8/31 - Sparks to Elko, Nevada

We had a good, although monotonous, 300 mile drive from Sparks to a few miles east of Elko.  I-80 runs from east to west across the Great Basin which covers most of Nevada. The only way to describe this state is desolate.  It's no wonder there are only two cities of any size (Las Vegas and Reno).  

The view from I-80 going east out of Sparks this morning shows a view of the surrounding mountains which is typical of the Reno area. Few buildings on the slopes but the valleys between the mountains appear to be packed with people.

Somewhere along the route we passed these salt flats which came right up to the roadside. From a distance they look like water. The pioneers crossing this seemingly endless basin and range region must have been devastated when they found out they weren't.

Lack of water was the downfall of many a pioneer. There's very little to be found here. One of the major pioneer trails followed the Humboldt River which runs along I-80.  The river is pitiful in the summer. Not much water in it and, what little there is, is hardly drinkable. There was also no forage for the pioneers' animals so many of them died of thirst and starvation. It's truly a wonder anyone made it across this region.

For those not familiar with the geological term "basin and range," it describes the topography of 95% of Nevada which consists of vast numbers of mountain ranges and valleys (basins).  They are caused by the stretching of the underlying continental tectonic plate which breaks into blocks along fault lines. Some blocks drop to form basins while others are uplifted to form ranges. The pioneers must have thought they would never come to the end of the mountains.

The Great Basin is not a single basin but is made up of all these smaller basins and ranges. What makes it a basin is that there is no outlet to get water to the Pacific or Gulf of Mexico. The water either evaporates or sinks into the ground or flows into lakes like the Great Salt Lake, the Salton Sea and the Humboldt Sink.  

One of the many ranges along I-80, this one being rockier and more interesting than most. 

This is typical of the scenery along I-80, although there's been only one area of salt flats so far.  (That's the white on either side of the road near the tractor-trailer.)  This was also typical of the traffic today.

Road engineers managed to get I-80 around most of the ranges, and occasionally over a few.  This mountain required tunnels....two for I-80 eastbound and westbound and two for the railroad lines.

We've had quite a change in accommodations between this morning and tonight.

First, the pristine, ritzy, semi-crowded resort in Sparks with its pavement and astro-turf......

And now the spacious, lower-end park within a hundred yards of I-80 which is great for an overnight. We can't hear the interstate and so far haven't heard a train (the tracks are a half mile away). The gravel keeps the dust at bay and there's even real grass between the sites, the first we've seen in a while. (It's green only because it's being watered.) We've stayed in a great variety of places. In spite of checking reviews and pictures, you never really know what you're going to get.

Tomorrow it's back to I-80 and another 250 miles to Hill AFB north of Salt Lake City. We'll lose an hour going into Mountain Time, so will try to get an earlier start so we can beat the rush hour traffic between SLC and the base. 

8/30 - National Automobile Museum in Reno

We made it to the National Automobile Museum today as planned. The traffic here is really wild.....very fast with vehicles darting in and out like mad hornets. We're glad we're leaving tomorrow and to be heading away from the city instead of through it.

The museum is listed as one of the five best automobile museums in the country. It certainly appeared to be deserving of the name. It consists of roughly 175 vehicles from the personal collection of Bill Harrah, founder of the Harrah's Hotel and Casino organization. His collection was up to 1400 vehicles when he died in 1978. It's strange that as such an avid collector and restorer of vehicles, not to mention being a very astute businessman, he made no arrangements for what would happen to his collection upon his death. Holiday Inn acquired Harrah's (the business) which included his car collection. They donated most of the 175 to the museum and sold the rest.

Harrah focused his collecting mainly on vehicles that were best-of-a-kind or one-of-a-kind, including some which were famous for one reason or another. This is the 1949 Mercury driven by James Dean in "Rebel Without a Cause." 

1910 Oldsmobile Limited Touring, 7 passenger. This was a huge vehicle then and still is today. The wheel height is 42 inches which required a double-step running board for passengers to get in. The wheel base is 130", about the same as a new Chevrolet regular cab long bed pick-up. Its cruising speed was 60 to 70 mph. That doesn't sound very appealing knowing the condition the roads were probably in back then.

1913 Stutz Bearcat, the best known American sports car (pre-Corvette). A bright red Stutz Bearcat was F. Scott Fitzgerald's dream car. Images of flappers and Prohibition.

This is a really strange one....a 1938 Phantom Corsair. It was designed and built by Rust Heinz, a member of the Heinz 57 family. With a top speed of 115, it was way ahead of its time with numerous features and accessories which weren't put on cars until decades later. It was featured in the 1938 movie, "The Young in Heart," as the Flying Wombat. 

Another very unusual car, a 1921 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost assembled with full sheets of solid copper. The beautiful wood trim is made from makash ebony. Historical records show the coachbuilder had to buy an entire tree to obtain this rare wood. 

Long before RVs came along, this 1921 Ford Model T Kampkar was available. The body was an accessory that could be attached in a few hours. It could carry 6 passengers and sleep 4 (the other two had to fend for themselves). It had a table, 2-burner stove, 8-gallon water supply, food lockers and storage for blankets, clothing, cooking and eating utensils. What more could one want?

Last but not least, the 1907 Thomas Flyer that won the 22,000 mile 1908 New York to Paris race. The race started in New York City on February 12th, going from there to San Francisco in the winter which had never been done before. The next leg was driving across Japan where cars had never before been seen, then across Siberia, Manchuria, Russia and Germany with the Thomas Flyer arriving in Paris 169 grueling days later on July 30th. The impact of the race did wonders for the fledgling auto industry, not only increasing the prestige of American-made cars, but showing that they could be a year-round mode of transportation and an efficient and reliable means of long-distance travel.

One of the things Bill Harrah was most intent on was restoring vehicles to their original condition. When he got this car it was in terrible shape. His shop restored it to the condition it was in when it won the race, not to how it would have looked when it was new. 

We thoroughly enjoyed the museum. Had it almost all to ourselves, too. 

Tomorrow we head east 310 miles to Elko, Nevada, for a one-night stop on the way to Salt Lake City.

8/27-8/29 Lassen Volcanic National Park and Sparks, NV

This is a long post to cover Saturday, Sunday and today. 

On both Saturday and Sunday we woke up to temperatures around 40 degrees. A bit chilly with the heat not on because it was too hot the night before to turn off the AC. Both days got into the upper 80's at the campground (60's in the upper parts of the park) but were very pleasant in the shade. 

Saturday we did the drive through the national park (66 miles round trip), stopping at all the overlooks and points of interest.  Sunday we went back to hike the Bumpass Hell trail, a 3-mile 3-hour hike.  When we got back to the RV I discovered our hotspot was working for the first time since we got here, so I got Friday's post uploaded. Before I could get this post written the hotspot went out again so here it is now.

First, here's a much better picture of Lassen Peak than what I posted earlier.  This is the side that blew out the pyroclastic flow, avalanches and mud flows that did so much damage for twelve miles downstream in the 1915 eruptions.

The other side of Lassen Peak where the trail to the summit starts. The trail is 2.5 miles one way with 1,200 feet elevation gain. Not something we can do, but it's great to look at it from the trailhead and use binoculars to see all those hikers marching up it like ants in the sun.

Jim is standing on a patch of snow next to the parking area. Above the 8,500-foot level the mountain gets around 80 feet of snow per year and has 14 permanent snowfields that haven't become glaciers. The top section of the road going across the park sometimes doesn't open until as late as mid-August because of the snow.  

Snow-removal equipment has GPS with the edges of the road programmed in so the drivers will know where they are. They have to use bulldozers to push the snow off to the side before they can use blowers to get it out and over the drop-off.

Lake Helen, a beautiful blue glacial lake just below Lassen Peak (on the right). 

View to the south from high up on Lassen Peak. Except for the evergreens it looks a lot like home.

Jim at the "Hot Rock," a 300-ton boulder thrown out four miles by the volcano in its big eruption of 1915. It was still sizzling four days after the eruption, thus the name. There are countless boulders of all sizes all over the place.

One of many hillsides covered in smaller boulders. This shows 100 years of effort by the trees to re-establish themselves.

Brokeoff Mountain, Mt Diller and Pilot Pinnacle mark part of the rim of the massive Mt Tehama volcano which collapsed 10,000 years ago, prior to the formation of Lassen Peak. It originally stretched eleven miles across the area that is now its caldera and through which we hiked to Bumpass Hell.  It was 1,000 feet higher than Lassen Peak and then, poof, it was gone. It probably took a bit longer than "poof."  Volcanoes usually self-destruct by erupting; this one and Mount Mazama (Crater Lake) went the other way and collapsed.

Glaciers covered this area at one point, dropping huge boulders in their path. These glacial erratics are a different mineral composition from the surrounding boulders.  We watched a teenager get stuck on top of this rock. He and his buddy were up there having their picture taken but he got too scared to slide off the rock which is at least twelve feet high. He finally did make it down with help and a lot of coaxing from several friends. Heights are always higher when looking down.

On our hike to Bumpass Hell on Sunday we saw many interesting trees. It's amazing how they manage to grow to such a large size out of rock crevices.  This one had to be cut to make way for the trail but it's still growing out to the side.

Other plants are also amazing in their ability to grow under adverse conditions. There are fields of lupines all over the place. This bunch, like many others, was growing out from under the rocks, covered in dust. There's been no moisture here in several months, at least not since the snow melted, but they still manage to stay alive. 


Bumpass Hell is named for Kendall Bumpass, the man who, while guiding a group in 1865, fell through the thin crust over boiling minerals and lost his leg because of the burns he suffered. It's an area of fumaroles (steam vents), mud pots and boiling ponds which is being fed by the same system that built Mt Tehama, the Brokeoff volcano.

Bumpass Hell with its walkways. It wouldn't be possible to walk around this area without the walkways built by the park service. There are signs everywhere warning people to stay on the walkways and trails, but every year people are injured because they ignore the warnings. After learning about what happened to Kendall Bumpass, it's amazing people still do it.

Big Boiler, the hottest fumarole - within a non-erupting volcano - in the world.  The temperature of the steam is 344 degrees.  This isn't much compared to lava at 2,000 degrees, but for steam it's extreme.  The heat and constant churning action are constantly increasing Big Boiler's size.  A few years ago it engulfed a portion of the boardwalk which extended out from the present one. There's a very strong smell of sulphur throughout the area, of course, with all this sulphur-emitting activity. (It made me glad my sense of smell is nearly gone because I wasn't bothered by it at all.)

Part of the huge forest fire area that was burned in 2012. Four years and the dead trees still have branches on them. It takes a long time for an area like this to recover.


Lassen Volcanic is an interesting place. We enjoyed it and are glad we've seen it.  What we didn't enjoy was the very fine, powdery, dirt that covered the park, the campground, and everything in between. It gets into everything. We were covered in grit and dust and, even after a shower, still felt dusty.  At our campground we very much enjoyed the quiet and our view of woods instead of RVs a few feet away, but we, and especially our noses and sinuses, are happy to get away from the dust.


Sixty miles into our drive from Old Station to Sparks, Nevada, we passed through Susanville, the county seat and largest town in Lassen County at around 17,000 in population. It is worth mentioning because it was the subject of the 2007 PBS documentary Prison Town. There are three major prisons in the area where 11,000 people are incarcerated. Nearly half the adult population of Susanville works in the prison system. 

Prison Town, USA (Susanville, CA)

The drive took us from the high desert pine forests (with the first clouds we've seen in ages) down to real desert.

The very desert-looking landscape near the Nevada-California border.

We're now in Sparks, Nevada, with mid-90's heat. Sparks adjoins Reno and is a high-density, high-traffic area. It's an unpleasant shock to be back in so much congestion. The traffic is really unnerving.


We've also gone from one extreme to another in campgrounds.....the last one in pine forests with lots of shade and no close neighbors (and, of course, all that dust), no wifi or phone and erratic power, to a concrete/asphalt/astro-turf city resort-style place in extreme heat. Dogs aren't allowed to use the astro-turf so Lovie has to walk 18 sites down a hot asphalt road to the pet area. It's very rare to find a campground that doesn't have something undesirable, so as we approach each new place we hope the "something undesirable" isn't too bad. At least we're here for only two nights.


Tomorrow we plan to see the National Automobile Museum. It needs to be a minimal-driving day with two long drives ahead of us to get to Salt Lake City by Thursday.

8/26 - Klamath Falls to Old Station, California

The closer we got to Old Station (population 51) on Friday, the less cell and data service we had…..until there was none at all.  I knew there would be no cell service at the campground but hoped we'd be able to get our Verizon hotspot to work. No such luck. We thought we’d at least be able to get a signal at the park’s visitor center but no luck there either. The campground supposedly has satellite wifi and TV but it’s the worst we’ve ever seen (as in non-existent).  

Our hotspot suddenly came on this afternoon (Sunday) so I’m putting up Friday’s blog while it's working. 

Except for eleven miles on I-5, the rest of our 170-mile drive Friday was on very good secondary roads with very little traffic.  It was picturesque and enjoyable.

Leaving Klamath Falls we crossed the Klamath River which gets its water from the Upper Klamath Lake we saw Thursday.

Before long Mount Shasta jumped up out of nowhere.  It’s so big it's surprising when it suddenly appears from behind other mountains.

As we got around to the west side it became much clearer and the cinder cone to the side of the main peak was much more prominent.  Shasta is 14,127 ft high, second only to Mt Rainier in Washington.  Shasta and Lassen are considered the two Cascade volcanoes most likely to erupt in the coming decades or centuries.  Volcanoes don’t erupt on schedule so no one has any idea when it will happen but all the Cascade volcanoes are constantly monitored for signs of activity.

We passed many miles of burned forest going south from I-5 on Hwy 89.  In places the fire had come within a few feet of homes and even the volunteer fire department.  Actually, the fire department building looked quite new so it might have been replaced after the fire.  We found out later from a park ranger that there was a very large fire in 2012 in the national park and that what we passed was likely part of the same fire. 

After set-up and lunch we went to the park’s visitor center which is ten miles further south.  On our way Lassen Peak suddenly appeared the way Shasta had done.  

Lassen is 10,457 feet, the largest plug dome volcano in the world.  It last erupted in the 1914-1921 period with a particularly large and violent eruption in 1915. This eruption is what caused the creation of Lassen Volcanic National Park which was done so that the area around the volcano would be left undisturbed for observation and research.

Tomorrow (Saturday) we’ll do the 33-mile main road through the park.  It’s a large park with one main road and three smaller non-connecting roads.  Most people, like us, probably do only the main road because the drive around the outside of the park to get to the other roads is so far.

8/25 - Crater Lake National Park

What a beautiful day to see Crater Lake....not a cloud in the sky and a very comfortable temperature. The 60-mile drive to the park was through ranch land with scattered herds of cattle and no traffic.  

We passed the south end of Upper Klamath Lake yesterday. Today we drove along most of the east side of its 25-mile shore. It looked like it should have lots of fish but there wasn't a single boat in sight either on our way up or back.

Mount Mazama holding Crater Lake.

Mount Mazama had been an active volcano for 400,000 years and was 12,000 feet high when it blew its top 7,700 years ago. It kept erupting for several hundred years more, but when the magma chamber underneath emptied itself the weight on top was too much and it collapsed into a caldera. 

Further activity eventually sealed the bottom of the caldera and it started filling with rainwater and snowmelt. It became the deepest lake in the U.S. at 1,943 feet. Average snow at the crater is 44 feet per year so it has plenty of water to replenish what it loses by evaporation. 

The scene most often shown of Crater Lake is with Wizard Island, a cinder cone which built up from the bottom of the caldera. The blue of the water is just as intense as the pictures of it, but pictures can't convey the size of the lake. It is really massive.

The wind was howling on the west side of the rim where this picture was taken. We were thinking we'd made a serious mistake by not bringing heavier coats, but when we got to the east side we found no wind over there. There's an amazing difference between one side and the other.

This is the south side of the tree. You just can't trust moss to point to north here. It grows all around the trees. It's more yellow-green than other moss so it's obviously not directional moss.  :-D

Two of the Cascades' lesser volcanoes to the south of Crater Lake....Mount McLoughlin on the left (9,495 ft) and Union Peak on the right (7,709 ft). Mount Shasta is also visible from the rim drive but there was too much smoke in the air today to get a picture worth posting.

Llao Rock, one of the three points on the rim over 8,900 feet. It formed when lava filled an explosion crater on the north slope of the mountain. As Mazama collapsed,

the lava block cracked and fell into the caldera leaving this portion perched on the rim.

A sizable section of the West Rim Drive is being rebuilt so the road has to be shared by visitors, dump trucks, asphalt recyclers and paving machines. There are many places where the road drops off for hundreds of feet with no barriers. We no longer have a clean truck, but Jim knew it wouldn't last long when he washed it yesterday.

Looking to the northeast and Sharp Peak, not a very original name. On the lake out of sight to the right is the dock area for the park service's tour boats. The 2.2 mile round trip hike down and back up to the rim road is really strenuous so we didn't plan on doing it. There's no place around the lake where the road gets anywhere close to the water.

Here's another much photographed part of the lake.....the Phantom Ship. It looks tiny from the rim but is actually the height of a 17-story building.

We took the 6-mile side road over to see the Pinnacles, fossil fumaroles from Mazama's eruptions. 

When a pyroclastic flow buried this river bed the resulting steam escaped through vents. The minerals and extreme heat of the steam welded the ash and pumice into these shapes which are gradually being revealed through erosion of the softer rock around them.

It's hard to imagine that Crater Lake is just six miles from this very different landscape. 

From the Pinnacles to the end of the rim road there's only one place to see the lake and it required a hike we didn't have time to take. We did stop at the one waterfall on the rim, Vidae Falls. It drains a very small area near the rim but is also fed by a small but consistent spring so it always puts on a good show.

Tomorrow we're going 165 miles south to Lassen Volcanic National Park. We're staying in a tiny town near the park which has no cell service and minimal wifi. From what I've read on the park service site, no commercial campground in the park's vicinity has cell service so the area is really remote. If I can't find a way to upload I'll catch up with posting when we get to Reno on Monday.