My annual time in the States drawing to a close. It was the beginning of April, I had a bit more than a month before my six months would be up and I’d have to be back in Canada. While that may seem like a ton of time for those of you used to two week vacations, I knew there would be limited time to see the sights between Las Vegas and the Canadian Border. There never is enough time to see everything – but then there is always next year to see other things.
Big tire recycled into a cow watering dish
You can do the journey north several different ways with only a few hours difference in travel between them. With this not being my usual one week rush to get across the border in time, there would be time for some explorations of areas I had not seen before. You have pretty much every climate of the west from desert to pine forests, to high alpine meadows to visit on the way north. We start with the desert.
View to Red Rock Canyon
Red Rock Canyon Viewpoint
Our first destination was well known to me: Mesquite, my usual first stop in the desert proper each year as I travel south. But first, I needed to get around Las Vegas. Carolyn was going into Vegas for business. I had no need to go in. I’d just be encountering the freeway congestion on the perpetually under construction Interstate 15. So I detoured around the city on Nevada Highway 159, which has some nice scenery passing Red Rock Canyon with a nice viewpoint to stop at.
Camp from afar
The 159 does not get you completely around Las Vegas, but it does give you access to the east side of their 215 ring road, which is a smooth drive around the NW section of the city. I was happy to leave the Vegas area getting back on Interstate 15. My destination was my new spot I had discovered in the spring, on a ridge top overlooking the Virgin River Valley. I got to watch Carolyn navigating the last bit of rough gravel road to the site. She definitely had worn shocks at the time.
Virgin Mountains after rains
During my last visit there I had explored everything to the east and south. This time, I explored to the west and north. There isn’t much out there other than the occasional cow watering trough, along with said cows. There had been a bit of winter rain, so you could find just a bit of grass growing in the shadiest moistest bits. It doesn’t seem enough for cows, but perhaps they supplement feed, like I’ve seen elsewhere in the area.
We decided to move to my old junky spot to the east, with a stop in Mesquite to check out the orange man protests. I’d never been to one before so I wanted to see what the vibe was, in a relatively safe town environment vs. a big city protest. People were friendly, there was only one orange man supporter trying to goad on protesters. The sheriffs kept a close eye on things, and even were nice enough to warn us to leave a private lot people had parked on. Of course I don’t have pictures, and I’ll be vague about what I was at. I don’t need to be hassled at the border with the current immigration paranoia.
Relaxing on the Virgin River
The old junky spot we visited isn’t that scenic with all the local junk along the road, but it has the advantage of being within hiking distance of the Virgin River. The desert was starting to heat up, so it would be nice to have a destination where we could put our feet in the water. I’ve been down that way before, but this was the first time it was warm enough to actually dip my toes in the water. Someone more hardy could have gone for a swim – it’s not that cold.
We headed north on Nevada Highway 91. You are following what would have been the old way to Salt Lake City before the Interstates were built, this having been originally Federal Highway 91. The highway curves back to St. George for a longer scenic route, although Interstate 15 through the Virgin River Gorge is pretty and impressive as an engineering feat carving an Interstate through this narrow canyon. We stopped at Gunlock State Park so I could dump and get water. Unfortunately, there would be no quick exploration of the park as they have a $25 day use fee. The park with a reservoir looked pretty, but not $25 for a half hour’s exploration pretty.
The road race goes by here according to the markers!
Our selected boondocking spot was about 20km east of Panaca, down what turned out to be a pretty busy gravel road thanks to the industrial site down the way. But we were far enough off that the road noise wasn’t too bad. What was concerning was all the markers put out in the area. It turns out that a road race comes through the area at about that time each year. From what we could see, the track passed by our camp, with the camp likely being a staging area. We couldn’t find enough info online to be sure that this wasn’t part of the track this year, so we decided leaving before the weekend of the race was the safer option.
Continuing north, it was Carolyn’s turn to dump and fill water at Cathedral Gorge Campground. There was a $10 fee station at the entrance of the park that is a good setup to pull in with bigger rigs. Nevada is not quite as spendy for a day visit fee at $10, but we had free camping in mind further north. We were now travelling north on Highway 93, a route I have traveled most of heading north-south, but not this bit, which I normally shortcut around going from Ely to the Vegas area. While the scenery wasn’t anything to write home about, it is always nice to see a new bit of countryside.
A stop for groceries was in order at Ely. There isn’t much in this eastern part of Nevada for towns of any size, so you likely are going to be visiting here for resupply on the way through the area. Fortunately, Ely is big enough that it has pretty much everything. We’d be happy for that soon enough… We had a couple of spots pinned as potential, turning east at the rest stop on the 93 and heading into the hills. We were following a good gravel road that wound its way up into the Schell Creek Mountain Range, eventually hitting a pass and descending down to our potential spot.
Camped beside the Pony Express / Lincoln Highway
It had been a steep climb and drop from the pass, requiring some down gearing on the RV. While the spot looked good, Carolyn’s RV had something you never want to see – smoke emanating from the rear of the rig. A bit of investigation found that the rear right wheel was really hot which is where the smoke was. As we had just descended a pass, brake issues were foremost on our minds as a potential culprit.
He thought the reflection in the bumper was competition
A bit more troubleshooting established that we could not detect any brake grabbing. While the ride down from the pass had been steep, it wasn’t the worst decent so smoking from riding the brakes too hard seemed off. I had been able to descend using mostly my engine brake which Carolyn was using too. My guess was a dragging brake pad that had come free in the last bit down when it heated up. Carolyn decided the rig needed to be looked at. You don’t piss around with brakes. We could head north to Wells, or backtrack to Ely. With Wells being farther and having fewer services, backtracking to Ely was deemed the safer option. In the meanwhile, we were parked on a nice spot, might as well explore for a couple of days since we had come so far in on the gravel road.
Sheep Ranching in the valley below us
Pony Express marker
We were parked right beside what had once been part of the Pony Express Trail, and later on, the Lincoln Highway, one of the first transcontinental highways in the States. To think, the gravel road we had wound up and down over had once hosted Model Ts and the early campers of the day, towing teardrop trailers with sub-hundred horsepower cars with way less braking power than we had. Our problems were minor compared to theirs in the day. They had no internet, cell phones or even towns within an hour drive. You either had the parts to fix it yourself on the side of the dusty road, or you hoped someone would be by that day to take you to the next town hours away at times.
There is a little bit of civilization scattered about the area, mostly ranching and a bit of agriculture. On the way in, we had passed Schellbourne, a former small town that had been a stop on the trail. Now, what remained was a ranch on west side of the mountain range. On the east side of the mountains was a north – south running valley with another ranch in it with cattle, sheep and horses. You’d have a good half hour driving just to get to your neighbor on the other side of the mountains here, so being independent is definitely a strength out here.
We were a fair ways from the nearest town, so it’s not like ATVs ride out all over the place here for a day ride from town. You have more travel from farmers checking their livestock along the roads here. I often was the first track down the road since the snow had melted that spring. The melting snow meant that there were actually streams in the area, although a lot of them disappear into the ground as they reach the valley below. It made for some pretty riding with the motorcycle and hiking for the more challenging roads.
See the dozer below?
Surprisingly, there was heavy equipment working below our camp about half a mile down the road. A bulldozer was moving dirt around. I could see on the googles aerials that a little camp was nearby. Perhaps they were preparing a site for a cabin out there, with a little garden plot added in. The dozer was moving a lot of dirt around. I’ll never know – I wasn’t going to go ask what they were up to.
We had a couple of nice days out at that site, but it really was time to get back to Ely and deal with Carolyn’s rear end wheel on her RV. I’m sure it was a more stressful two days for her, with that trip back over the pass always on her mind. Tune in next time as we cross the pass see what might need fixing in Ely.
End of 2025 real time update!
But wait, there’s a real time update! Yeah, I’m still eight months behind realtime. But I’m only 6.5 months behind if you count what I’m working on now. Yes, I have a queue, which has been helping me keep this up as a weekly update even if I have a week I don’t get a blog done. I seem to be writing 2 weeks for every week that passes in real time so I’m catching up, slowly. As I get to summer 2025, I’ll catch up quickly as there is my time visiting the Calgary area where there isn’t much going on I’m going to blog about. If I get a bigger queue going, I may even post twice a week to catch up quicker. My goal is to be a week or two behind, not six months!
As of the end of the year, I’m camped SW of Phoenix, in an area I’ve not been before. I spent the fall coming south over familiar routes, camping in familiar spots. That should mean less photos to process and less things to talk about, so I’ll catch up quicker there. But I still have to get through the rest of my journey north, and I do have some stuff from late summer where I found camping on Kinbasket Lake, as a little spoiler preview. Here’s hoping the new year is better than the last one!
-Ralph-
