Lake Lahontan, NV
Lake Lahonton was mostly dried up when I got there, with about 50 blackened cottonwood stumps out in center where the water should have been. I was a mile or so below the Carson River damn. The pictures on the internet showed a placid lakeside with a serene fisherman, but the whole campground looked pretty dry and dusty to me. There were no hot showers like advertised.
This dried-up lake, was named after the ancient Lake Lahontan that covered most of North Western Nevada after the Ice age. I had driven 11 hours from LA on the 395 right along the snow capped Sierra Nevada’s barely stopping except for gas and coffee. I arrived at this middle of nowhere campground just as the sun was going down with just enough time to pitch my tent. I was glad that I had not stopped long in Bishop, or Owen’s Valley, or Yellowstone only because I wanted to arrive by nightfall. Now that I had arrived I was a little skeptical of my own intentions. Why did I choose the Great Basin in the first place? My friend Leslie had mentioned that it was monochromatic. I think that means flat, dry and desolate. But perhaps I would find what I was looking for here, a sense of adventure, the petroglyphs in Robert Heizer’s book. As the winds picked up I felt kind of alone and exposed. I was hoping my friend Michele would show up soon. We were planning to meet here.
It was Saturday night. I faced the tent towards the East along the edge of the dry lakebed. There were a few other campers spread out around the campground.There was a port-a-potty and a spicket that the mocking birds liked. I watched the stars come up for a while, but was too excited to eat my dinner. Then my friend John called, which confused me. I was out in the middle of nowhere, but my iPhone works? This was also somewhat comforting. We spoke for a while and then I tried to figure out my new involometer I had bought at the camera store the day before. I could not make much sense of it, gave up, and crawled into my sleeping bag-- exhausted from the long drive.
The cottonwoods rustled in the wind all night. And a pack of coyotes came through the camp, probably crossing the lakebed in the wee hours, howling and barking and making a ruckus. I was happy as a clam in my new overpriced capelene pullover with two wool blankets tossed over my sleeping bag. I think there was a meteor shower at 4:30 AM, but I was too tired to pull myself out of the tent in the dark. it was also a lot colder than I thought.
I got up just before sunrise. The weather is supposed to shift for the worse. I kept hearing in on the TV sets everywhere I stopped for gas.
I had driven through two Paiute reservations in Nevada the porevious day, maybe three. The Shoshone/Paiute Reservation outside of Bishop--a nice little hippy town right before the pass that goes through the Sierra’s. I also drove by Yosemite National Park and the Obsidian Dome. The backside of the Dome was visible from the road. It looked enticing, but I was on a mission to make it to Lahontan by nightfall. I also blew past Mono Lake, gorgeous, but windy as hell. I felt the front moving in. I followed the Walker River into Nevada on the 208. The wind quieted once in the Basin. Wow! the wind in Lee Vining! There were a lot of birds along the river and tall grasses and a few fishermen. I was glad to be in the Basin, a place I had anticipated often for the past two years-- not as grand as the Mountains, but
it had its own beauty.
10/21/12
Grimes Point, NV
The next morning I met Michele at a Ralphs in Fallon, NV. She came from Salt Lake City, the day before and rushed across Nevada in order to meet me at the campground at Lake Lahontan. The distance from Salt Lake was further than both of us thought and she had slept somewhere in her car along the Hwy 50 in the middle of the Great Basin. At Grimes we cruised past the entrance/picnic area and the designated petroglyph area and agreed to visit the petroglyphs on the way back. We drove along the road past the caves, again agreeing to visit these on our return. She wanted to look for “precious stones” that a lady at a gas station near Elko had mentioned to Michele. We pulled off the road and walked out onto the flats. Around our feet we saw millions of small smooth stones. I found a handful of smooth orange-brown and green stones. They turned out to be chert -- according the colorblind geologist I spoke to at UCLA. Michele filled her pockets like I couldn’t believe. She must had gathered a couple hundred stones by the time we finally called it quits. We poured out our pockets on the truck floor, pleased with our bounty of precious stones. I have no idea what she planned to do with them.
While we were stone hunting I noticed a caravan of trucks driving up to the cave parking lot. I watched as a group of about 20 people walked along a path. Then they disappeared into the hillside. I didn’t think much about it. Michele and I were sitting at the mouth of the first cave and taking ictures, catching up on our lives and journeys across the country. After a while I began to wonder what happened to the group of people, and suggested that we walk along the path they had taken --before they disappeared. There were beautiful views to the West, as we looked out across what once was the actual Lake Lahontan. Next to a generator there was a bench area and a small open door which Michele immediately ducked into. I was fussing with my camera equipment when she came back out. “Don’t go in there!” She said, “It stinks like stale piss”.
Inside the rather large cave was the group of archaeologists, and a site where they were digging. The cave had been a cache cave, where former inhabitants stored food and maybe used for temporary housing. I wondered if it smelled as bad 4000 years ago? The archaeologists were very nice, and had just finished a conference held in Fallon. The cave is called Hidden Cave. You can read more about the archaeology site here:
http://research.amnh.org/anthropology/research/naa/hidden_cave
I shot some video in the cave and all the archeologists left. Finally it was time to go. Michele and I we were both a little tired from our drive, the sun and our hectic morning of stone gathering, but we decided to venture up a little ways along the petroglyph trail. It was the whole reason we had come out here in the first place. While we walked along the trail we saw quite a few petroglyphs. I took photos but felt distracted and a little overwhelmed by everything, seeing my friend for the first time in years, the windfall of information that the archeologists imparted and held, and the elements. There was also a fair amount of graffiti at a place where the road ran behind the rock outcroppings. It looked like some high-school kids came out and shot cans or jerked around in their cars. The weather also started to shift. The temperature dropped 10-15 degrees and clouds started to roll in.
It was about 3pm, and it was going to take an hour to get into Reno where I had booked a hotel for the night. A hot shower and clean sheets sounded pretty nice so we hauled back to Fallon to pick up Micheles car and we caravanned into Reno.
