Great Basin National Park

Most of you are probably saying "Where the heck is that?" Don't worry it's with good reason....it IS the least visited National Park in the country. It's out in the middle of nowhere by an extremely small and weird town called Baker, Nevada. That being said you may wonder why we decided to go there. Wellllll....Our good friends Casey and Amy had been there before and said they loved it, so we thought we would give it a try. The outcome....we loved it too! It was great not to have to fight the crowds of more frequented National Parks. Great Basin NP is one of the places in the US that has the least "light pollution" meaning there are no city lights within a certain distance so that it gets very dark at night and therefore you can see all of the stars extremely well. It was awesome. My camera is not high tech enough to capture the stars so I posted a picture that I stole from the NP web site.

One of the biggest attractions at the Park is Lehman Caves. We took a hour tour of the caves and I think I took about 200 pictures. It was amazing! I have been in caves before but never any like this. Our tour guides name was Travis and I swear he was straight out of a cartoon...he totally had a lisp and he was like "Hey Kids! Welcome to Lehman Caves. I'm your tour guide..Ranger Travis! You all need to be good so you become Cave Cadets at the end of the tour!" In a weird nice way, he was a total Nazi about obeying the "cave rules" and he had no social skills whatsoever. One of the caverns in the cave was called the "Gothic Palace" and Cory asked him if Marilyn Manson lives there. He got all flustered and told Cory that "all questions should be age appropriate." Cory, Casey, and Andy kept asking him questions and he acted like everything was classified and he couldn't disclose such important information. It was entertaining. I was too busy taking pictures to ask questions. Here are a couple of my favs.

We decided to go on a hike to Lexington Arch...one of the largest limestone natural arches in in the US. Most natural arches in Utah are made of sandstone, limestone arches are rare. They believe it may have once been a part of the cave system. Enough of the geology/history lesson...lets just say it is really cool. So the hike it in a kind of remote area of the park that is not visited very much. We figured it would be a safe hike to go one because it is only 1.5 miles each way. We failed to check the rise in elevation in that 1.5 miles. It was pretty steep with a lot of switchbacks...we are all not in the best shape. This hike kicked my butt! I need to get on the stairmaster or something. Whew! But the best part of a hike is always the awesome scenery at the end, that makes it all worth it.

So we were just finished our photo shoot at the arch when we heard the rumble of thunder! A storm started coming in fast! As we hiked down the trail (much faster than we hiked up it) it began to drizzle just a bit.....then about half way down it started pouring. It's amazing how you get a second wind when you have a little motivation. We pretty much ran the rest of the way to the truck! It was such a relief when we all reached the truck. We were all loading our packs in the back when I hear Cory mutter something not so pleasant. I thought maybe he realized that we were all going to have to get in his truck with muddy shoes......but no...that was the least of his worries.....His front driver side tire was completely flat! Keep in mind that it was still pouring rain and the ground was all muddy and we are miles from civilization on an overgrown dirt road. Yeah, whoever came up with idea of keeping a spare tire in vehicles rocks! Cory, Casey, and Andy all showed off their awesome skills and had that tire changed in no time at all....Amy and I stood close by under a tree and took pictures.....I was waiting for them to yell at me to put the camera away, but they had good attitudes and we were all laughing and having fun by the time they finished.

Sometimes things that seem like they wouldn't be a pleasant experience make for the best adventures. The hike was probably my favorite part of the trip just because it was exciting!

The rain brought a few more awesome things...check out these pics of the sky on the drive back to camp.

For all of you single ladies out there....check out the pot of gold at the end of this rainbow!

The rest of the trip we pretty much just spent sitting around the camp fire while we read backpacking magazines, did crossword puzzles, whittled sticks, and made our own versions of the "burning man" and burned them. It was a very relaxing trip because we had no agenda whatsoever.

Earlier I mentioned that the little town of Baker, Nevada is a little weird....Here are some pictures we took along the side of the road with a few of the local attractions:

We were sad to leave :( because we had such a great time. I would recommend Great Basin National Park to anyone who loves the outdoors and doesn't like to fight crowds. We will definitely be going back!

THE END!