s the over sugared middle schoolers serving SnoCones.  Oh well, I ordered a 16oz blackberry/mango, and it was only $2.50.  I tipped the girls two bucks and the look on their faces was that of two young people who not only had never seen a tip before, but that of naivety to the fact that tips even exist at all.

Dave, and I sat in the shade of the a tree while I enjoyed my flavored ice and the two young ladies bounced around and did laps in their little hut.  Dave pointed out that these girls were probably doing shots of syrup all day long and were wired beyond control.  I think you’d have to be.  It seemed like I was their only customer all week. Come on, Delta, it’s 94 degrees outside, get a dang SnoCone!

Dave and I headed back to our to our little gypsy caravan and the girls slid open their window to thank us.  Then a few more steps and they slid open their window to wish a good trip.  As I was getting into the truck the window slid open again and the wished us a fun adventure.  As I was pulling out of the parking lot one of the girls ran out of the SnoCone hut to wave and wish me safe travels…

They need a YMCA in Delta or something.

Delta, may have been 94 and bluebird, but 30 miles South was the beginning of some monsoon.  The temperature plummeted into the 70s and sporadic downpours were making Dave’s clothes wet (they are strapped to the top of his Jeep).  We took US50 to I-15, to SR-20, to US89, to SR-12.  The weather was rumbly and awesome.  Once on SR-12 we entered Canyon Country and were on the doorstep of Bryce Canyon National Park.  The rocks were bright red and spectacular.  SR-12 is one of the most beautiful drives in existence; especially when thunderheads and sunshine are mixed in equal parts!

We drove through Tropic and a beige canyon that will live on in infamy in my mind.  Two years ago I was passing through the same narrow canyon when a huge mountain lion ran in front of my truck.  That was exciting enough, but around the next bend I saw Him.  Standing next to a shiny red Ford Focus rental car was a short, fat man with a waxy bald head, no teeth and a $3000 suit on.  He looked me in the eyes and stroked his huge .50 caliber sniper rifle as I passed by.  Terrified that this wack-a-doodle was going to snipe me in the face as the road followed the river bend back around for a picture perfect shot, I drove the next 400 yards blind, since I was crouched under the dashboard of my truck.

This time around I wasn’t terrified of the fat man in the expensive suit holding a six foot military-grade weapon.  I wanted him to be there.  I wanted Dave to see this reality.  I wanted so desperatley to not feel like the crazy one, when I know fat-sniper-rifle-guy must be the crazy one!

As we drove out of the canyon and into a high valley my disappointment abated and gave way to sweeping views of the terrain below.  Canyons just look so good.  Good job, Nature.  After we made it through the burg of Escalante the real awesome part began:  Hell’s Backbone!  We were in for a treat, just as we made it to the top of the ridgeline the thunderheads had just passed leaving a hole in the sky for the sun to shine through on the canyoned Earth below us.  The light reflected off the fresh streams of water now cascading off the smooth rocks of the mesas and canyon walls.  It looked as though someone had poured quicksilver over the whole of Southern Utah just to watch it shine!  It may have been the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life.  I will take that view with me to the grave.

Coming off of Hell’s Backbone we arrived at our destination of Boulder.  Home to 200 residents and two members of the Wade family.  Only I didn’t know where they lived.  They had moved since the last time I was here.  Dave and I killed time by eating all fancy-like at the Hell’s Backbone Grill.  We both got filet mignon and enjoyed the thunderstorm and out meals.  Our waitress happened to be friends with my sister in law Kelly and told us where to find her.  Instead, she found us!

Once we arrived at the new Wade Family compound on three gorgeous acres, Loch showed us the garden and his plans for the amazing water wheel grist mill that will run off the irrigation water from Boulder Creek.  construction is slated for next year.  Loch and Kelly took Dave, Myself and all the dogs to the top of the hill in the back yard to view the valley and watch the thunder storms surrounding us.  A good monsoon indeed.

Tomorrow Dave and I head to Colorado.  I am not sure if or when I will be able to update next.  I will try to get something written at soon, but internet connectivity may prove elusive.  Stay tuned!

Ghost Towns, Trip Report

Butterfly Murder.

1 Comment

I have contributed to the death of thousands.  Butterfly after butterfly gets eviscerated by the grill of my truck.  Beauty and tragedy at 70mph.

I woke up about 8:30 and got what was left behind by the rest of the hotel guests at the Holiday Inn Express.  Some warm milk, a cinnamon roll with what looked like a finger hole in it, and Raisin Bran.  Dreamy.

Last night, after I made my trip update, my computer’s battery was real low so I got my charging cord out.  Well, I should say I got half of my charging cord out.  I apparently left the half that plugs into the wall somewhere that is not my computer bag.  Hrrmmm…  Another thing to do in Fallon when your almost dead, go to Radio Shack.

I then took my bruised beast of an F150 to Les Schwab to get my tire fixed.  I chatted with the tire guy and he had all the same questions everyone else has when they meet me out here,  “What the hell did you do to your truck?”

“More manly things than anyone else with trucks around here it seems,” Has become my reply.

They took off my tire and saw the golfball-sized hole and said they couldn’t fix it.  I had to get a new tire and they didn’t have what I needed.  The dude said I could go to either Winnemucca (115 miles away to the North), or Sparks (51 miles away to the West).  I am trying to go East!  Onward to Sparks, I guess!  It was noon by this time, and the drive took about an hour as I was still driving like a granny with my two drive wheels of different diameters.

I rolled into Sparks and, guess what, got another tire tech who wanted to know just what in the hell had I been doing to my truck.

They took about an hour to get a new big ass Wild Country AT tire on my rig.  The charge: $308!  Whaaaaaa?  I then took my warranty out of pocket and asked, “Does this help?”

Yessir, it did.  The charge dropped to $174.  Not as bad.  It was now 2pm and I had hoped to be in Austin, 200 miles to the West of Sparks, by this time.  Sigh.

Back on the road and flying.  An hour later I was in Fallon, yet again.  Filled up on gas, and I was outta there.  Still cruising US50 I drove passed the tanks in the desert again.  This time they were being loaded onto flatbeds.  I guess play time was over.  Since I was retracing my steps I turned back down HWY361 to scope out some of those promising rock formations that had potential for riches.  I found three old mines, one new one, and biggest dribble of bird crap ever (it fooled me, I thought it was a quartz intrusion from about a mile away; that was a long hike to get a good view of tremendous amount of poop).  I am really good at being 150 years late to all these gold loads.

I hopped over the mountain range and crossed the big valley back toward Ione.  I had initially planned to cross the next range there yesterday and now was my chance.  Waved to all the no trespassing signs people who squat in abandoned houses in ghost towns always place on their fences and blew through Ione.  Been there, done that.

I was not a mile East of Ione, when, I can’t say it is maternal instinct, since I’m not a lady  and unless you consider the Honey Badger my child, but a thought popped into my head: Check on the Honey Badger, the little guy needs you.  I halt my rig and get out thinking that I might be dragging my tail lights again (I had just bought my 4th new pair in a year that morning back in Fallon).  Nope, taillights are copacetic.  Then I hear the hisssssssss of air coming from my trusty trailer.  The driver’s side tire had a crack in it.  Lame.

I split into action and grabbed my mostly used bottle of Fix-A-Flat.  I shook that sumbitch vigorously for 30 seconds and the emptied the can into the tire.  I do have a spare tire for the trailer, but I don’t happen to have a tire iron that fits the lug nuts on the wheel (note to self: get a second tire iron).  I had to hope the can of goo would stall the inevitable; there was another 50 miles of dirt roads between me an Austin… Where I should arrive at about 7:30, well after everything has closed.  I drove through, what looked to be an indian reservation that was the size of a football field and seemed to contain no residents.  Just cows.  And cows who don’t move for trucks at that.

The valley was gorgeous.  Bathed in the long light of the late afternoon sun the greens of what was a much more watered valley than all the other scrub brush desert I had be through.  In fifty miles I saw maybe ten homes, and one very determined dog who angerly chased my truck for about a mile even though I was doing about 30mph.

About 20 miles South of Austin I came upon a ghost ranch.  Rad.  I blew by it and took photos at speed of the homestead making a metal note to return and explore the abandoned big brick ranch house someday.

The road was weird.  There would be a mile of smooth, expertly paved road, followed by a mile of graded gravel, followed by a mile of pavement, and so on.  I reunited with HWY722, and then US 50, and chugged up the mountain into Austin where my first stop was the town’s gas station for fuel, ice, and two cans of Fix-A-Flat for the Honey Badger.  The tire was low but the hiss had stopped.  The little buddy just had to make it to Ely to get some new duds 150 miles away.

Away from the 8000ft pass that markes the exit from Austin the evening light began to bathe the next valley in reds, purples, and rainbows.  Puffy little cumulus clouds began to drop their hard days work of gathering the moisture from the rising air warmed by the sun earlier in the day giving me a colorful view.  The high desert is so stunning.  I could totally live here if it wasn’t for the lack of ocean and the constant bloody boogers.

Cars are few and far between.  I see more deer on the road than fellow travelers.  As the last remaining rays of light bend over the curve of the Earth and night begins I saw a dark vehicle off in the distance, barely, coming toward me with it’s lights off.  As it got closer I did the neighborly thing and flashed my lights on and off to remind him that he turn on his lights.  Turn on his lights he did.  Then he did a U-ee and pulled me over.

“Why are you flashing your highbeams at me?” asked the fat tub of sherrif’s deputy glaring through my window.

“Because it’s night, you’re driving a black car, and your lights were off.”

“Oh… Sorry about that.  Lord a’mighty, I can be damned fool sometimes.”  Forehead slap. “Sorry about pulling you over.” Long pause, “Thank you?”

“No problem?”

Back on the road.  I blew through Eureka, I was on a mission.  Ely or bust.  Time to meet Dave.  I haven’t seen that dude in eight years!

I got to Ely about 9:30, parked at the beginning of town, and scanned road for Dave’s Jeep.  Nope, nothing.  Duh, this is Dave we’re talking about.  He has never been on time for anything, ever!  About 20 minutes of playing Triple Stack on my phone and I get a call from the man.  He’s in Ferny (halfway between Sparks and Fallon) and won’t be getting into Ely until really late.  So I walked to the Nevada Hotel and Casino, grabbed some dinner, then some desert, and now I am that jerk who nurses and piece of cake for two hours while he steals their wi-fi signal updating his blog.  What a dick.

Ghost Towns, Gold, Legends, Silver, Trip Report

The Day So Nice I Post About it Twice! Or, I came for the Ichthyosaur and Stayed for the Giant Rock in my Tire! Or, The Last Pain to Grantsville!

1 Comment

After my initial posting, done in the parking lot of some steakhouse/casino on my phone, I filled up the tank and made my way East towards Austin.  My first stop was the Grimes Archaeological Site where there are some petroglyphs.  They are old and not very exciting…  Moving on!

I continued on US50 (the “Loneliest Highway in the World”) and drove passed some salt lakes.  Mirages are strange.  The way that light refracts through rising air (heat waves) makes any flat surface reflect like it is water.  I can imagine how frustrating that must be if you were really thirsty and hot and your horse died and life sucked.

I turned on to HWY722 which is the old route for US50 and got stuck at a flagger for 20 minutes where I had a conversation with the flag lady while we waited for the “pilot car”.  Her first comment to me was, “Geez, you really scratched the shit out of truck.  What the fuck were you doing?”  I informed her that I was a badass geologist and liked ghost towns, thus the shit scratching.

She got excited and wanted me to check out her opal one of the old guys who lived down the road gave her.  It was a beautiful white opal that was at one time a limb of a tree millions of years ago.  She was excited when I explained to her that it was once a tree, but I don’t think she understood that the tree had been petrified with opal and not that there are some trees out there made of opal.

After I got through the road construction I turned South onto an unnamed dirt road and burly manned it through the desert.  These roads are not always the best maintained.  Every time I look in my rearview mirror I am surprised I am not seeing the Honey Badger kartwheeling behind me like it had been smashed by some Decepticon in yet another Michael Bay shitshow while all my gear yardsales into the dust cloud that remains.

After about 30 miles of washboard roads I climbed out of the basin and into the range to arrive at Ione.  The claim to fame for Ione is that their population was so egomaniacal that they forced the state to make a new county by splitting up two others just so they could be the county seat of something.  Then the gold ran out and everyone left; like 10 months later.  Whoo!

South or Ione lies Berlin and the town’s Ichthyosaur.  Since people marvel at the 100 million year old sea creature a state park was made.  Since a state park was made, the ghost town of Berlin has been rebuilt.  The stamp mill is awesome and probably full of mercury.  I loved it!  I didn’t get to see the Ichthyosaur since they put a building over it and locked the door.  Lame.

I decided to hit up one more ghost town before heading back up to US50 and went down the road a ways to Grantsville.  The road was a piece of cake and the Honey Badger was bouncing along when *BAM*!  Well, more like a high pitched *Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee*!  Uh oh.

I jumped out of the truck and ran to the sound.  My rear passenger tire had a golfball-sized rock impaled through it.  Neato.  I reacted like the crisis manager I was trained to be by Mama Wade.  I grabbed my can of fix flat and read the instructions: “If possible, remove object.”  Check.  “Shake can vigorously for 30 seconds.” Check.  “Fill tire.”  And the horns go *wuh wah*.

Fix a Flat doesn’t do what they claim, and I had to change a tire on a truck, attached to a trailer.  What joy.  It is really hard to use a jack under the rear axle of a truck that is lifting a gross weight of like 9000lbs.  After about an hour of being manly some more I got my spare on and it is only 4 inches smaller in diameter than my $400 badass impenetrable tire that got penetrated.

I got back in the truck and GPSed the closest Les Schwab.  The closest Les Schwab is in… duh dun Dah! Fallon 94 miles away.  That’s 94 miles at 40mph down mostly dirt roads because you shouldn’t go fast when your drive wheels are different sizes.

On my way over a pass to connect with a different, paved highway (HWY 361) my breaks started to melt, yay! I low geared it to a crawl and managed to pull over to let the breaks cool.  I got out to tour the truck and check my spare when I notice that yet another magnetic trailer light set was dragged to its death.  Gar! $44 dollars a pop and you’d think they’d make better magnets.

All was not lost, after I get my tire fixed in the morning I plan on double backing to HWY361 and check out some promising quartz veins when I make my way out to meet Dave in Ely.

Now I am back in Fallon staying in a Holiday Inn Express because I deserve it… and I needed the shower

I

Ghost Towns, Gold, Opals, Silver, Trip Report

A Mosey Through Nevada

4 Comments

I woke up late (as per usual), pussy-footed around (not so unlike me), and finally got my tush on the road about 2:30 in the afternoon; that’s what I meant by, “I’m leaving in the morning.” The drive South into Oregon was OK, I decided at the last minute to cut East and go down Highway 97 and gave my old coworker Kryn, who lives in Bend, a call and see if she wanted to meet up for a very late dinner.

I rolled into Bend just before 10pm and we had a nice meal. She is loving Bend, it’s a town designed for outdoorsy young adults, and she is an outdoorsy young adult. We had a great, brief time, said our goodbyes and I got back on the road around midnight.

South of Bend I turned onto Highway 31 by the town of La Pine. All the pine trees were dark and ominous. The sky was ablaze with lightning and I could feel the rumble of the thunder through the armrest of my truck’s door. I finally pulled over and got some shuteye about 1:30 and slept cramped in a ball in the cab of the truck due to the lightning storm.

By morning the skies were clearing and I drove to Fort Rock. Ft Rock is a pretty cool geologic feature. It was a cindercone volcano that formed under an ice age lake. As a result the “tuff” that formed the ring of the cone baked into a brick leaving behind a natural fort. The earliest peoples used the shores around Fort Rock as a camp on the once great lake. The caves in Fort Rock have produced sage sandals over 10,000 years old!

From Ft Rock I went further South into Summer Lake and Paisley where I finally had breakfast (I wish I had one of my hundreds of paisley shirts… Oh well).   South of Paisley are the crumbled remnants of an obsidian lava flow. I grabbed some fine specimens. Then I turned onto Highway 140 (in the Spring time this is the most beautiful place on Earth; in the Summer: meh). That took me past my opal claim. It was best not to stop and dig opals as it was 92 in the shade–and there is no shade in this part of the country.

I decided to continue on to Winnemucca to refill my tank and my belly. I ate at a casino attached to the Holiday in Express. The restaurant was a Mexican Joint called “Dos Amigos” where I was waited on by the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life. What the hell this vision was doing serving a schlub like me in backwater, NV I’ll never know.

I left Winnemucca about 6pm and chose to stay the night Unionville. About 30 miles South of Winnemucca is a ghost town called Star City. Star City was the site of a large silver mining operation and boasted 1,200 residents at one time complete with all the bars and brothels a town of that size required. The road up the Star City was a piece of cake… At first! I ditched the Honey Badger (my ghetto trailer that tags along with me on these adventures) and pushed on in just the truck. The road got worse, and then worse, and then impossible. I stopped the truck and got out to hike up and see if there was a place to turn around further up, because backing down thise narrow road was going to be deadly.

I found the teensiest turn around about 500 yards up the mountain, but I was going to have to drive through some decent sized bushes (trees?) To get there. Oh well, let’s do this! The truck was a champ, just mowing down nature, and then I died. Well, actually what I thought was, “Oh God, I am going to die… I should have asked out that waitress… Damnit!”

To my right is a sheer cliff that goes up to the ridge, to my left is a 6ft drop down into a pretty gnarly creek. The bank gave way under my front driver’s side tire and my truck began to roll into the creek. For some reason I steered into my doom, and rather than rolling the full weight of my F150 onto my head and drowning in the creek alone and never to be found, I drove down the embankment and ended up with my truck bisecting the creek.

Once My heartrate calmed down, I did my best Austin Powers impersination and completed an 87 point turn around in the creek and was now pointed downstream. I went from accepting my inevitable demise to, “What the hell do I do now?” What I did was class three rapids in a Ford! I drove more than half a mile down a mountain creek (including what could be considered a rather large waterfall for a truck) until there was a point I could drive out of the creek and back on to the primitive road.

I returned to the Honey Badger, gave Star City the finger, and headed back down the mountain. I arrived at the turn off for Unionville about 9pm and decided I had had enough for one day and made camp under the Unionville information sign on the side of the road.

This is where I discovered that I am easily mistaken for a cattle rustler. My arrival was the most exciting thing this dead end road has had in 150 years. By 11pm dozens of ranchers were swirly around me. Word had gotten out that some cattle rustlers had arrived in the dead of night and were by the mailboxes at the end of the road (I was camped at the mailboxes at the end of the road). Much to all these ranchers’ relief (maybe disappointment for some who may have wanted a new trophy to mount in their study), as it turns out, that I was not there to in fact take their cows. We all had a good laugh, they put away their shotguns and went back to their ranches concluding that the Honey Badger can barely carry my cooler let alone a 1500lb animal or two.

The next morning one of the ranchers was so kind as to wake me up at 6am for a chat about how well I slept the night before. “I slept very well, until some jackass woke me up at 6!”

I packed up my cot and bag and rolled up the mountain to the ghost towns of Buena Vista and Unionville. There I saw two famous people’s homes: Mark Twain’s cabin when he failed miserably as a gold miner; and Sandra Bullock’s less humble manor. I peed in Twain’s outhouse and drove South through the desert toward Fallon, NV.

I drove past Shanghai Canyon, site of my infamous fall down a cliff and subsequent hospital bill. At the base of the canyon was a herd of wild horses. I started taking a panorama of the horses and the mountain. If I had waited 5 seconds I would have had a Navy F4 in my photo. I took the last image and my heart exploded out of my chest as Mr. Comedy did a flyby of my face and scared the shit out of me. I managed to get a photo of him on his return pass.

I am now in Fallon contemplating a $10 shower at a truck stop and writing this long screed using my thumbs and my cellphone!

More to come!

Trip Report

The adventure begins anew!

2 Comments

I’m hitting the road again to meet up with my merry band of neardowells. I’ll first be poking through Nevada and getting my fill of ghost towns where I will eventually meet up with my old roommate Dave (my first friend in Hawaii when I moved there); in Elko maybe?

Thent Dave and I will mosey through the rest of Nevada, Utah and Colorado, where on the 23rd we meet up with Aren, Erik, and probably Aren’s brother Lars in Denver. We go North from Denver to Fort Collins where my cousin Sam just might be waiting for us–then it’s the push into the wild where our diamond mining begins!

Stay tuned for the trials and tribulations of the gang and see if we get significatly more diamonds than we did last year. Come on “retirement stone”!

Explore the world one rock at a time!