Leaving Las Vegas

Our time here at the Desert National Wildlife Refuge is coming to an end.  As always, we’re glad we had the opportunity to work here, but also happy to move on.  After all, we’ve sampled just about every restaurant within an hour’s drive!  This has been a truly memorable experience; the vast refuge (1.5+ million acres), beautiful visitor center, and welcoming staff and volunteers provided memories that we’ll never forget. 

It seems that every place we visit experiences their worst weather in ten years.  Here we may have exceeded even that record.  This morning we awoke to the second snowfall in the last two weeks.  Although it’s been just a few inches, the snow has paralyzed the city and closed the airport for a time.  While they only recorded a trace, they have zero snow removal equipment and so 55 flights were cancelled.  Tonight’s local TV news reported 56 automobile crashes today.  Folks here need to spend a few weeks in Grand Forks or Minot to get acclimated!

Places that have never been snow covered now resemble the Rockies.  Here at the refuge the view of Gass Peak, right on the edge of Las Vegas, is remarkable:

If we have one regret it’s that we didn’t have more time to explore the back roads extending through the refuge.  The government shutdown kept us from checking out a refuge truck with 4-wheel drive, a vehicle needed on the remote roads.  As we tell people at the visitor center who are interested in hiking into the mountains and camping, “there is no cell service, the back country is not patrolled, and you should bring supplies for extra days if the weather turns”.  But surprisingly, for most people this is an attraction.

This area is home to many fossil beds, one of which is right alongside one of the refuge roads.  Here the rock is studded with hundreds of prehistoric marine mollusks (ammonites): 

Looking across the Yucca Forest, you can see what looks like the head of a crocodile:

One of our most common birds inhabiting the riparian area behind the visitor center is the Phainopepla; a pretty bird that I’ve come to think of as the “Mistletoe Marauder”. 

The Phainopepla feed primarily on the berries found on the Desert Mistletoe.  The seeds don’t get digested and pass through the bird, which seems to enjoy pooping on branches.  The undigested seed is sticky, forms roots, and grows into the tree, usually the Honey Mesquite, our most common tree.  This parasitic bush is found everywhere among the refuge Mesquite trees, in some cases it is difficult to tell what type of tree it is covering. 

Our time here has been everything that we look for in a volunteer position – new places to explore, new things to learn, and new friends to keep in touch with.  And with the Spring Mountains covered in snow, who could ask for a better backyard view?

We’ll be traveling back to the Oregon Coast for a a month or so and are looking forward to seeing friends and visiting some of our favorite places, so check back for updates!

New Year, New Adventure

Happy New Year to everyone from the Desert National Wildlife Refuge, our home for the past month.  We’ll be here until the end of February and are enjoying this, our sixth US Fish & Wildlife Service volunteer location.  The refuge is surprisingly the largest in the lower 48, yet just a few miles outside the growing (now 3 million) city of Las Vegas.  It became a refuge in 1936 with the mission to shelter and protect Desert Bighorn Sheep which number between 600-800.  And it’s not just desert – the Sheep Range which runs north-south has peaks over 9000’ with areas of Bristlecone, Ponderosa, and White Pine.  At the lower elevations, the country’s 2nd largest Yucca forest (after Mojave) can be seen, and there are fossil beds, deep canyons, and remnants of the pioneer past.  And all of it is open to the public for sightseeing, hiking, and camping…and it’s free!
We’re the visitor center hosts, augmenting the many local residents that volunteer here.  The folks here are what we’ve come to expect at F&W locations – friendly, welcoming, and appreciative of our efforts.  We have a great site with full hookups and a view of the Spring Mountains in the distance.  Although it’s quiet and dark at night, we’re only 15 miles from the outskirts of town and great shopping. 
The visitor center is beautiful; only four years old and well designed with great interpretive displays, interactive children’s activities, and a theater.  Behind the center are well maintained trails that wander through the spring-fed Cottonwood, Desert Willow and Mesquite trees.  This is a birder’s paradise due to the riparian environment – various sparrows, Northern Shrike, Phainopepla, Bluebirds, and others are seen daily.  We maintain a bird feeder on one of the trail’s curves, and on most days you can find this Cooper’s Hawk in a nearby tree, waiting for the sparrows to grab a meal before he swoops down to get his.  The trail also passes a cabin, built by the original ranchers son, constructed of railroad ties left by a bankrupt railroad.  A bit further is the “refugium”, a large aquarium that houses a number of the very few surviving Pahrump Poolfish.  Even now, with the trees mostly bare, the scenery is well worth a walk along the trail. 


I had the chance to accompany a couple of the maintenance volunteers on a trip into the back country on one of the two roads (I use the term loosely) that traverses the refuge.  Leaving the visitor center, the road slowly climbed into the mountain valley and gave us a great view of the mountains to the South.
The very rough gravel and dirt road wound through the Yucca Forest and into Peek-a-boo Canyon, named for a hole in the canyon wall.

After 21 miles we arrived at Desert Pass campground, the only campground on the refuge with six sites and two pit toilets.  At 6600’, there was snow on the ground and a definite chill in the air.  It’s a pretty place, with Ponderosa and Pinion pine providing shade.  After disinfecting the toilets and emptying the fire pits, we were on our way, another 25 or so miles to the eastern edge of the refuge and paved highway. 
One of the reasons we chose to stay here was that our daughter and her husband, who live in the L.A. area, could visit.  We were fortunate to spend most of the Christmas holiday with them and about a million other visitors.  We made a Christmas Eve visit to the heart of the strip to see the decorations at the Bellagio Conservatory.  It was pandemonium – literally thousands of people crammed together, most with phones held high to take pictures or fixated on texting others about the great time they were having as they stumbled into one another.  After the chaos we slowly made our way through the crowds to Caesar’s Palace and Joe’s Prime Steak, Seafood, and Stone Crab restaurant where we watched Kim’s husband Bill devour a 22-ounce Lobster tail while we worked our way through scallops, shrimp, and much smaller lobster tails.  While we’ll never visit the “strip” again on Christmas, we’re glad we did it once.
So that’s it for now.  Brenda and I want to wish you all the happiest, healthiest, and most rewarding New Year possible!  And if your travel plans include Las Vegas over the next two months, let us know, we’d love to get together!

You Can’t Buy Eggs at the Chicken Ranch

We’re finishing up a month’s stay in Pahrump, Nevada, about 50 miles west of Las Vegas.  It’s a fast-growing town of over 35,000 with casinos, a Wal-Mart, and even a Home Depot, but its roots are in the history of its ranches - the Chicken Ranch, Sheri’s Ranch, and the Cherry Ranch.  Pahrump is in Nye County where prostitution is legal, but the majority of visitors to the “ranches” are Las Vegas tourists (there’s a free limo service).  These are not tawdry, back-alley businesses; they’re out in the open, advertise with billboards throughout town, and even have their own web sites where you can peruse the…ah….merchandise.  They have a helpful “Frequently Asked Questions” section (Do you have midgets?  Not at this time.  Yikes!)  The Chicken Ranch even invites tourists to take a tour, meet the “staff”, and shop for souvenirs.  Although we didn’t take the tour, we drove past the ranches to see what they looked like.  Surprisingly, they look like a combination upscale sports bar/motel, everything clean and spiffy!  The Chicken Ranch even had a banner proclaiming “Voted #1 Nevada Brothel of the Year”.  I’m going to assume the voting was by secret ballot.

Back to the normal……we never pass up a chance to visit a National Wildlife Refuge, and so off we went through the desert to Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge.  It’s an amazing place – after driving through what looks like the surface of the moon for an hour, you suddenly come upon an area of trees, 


marsh, and incredibly clear ponds.  This is a place where a large underground aquifer fuels a number of springs that make this the largest oasis in the Mojave Desert.  

Endangered Desert Pupfish inhabit a pond called Devil’s Hole, a water-filled cavern over 500 feet deep (the bottom has never been reached).  Our first stop was the visitor center, an impressive facility with interesting and informative exhibits and staffed by (what else?) friendly volunteers.  From there we headed out on the refuge roads with our first stop at Longstreet Spring and Cabin.  Built in 1895 by rancher and miner Jack Longstreet, the restored cabin is next to a vibrant spring.  How anyone managed to trek across the barren wasteland of the valley to find this place is a miracle – and why they would
 live here is beyond comprehension.  But they did, and in the 60s and 70s much of the area was used for farming which almost destroyed the original springs.  Fortunately, US Fish 
& Wildlife Service was able to acquire the land and restore it to a more natural state.  Today there are literally miles of boardwalk that protect the fragile desert and that take you to springs, caverns, and marshlands.  The amount of work that went into completing the facilities on this refuge is staggering – one of the best we’ve seen.
Being this close to Death Valley, we decided to take a day trip via a different route than we’ve traveled before.  We have to say up front that we’re not particularly enamored with the area.  While some areas are visually interesting, it’s a long dusty drive through desolate desert to get to someplace interesting.  And after a while we get overwhelmingly bored by the different shades of tan, brown, and beige.  We came into the park from the east, through Shoshone, traveled over Jubilee Pass, then followed the road north through the Armargosa Valley to Badwater Basin.   Here, you can park and walk a mile in searing heat and sun through salt-encrusted desert to have a picture taken at the lowest point in the U.S. – 282’ below sea level.  What fun!  Even on this mid-April day with temperatures in the mid 90s, the parking lot was full and the trail was crowded with people.  We decided that photoshopping ourselves into the sea level sign was less painful. 

We detoured on the Artist’s Drive, a meandering road into the foothills that had some colorful and interesting rock formations. Then it was back to the main road for a quick stop for a snack at Furnace Creek before heading for the Dante’s View, and overlook over a mile above the valley.  On the way to the viewpoint, we passed a large mine and in the distance could see a number of large buildings.  Curious, I did some online research and found that it was the Ryan Mine, a long-closed mine with a fascinating history.  You can read its story here and here.  The 14-mile road into the mountains ends at the parking lot for Dante’s View, a beautiful overlook of the valley.  We were right above the Badwater Basin parking lot and could clearly see the line of people stretching into the distance.  It was late afternoon and and the sky was hazy, but even looking into the sun the view was majestic.  But the sun was setting and it was a long trip back to the park, so we called it a day.  Everyone should visit Death Valley, but be aware that it’s a long drive from anywhere, it will be hot even in early spring, and there will be crowds no matter what time of year.  For us, this was the final visit.
We’re headed back to Oregon for a summer of volunteering for US Fish & Wildlife, so stop back and visit!

Nevada Backroads Part 2–Pioche & Cathedral Rocks

Twenty-five miles north of Caliente is the former mining town of Pioche (Pee-oach).  Once a boom town of over ten thousand people and 72 saloons, it’s now a quiet little village of just over one thousand.  The history of Pioche is fascinating; it’s said that 72 people were murdered before the first natural death occurred, and in the years 1870-71, Pioche accounted for 60 percent of all the killings in Nevada.  Tombstone was more like Mayberry R.F.D. compared to this place!  Our first stop was “Boot Hill” an area next to the current cemetery.  Here, grave markers, with a boot on each one, are lined up with a brief explanation of the person’s fate. 
Above Boot Hill is an impressive reminder of the mining days, the cables and cars of the aerial tramway that transported the ore from above the town to the mill, across the highway and about one and a half miles away. The tram operated on gravity – the weight of the fully loaded cars going downhill brought the empty cars back up. Looking up above the town, you can still see the tailings from the mines, and with just a short drive, we were at the top next to the tramway loading area. Far in the distance, we could make out the smoke stack of the mill. Although a hundred hears old, the cable, cars, and towers look like they could be put back in service today.
There are a number of original buildings that still stand today; the opera house, the bank now open as a bar, and the Mountain View Hotel, built in 1895.  Next to the hotel is the “Million Dollar Courthouse”.   In 1871, the county contracted to build the courthouse at a cost of $26,400. In order to raise the needed money, $25,000 worth of bonds were sold at a discounted rate of $20,000. By the time it was completed a year later, costs had escalated to more than $88,000 because of alterations, cost overruns, mismanagement and kickbacks. To finance payment, of the courthouse, the Board of Commissioners issued certificates of indebtedness at a high rate of interest, and by the 1880’s the debt had risen to $181,000. By the end of the century it exceeded more than $670,000. The final payment was made in 1937; four years after the building had been condemned. The total cost of the Lincoln County Courthouse was nearly $1,000,000.  An interesting story and an equally interesting town – much more authentic than  Tombstone and its Disneyland appearance!
A few miles south of Pioche is Cathedral Gorge State Park, an amazing area of fairyland spires, slot canyons, and hiking trails.  Our first stop was the overlook, which gave us a glimpse of the gorge and reminded us of a miniature Bryce Canyon. The formations are the result of soft bentonite clay (like that means anything to us) and easily erodes from wind and rain.  
Driving past the visitor center (closed for renovations), we stopped at the self-pay station to pay our $7 fee and continued into the park.  The bottom of the gorge is perfectly flat, and the formation walls rise high above:
You can disappear into one of caves or slot canyons and work your way to top, like this hiker who gave us a great view of the scale of the formations:
Some of the formations looked like castles complete with turrets:
There are entrances every few yards into the formations.  Inside, the walls are almost perfectly vertical and have different surfaces, from smooth to textured.  Once inside, the temperature drops significantly .  Since the canyons open to the sky, there was enough sun during our visit to navigate our way through the labryrinth.  If you enjoy visiting a “corn maze” during the fall, you’ll love this place!  But probably not so much if you’re claustrophobic….







This trip taught us once again that some of the most beautiful places are those seldom visited and out of the way.  We’re so glad we spent time here, and will mark it as a place to come back to.  But leave we must, and so we headed north to Ely to once again try and visit Wheeler Peak and the Great Basin National Park.  And for the second time we were shut out by rain, snow, and low ceilings.  But the view from Ely’s Main Street was pretty.
We’re at Ellsworth AFB just outside Rapid City visiitng friends, finishing up medical appointments, and enjoying the great shopping and restaurants.  The Black Hills are warming up, so we’ll be back with more adventures!