Great Basin National Park

A year ago, people said the 12-hour drive home from Idaho that normally takes two hours was totally worth viewing the solar eclipse. I don't agree with them--12 hours in a traffic jam will never speak to my soul--but now I get it.

In 2016, on our way home from Sequoia, Kings Canyon, and Yosemite National Parks, we passed through a little town called Baker, Nevada. There we saw a sign pointing to Great Basin National Park, just a couple miles off our Google mapped road. We were feeling adventurous, so we took the detour and discovered a little gem of a park. It was evening, so the visitor center was closed, but we grabbed a brochure, meandered through camping loops, and took in the amazing views and pine-and-sagebrush scent from the top of a very high road. We vowed to come back.

On that drive home, I read in the brochure that Great Basin has been designated as an International Dark Sky Park, and one of the best places in the USA to view the night sky. That sentence took me back 22 years to the awe I felt when I first discovered the dark night sky. I worked with 20-something 20-somethings near the Grand Canyon that summer. One moonless night, we hiked on the unpaved side of the road's barrier to strike frozen poses for any car that passed. (Ah, the brains of young adults!) When headlights weren't blinding us, we walked with our eyes to the night sky. I had never realized how many stars there were! That memory fed another from the second summer in our home. Kent was traveling, so I took a queen-size air mattress to our deck and slept with my oldest three daughters under the August night sky to witness the peak of the Perseid meteor shower. It was magical to lay there, waking through the night, cuddled with my littles and watching the stars fall.

I knew Great Basin was meant to be for our family. I found the peak of the 2017 Perseid shower and reserved two campsites (we like camping with friends) as soon as the six-month-advance reservation window opened. A few weeks later, while meditating in the light of the very early morning's full moon, I realized I couldn't see any of the few stars I can normally see from my suburban balcony. I checked the moon phase calendar and discovered that our planned star-gazing trip coincided with the late summer's full moon. I canceled that reservation and tasked myself to set a new reservation in early 2018 for this August, when the Perseids would be at their peak during the same weekend as the new moon (ie. no moon). Other campers had clued into this weekend too, evidenced by the fact that only one reservable campsite remained when I paid for it in February. Sorry, friends.

That is a long introduction to explain that this trip has been over two years in the making. It was worth the wait, but not necessarily for the reasons I thought it would be.

As summer plans started to get set on the calendar, and my kids realized they would miss out on the Glauser week of boating at East Canyon, our Great Basin trip met some resistance. My description of camping in the desert with no running water and only a pit toilet, with the possible exciting outing to a ghost town, was not an easy sell. In fact, my kids said they weren't coming. I said they didn't have a choice. Madelyn weaseled out of the trip by accepting her boyfriend's family's invitation to go SCUBA diving for nine days at the Boy Scouts' Florida Sea Base, all expenses paid. She's an adult. I can't force her to the desert when the fish are calling. And I'll admit, there aren't many vacations that would outdo her Florida experience. (Maybe I can get her to do a write-up of that trip on this blog.) I was encouraged that Kassidy and Cache's skepticism turned into mild enthusiasm when I told them about the cave tour and hiking. It's nice having a son-in-law who likes camping possibly more than we do.

Following are highlights and lowlights of our trip.

We got #4 back! She was wrapping up a couple weeks at a service ranch in central Utah, and Cachidy picked her up on the way to Great Basin. We were all amazed at how tan she had become. I guess backpacking each weekend and working and playing hard outside all day will do that for you.

Our campsite was the perfect size, near some small but beautiful cliffs and a stream. The pit toilet was the cleanest, best-smelling pit toilet I've ever experienced. (Madelyn, our connoisseur of restrooms, missed out!) On the second day, the only improvement I could wish for was for the toilet's dozen flies to shoo...and then half an hour later a ranger came and hung fly paper in the facility! The campsite's smell of sage was amazing and we were allowed to have a campfire, which is a no-no in most of the rest of the West this year. Cachidy set up their many hammocks, the kids pitched our tent, and we enjoyed some delicious grilled salmon, strawberry-rhubarb crisp (gluten-free, of course), brats, and other camp recipes. I loved that all my kids (plus one--#3 brought a friend at the last minute to substitute for Madelyn) wanted to gather in the tent at night to play games and just be together.  My usual "Never Have I Ever" had a parking ticket or moving vehicle violation citation did not win with this crowd of non-drivers. (It's true: though I like to speed a little, I've never been caught!) Instead, #4 took all but #5 down with "never have I ever had a passport".

Our star-gazing schedule was supposed to commence on the first night with a Saturday astronomy show at the visitor center. The rangers have a handful of powerful telescopes that they bring out three nights each week. After dinner, glimpsing the stars coming into the night sky, we took our camp chairs and arrived partly into the "show" which turned out to be a presentation by a professor whose grad students use the Great Basin observatory. He had a projector and screen set up to show us a graduate-level presentation of graphs and charts and lingo that was way above the understanding of the population of young children--and adults--in attendance. I thought the blue light glaring off the screen was interfering with my ability to see any stars in the sky as his presentation progressed. Not so. When he finished, the 300-person audience clapped politely, hoping for the telescopes to come out. He shared a few words with a ranger and then announced that there were too many clouds to see the stars well. He turned the knife by describing the fabulous views of Mars and the Milky Way they'd had just the night before. The audience bled away pretty quickly. We sat watching the shadowy bats zoom above us and hoping he would turn off his monitor so we might see something. Eventually, we went back to camp, and the clouds blew away 30 minutes later to reveal a lovely, starry sky. Sunday night the rangers announced a Persied-viewing party, so we went back for round two of cloud cover and no telescopes. Each night, the clouds would clear away once all were asleep and I'd see the middle-of-the-night sky through the window of my tent. But I wanted my family to experience it.

On our third and last night, most of the family said I could wake them at 3:00 a.m. for star gazing. It was gratifying that the kids anticipated the night as if it were Christmas. They woke on their own and we spilled out of the tent with our blankets and excited whispers. Even with clouds covering two-thirds of the heavenly dome above us, we saw at least a dozen shooting stars. There were three burning meteors like nothing I've seen before. Their long tails continued to burn in an arc all the way across the sky as the rocketing rock leading the arc disappeared at the mountainous horizon. That night has become a stunning new favorite memory for us.

Sunday was special there too. We got a small amount of complaining from the kids when they learned that church was still on the schedule, but a reminder that they would have WiFi at the building appeased them. Our family has never visited an LDS branch before. A branch is a small congregation with fewer leaders in its organization. We are accustomed to attending our ward, which has about 500 people in the congregation. (About 300 of those show up on Sundays.) Walking into the tiny church building across the border in Utah (one hour earlier than Nevada time meant waking up an hour earlier than anticipated), we realized that our group increased their numbers by 26% percent that day. From the time we sat down, the kids felt very conspicuous and begged in whispers to leave after the first meeting. Kent said if everyone kept their cell phones tucked away for the whole of Sacrament Meeting, they wouldn't have to go to Sunday School or the youth meeting. The pull of Wifi proved too strong for them, so we stayed for the entire block. We added four teenagers to their one, so Cache attended the youth meetings to show solidarity with #5. Kassidy and I made up one-fourth of the women's meeting. It turned out to be a sweet experience for all of us. With fewer people and opinions to hear, every meeting was shorter than the hours we are used to, and we shaved 30 minutes off church that day. The people were great too. We had only one speaker in Sacrament Meeting, visiting from a ward in Ely, Nevada. He was a great storyteller and kept us all riveted as he tied faith into his experience of being a local when Mt. St. Helens erupted. The people were interesting, coming from different backgrounds and lifestyles than we are used to. It was delightful to be welcomed into their atmosphere of love, and I found myself comforting others who shared their difficult experiences in our Relief Society (women's) meeting. One woman shared that her daughter had committed suicide a year earlier, and she felt it was an answer to her prayers that on this day she could witness me and my daughter, Kassidy, sitting together. She said it renewed her hope that through Jesus' atonement, she will be with her daughter again in the resurrection.

Cave shields

We spent much of the afternoon reading, playing, and otherwise relaxing back at our campsite, biding our time until our scheduled cave tour. Lehman Caves is one long cavern in the marble and limestone of the Snake Range. We bought tickets to the 90-minute tour, and were lucky to have a ranger who was so enchanted with the cave that he spent an extra 30 minutes with us in the hollow. This was the second cave we've visited as a family, and the sixth of my lifetime. Each cave has a different feeling, and I had the impression in this cave of being in the guts of Mother Earth. There were formations, called shields, that I've not seen in any other cave. There were rooms where settlers and early visitors held dances and other parties, leaving graffiti colored by the smoke of candles on the ceiling. We were quiet to not disturb the hundreds of bats that use the cave as a rest stop in their migration. Outside the cave, I asked our guide about something I had read in the preserved cabin near the cave entrance. It said the rancher who "discovered" the cave, Absalom Lehman, found bodies of Native Americans resting on its high stone shelves. The ranger thanked me for not asking the question earlier. He explained that we have access to the cave in agreement with local Native Americans, and part of the agreement is to not talk about things they consider to be sacred while in the cave. He said the tribes still come to the cave for ceremonies each year. The leader stands at the entrance to the cave and asks the cave's permission to enter her depths. And then they wait to enter until they feel permission is given. They have a relationship to the Earth that I don't understand very well, but I did sense a reverent connection there. It was a good Sunday.

If you take your kids places where it's cold,
they will become affectionate toward each other.

A century-old building on the ranch

Monday was a day for exploring. In the park, we hiked the Alpine Lakes Loop trail, connecting into the Bristlecone trail. Hiking above 10,000 feet, my head ached a bit, but it was wonderful to breathe the clean air. We drank from a sparkling spring coming out of the rock, which fed a tiny lake, which, of course, the boys couldn't resist swimming into. So cold! At the highest point of our hike, we wandered through a bristlecone pine grove. These are the oldest trees on the planet, and placards told us we were hugging a speciman that is 3,500 years old; it still has a good 1,500 years of life left in it! The trunk smelled, surprisingly, like honey. We all stood around with our noses in its beautiful grain. These trees were truly something to behold.

Our plan for the afternoon was to explore Ely, Nevada, about an hour from the park, and maybe find some ghost towns on the way. Having received a few separate invitations at church, we decided to stop at the branch president's ranch on the way to town. We spent a good hour there talking to him and touring the ranch with his wife and children. It rained off and on as we toured the grounds, and they told us that in the springtime, the ground is soggy with water. The desert is certainly surprising! They were kind to invite us to dinner, but we didn't feel great about doubling their meal prep and inflicting our dietary restrictions on them, so we declined and continued to town. #5 was feeling increasingly nauseated, and when we sat down at the restaurant, we could only convince him to order fries. He said salty food sounded good. He grew more and more pale and eventually left the table to go lie down at the city park where we had parked our van. Kent ate quickly and joined him, and 20 minutes later they returned. #5 felt much better after vomiting his undigested breakfast in the park's lawn. Lesson learned: eat something salty when you're trying to stay hydrated on a hike. We think he was waterlogged from drinking all day in the desert, but not stopping to eat because the glacier lakes had called to him. 

One of the things I like about Ely is its murals. There are large paintings on the sides of old buildings all over town. We posed with a couple of the murals until it became too dark for pictures, and we returned to camp.

Tuesday we broke camp. Kassidy and Cache took #3 and friend in the early departure vehicle so they could get to Cache's dad's birthday party that afternoon. The rest of us took another hour to pack the van and then make several stops along the way home. We took some time at the Topaz Museum in Delta, Utah. This museum memorializes the internment of 11,212 Americans of Japanese descent during the final three years of World War II. We walked through a restored wooden barrack with it's thin plywood walls that did not provide insulation from cold Utah winters and hot summers. We learned about the homes, businesses and other property that were lost when these people from the West Coast were rounded up and sent to 14 camps in remote areas of the United States. What I found most sadly ironic was that our government did not trust these Americans, these 110,000 potential spies, to live freely on American soil, but their young men were welcome to leave if they would fight for this same government in an all-Japanese American combat unit. I understand it was a tough time for our country and that fear of Japanese spies was real. When fear is so strong, it's hard to choose love. I've raised my children to stand up for those who are bullied and to be kind to all. It's important that they know the history of our own racist government, and see how people have handled fearful situations so we can decide how to better cope with them in our day and the future.

The rest of the drive home through the tiny towns of western Utah was charming. We enjoyed lunch and treats on the road, but as with all good trips, it was also good to be home...and to get the kids ready for school starting the next day! Thank you, Great Basin, for an enriching and rejuvenating four days for our family to be together to wrap up summer.