18 Sep Road Trippin with Karma – NM to CA: Part II

Sunday September 4

We slept in at our campsite outside Torrey, UT until after 8a, then I climbed behind the wheel and took us north and west across the rest of Utah. The drive was beautiful as it wound through the western Utah forest and the landscape slowly changed to the salt flat deserts.

As we climbed the final pass in Western Utah, the desert temperature rose again to dangerous levels well over 100ºF. Our target was Great Basin National Park, only 10 miles across the border, but Karma the van was beginning to sputter with the high heat. We nervously, and slowly, inched over the pass, realizing that stopping anywhere in the full sun around 1pm wouldn’t be helpful in allowing the car to cool down. As we coasted down the other side, the nearest sign of life was the Border Inn and Casino, right across the Nevada State Line. Luckily it was also a bar, restaurant, gas station, rv park and hotel so we felt overjoyed that all our needs could be met at this hole-in-the-wall spot in the middle of nowhere. Karma safely made it to a shaded parking spot and we went inside to kill some time for a few hours until the sun set behind the massive mountains of Great Basin NP.

After a great reset of fried appetizers, beers, wifi, and power, we headed the remaining 20 miles of our journey up to 10,000 ft, where we’d be sleeping the night to prep for a summit hike early the next day. The Wheeler Scenic drive up the mountain was so beautiful as the sun’s final light colored the eastern valley.

We arrived safely at the trailhead around 7:30, parked with other over-nighters and late hikers, excited about the nature all around and the day to come!

Monday September 5

We set our alarms really early for the summit hike to avoid the blazing heat wave, but woke up even earlier at 5:00 am. We enjoyed having some extra time to finish prepping snacks, and we were on the trail by 6:30am.

The sunrise light was lovely on the lush forest, incredible setting just a couple miles above the Great Basin desert. We met some early morning grazing deer that followed us up the first mile or so of the trail.

We detoured off the summit trail to view the alpine lake in the 7am stillness, then quickly carried on our way up and up until we were above treeline.

 

The hike was growing hotter, but not nearly as brutal as the canyon hike we did in Utah two days earlier. We finally made it above the trees, with another 1.5 miles or so of steep, rocky hiking to go.

We made it to the summit around 10, and enjoyed an awesome lunch break above 13,000 ft!

After a solid 40 minutes on the summit, we leisurely made our way down from the mountain. We took the long way down from the mountain to visit the other lake in the park, finishing our hike around 1p, with just over 10 miles and 3,000 ft of climbing for the day.

We hung out for a few more hours at the Great Basin trailhead parking lot, cooking some yummy truffle mushroom pasta and enjoying a lazy lazy afternoon, preparing for a few hours of driving across Nevada for the night ahead.

We left the trailhead around 4:30 to begin our 214 mile drive across Nevada for the night. Highway 50 took us across more empty deserts and across several small mountain ranges and we soon easily saw why it was name the “loneliest highway in America.” The rest of the drive was uneventful and we arrived to a lonely parking spot around 9:30pm.

Tuesday September 6

The alarm was set for 4:30am. Our goal was to finish our bar-supplies shopping trip in Reno by noon, to hopefully make it out of the city before the worst of the heat. We really have enjoyed the early morning drives the best — there’s no one on the road and watching the sunrise is always a treat! We finished our time on the Loneliest Road in America and arrived in Reno before 9a. We had several stops to make and seemed to be finding more things to look for in the only city stop we had on this trip. Before we knew it we had gone to 6 different stores and were just rounding out of the city on the bypass at 1:30p. Well, the heat was terrible once again and we pulled over just outside Reno in Verdi, NV to await dusk for climbing over Donner Pass into California.

Luckily we found rest stops in the way of an awesome distillery in Verdi and dinner in Truckee CA! Before we knew it, it was 6:30 and we were heading over Donner Pass — too late & dark for photos! But we arrived safely at our friends’ house in north San Juan without issue! It was now time for wedding festivities… epic first chunk of the vacation & 1,450 miles in 5 days!