Circle the Bay: Day 2: Great Basin

Day 2: Great Basin
Sept. 12 2017

(Circle the Bay Part Two)

398 miles in 9 hours

(Total 639 miles in 18 hours)

I drove from Emerald Bay on Lake Tahoe in California to the Thomas Canyon National Forest campground near Elko Nevada.

West Side of Lake Tahoe

Boat Crossing The Road On A Lift

Album of The Day -- Another Green World by Brian Eno

This album by Brian Eno has been in my head for years, and I realize other than St. Elmo's Fire the songs aren't that catchy. It's more than atmospherics that appeal to me, or I should say aquascape, because every song evokes an underwater feel, or a planet with different water breathing lifeforms. Another Aquamarine World would be an alternate title. Seems this album was a step toward the ambient music Eno got into next.

The album that almost took Album of the Day was An Awesome Wave by alt-J. It's a blend of soulful music, everything tasty. I had no idea who they were, but I let it play, and I'm glad.

Reno

In Reno I made a stop at REI, for another water bottle for crossing the desert, and to replace my trust old white-gas burning camp stove that sprung a leak and flamed out while cooking bacon this morning. To avoid burning down the forest I used a pliers to grab the fire-throwing contraption and put it in the fire ring. Good bye Naked Svea (the camp stove's name).

Naked Svea Flameout

Reno is Northern California's version of Vegas. I haven't driven through here in 30 years, and free-standing hotels have sprung up out by the airport and the freeway, giving it that same feel as Vegas, where the Strip grew up away from downtown.

Rest Stop Signage

Elko

Right before Elko is the California Trail Interpretive Center, which was closed by the time I got there. Even before that my eyes had been looking at the vast openness of Nevada with more appreciation than the last trip thru. What I see now is vast empty lake beds, bodies of water that eventually drained once they overflowed enough to erode river canyons. Which made for fairly good travel from Utah to California, except for the parts where there was no water left in those rivers.

With that in mind, I now have more appreciation for man-made reservoirs in this region. It's not really man-made, it's man-restored. Now if we could only restore some dinosaurs to swim around in them.