Itinerary:

July 2020

Day 1 – Drive to Ely, NV from the CA border, Nevada Northern Railway Museum’s Star Train

Day 2 – Great Basin National Park

Day 3 – Garnet Rockhounding at Garnet Hill, Drive home.

The Drive

Me, my son and my parents went together on this trip. We took Highway 50 across the center of Nevada to Ely, NV which was about a 5 or 6 hour drive. Our road trip took us through historic Virginia City and saw some wild horses right by the side of the road! We hit some construction in Austin, NV and decided to stop for lunch and some gas. The only place open besides the gas station was Austin Found Saloon, and though the proprietress was a bit standoffish, lunch was accomplished. Highway 50 also winds through historic Eureka, NV which is where we stopped for lunch on the way home. Shortly before reaching Ely, there are several mining operations with the largest trucks and equipment you could possibly imagine (a very exciting roadside attraction for my vehicle-obsessed son)! The mine is extracting copper, gold and molybdenum (say that three times fast!).

The most striking feature (for me) throughout the drive was the basin and range geography. Much of Nevada, and indeed, the Great Basin at large (which is much larger than the actual boundaries of the park), is covered in what geologists call basin and range topography that consists of waves and waves of small mountain chains with a valley (or range) in between. Each one is unique and all have a barren, picturesque quality to them. The light changes here, and the high desert has a subtle beauty that is attractive and unmatched. It also made me wonder just how any cross country pioneers managed to cross the Nevada desert at all! There was so much terrain, and it was so vast and endless. I couldn’t imagine going up and down a range to find another across the valley, and another one after that, and another one after that!

The Star Train

The evening we arrived in Ely, we had tickets to Northern Nevada Railway’s famous Star Train. The Star Train consisted of a ride out onto a high valley shelf from the Ely station on a historic train to watch the sunset, and then a ranger-guided stargazing opportunity. The evening’s programming was led by actual rangers from Great Basin NP. There was space trivia, and a guided star gazing in a circle of chairs when we got there and let our eyes adjust to the dark for 20 minutes! Otto, my son, won 3rd place in the trivia contest, and earned a dark skies patch and a Junior Ranger badge from one of the Rangers. This was a formative moment that would encourage us to drive out to the actual national park the next day.

Ely, NV, and Great Basin NP in particular is renown for its stargazing. Many national parks are “Dark Skies” parks – where you can stargaze well, but Great Basin really takes the cake. Why? Because it is at LEAST 200+ miles from any large city that contributes to “light pollution” that makes it hard to see the night sky! The skies are very dark here. It is very remote, which is a plus for seeing the night sky, but can also explain this park’s low attendance rate.

It is pretty hard to get tickets to the Star Train, but Northern Nevada Railway holds MANY other themed train rides, as you can see on their website. If you can get tickets, I HIGHLY recommend this event. Rangers were very knowledgeable and engaging. I learned quite a bit, and really enjoyed the greek mythology they threw in there to explain the names behind the constellations we were picking out. Sign up for Northern Nevada Railway’s email alerts to be notified when tickets become available (I believe it is yearly in August???). The Northern Nevada Railway is definitely worth checking out if you have kids! They let my son crawl up into the engineer’s seat for a moment which was very fun. There is also a caboose to explore! Also, their shop cat, Dirt, is featured on several items in the gift shop offerings, which we could not resist.

The First Park

Having come to Ely to ride the Star Train, our mission was complete. This was the first vacation or trip myself, my son, or my parents had taken since the Covid-19 lockdown had begun, and being out in the world felt both strange and normal and cathartic. I’m sure you know the feeling! So, we found we had a whole day with nothing planned! My mom had a few ideas of how to fill up the time, but I pushed for us to drive out to Great Basin National Park, which was about an hour away. I was impressed with the Ranger’s knowledge and passion from the night before, and I was ready to see some more natural beauty!

Great Basin, unlike most other parks, does not charge an entrance fee because they have pretty low attendance. We started our visit at the visitor center! A lap of the gift shop gave a great preview of what could be seen and encountered at this park. After talking with the ranger on duty, we decided to go try a hike to see some bristlecone pine trees.

These trees are not very well known, and, to some, may look gnarled and ugly, but they are unusually old. Whereas Sequoia has the BIGGEST trees, Great Basin has some of the OLDEST trees by several orders of magnitude. Coastal Redwoods are 600-800 years old; large Giant Sequoias are about 2,700 years old. Bristlecone pine trees are 5,000 – 6,000 years old! They only grow at very high altitudes, and I wanted to see one! We enjoyed the scenic drive towards the trailhead on Wheeler drive and pulled over at several scenic overlooks to enjoy the view. The hike began from the trailhead at the end of Wheeler Drive; it was called the Bristlecone and Glacier Trail. Rangers advised us it was a 2 hour hike (one way) which is more than I am typically motivated to do, but we persevered until we found what we came for: The Bristlecones! The trail was steep in a few places but easy enough to follow. It was a hot summer day, and I did sweat, but the views were worth it, and the success of finding the ancient trees was also a fun reward in and of itself.

There were also some really cool rocks with a purple shimmer to them that my son really liked. I kept trying to take a picture of them, but it wasn’t coming through on the camera. It was a natural wonder we just had to fix in our memories as part of the experience. This would be a pretty challenging trail for young kids. My son, 7 at the time, managed it with minor complaining and copious amounts of trail mix. By the end of the hike, he was bounding through the forest with the confidence of a man who just summited Everest, but it did take coaxing and a bit of sugar (the M&Ms in the trail mix).

We returned to the car much more easily than the climb up with our water bottles now empty and our spirits high. We stopped back at the gift shop flushed and hot and excited about what we had seen. If that isn’t a formula for spending a pretty penny on souvenirs, I don’t know what is. The National Parks Service knows this, and they are smart in putting merchandise in nearly every visitor center. We were happy to hand over our card (well actually use the chip reader contactless payment machine because, you know… Covid) for anything with a Bristlecone pine tree on it.

I insisted on going out to the Baker Archeological site to see some ruins of an old Native American village. It was sizzling on the valley floor, and the rest of my family stayed in the air conditioned car while I walked around the footprints of a former village. I was an Anthropology minor in college. I couldn’t help myself. We stopped in Baker, NV for dinner and then made the 1 hour drive back to Ely, NV.

Garnet Rockhounding

Those cool rocks we found with the purple sheen to them turned out to be Rhyolite (we asked a ranger!). Rhyolite is an igneous rock and it is formed when lava cools very quickly. It is common throughout this area. That is when we found out about Garnet Hill!

Garnet Hill is a hidden gem (pun intended) in Ely, NV where you can go rockhounding for garnets that are trapped in the Rhyolite. It is on public land and is free to visit! On our last day as we were leaving town, we decided to try to go find this mythical place. My rock-loving son had his heart set on this activity. Garnet Hill takes a bit of skill to find, and we did almost give up on it, but we did eventually find the right dirt road and persevered long enough without many clear road signs to point us in the right direction.

We were a bit unprepared as we neglected to bring any rockhounding supplies, but we did take some promising-looking rocks home in a plastic bucket. We didn’t see any garnets just lying around on the ground, as the signs (and this website) claimed we could, but we very much enjoyed the hunt. The rocks split open under a bit of work with a conventional hammer and we did indeed have several very small garnets in the rocks we collected!

The Spark

I’m not sure if the context of this being our first trip after Covid made this trip extra special and poignant, but this trip exceeded my expectations in every way. I though we were driving to some forlorn corner of Nevada to ride an old train. No, it was so much more. The knowledge of the National Park rangers, the beauty of the skies and trees and rocks made me feel like I could actually breathe again for the first time since we had to put on our Covid masks.

Seeing my son run and jump and do normal kid things in nature made my heart so happy and made me seriously reconsider my life priorities. Or, at the very least, reconsider our recreational and vacation goals.

For me, also, laying my hands on a tree that was 5,000 years old was profound and transformative. That tree was older than Christianity! It was on earth when things like writing were being invented! It made me feel a deep sense of connection to the earth and time and history, and the close-up photo I took of the Bristlecone pine was my background on my phone for a long time because that moment was so meaningful to me.

By the time we left Ely, I was already googling the National Park System and figuring out where we could go next. I knew at the very least that my son and I needed to visit Lassen Volcanic National Park. It was about 2 hours away from our house (it was basically in our backyard!), and I already had a rudimentary camping set up.

I was shocked that there were 62 national parks (there are 63 now)! I knew about famous parks like Sequoia, Yosemite, Yellowstone, and the Everglades, but I had no idea there were so many parks. What’s more, California, our home state, is home to 9 National Parks! My planner brain went into overdrive mode, and we have since been to 19 parks total together!

Highlights and what I would do if I went back

The Star Train and the Bristlecone pine trees were the highlights for me, and Rockhounding, and seeing the Utah border was Otto’s favorite things.

If we went back to Great Basin, I would love to visit the Lehman Caves (they were closed when we went). I also would love to go back to get a picture of Otto and I in front of the entrance sign. I would love to go do more stargazing there, so maybe another trip to camp in the park is in order. If we went rockhounding, I would definitely buy some basic supplies.