Thursday, Friday October 13, 14, 2016 Willow Creek Reservoir Nevada
Heading for Willow Creek Reservoir
After I posted my blog at Burger King, I headed east on 80 for about twenty miles and turned northeast at Golconda which is a heavy mining area.
After I left the pavement I traveled a few hours on this mining haul road which has a Magnesium Chloride road bed which is nice as long as it’s dry.
Eventually, I started getting into the mountainous area.
Wrong turn
I took a wrong turn once and spent an extra hour or so on this road. Once I realized my mistake, I turned around and found the right road. The big mines in the area mess up the old roads as their newer bigger roads sometimes hide the older roads.
Stopped here for a short break
I stopped for a short break here to have a look at one of my camp spots, but didn’t stay. I wanted to camp near where this creek comes out of the Willow Creek Reservoir which was just a few more miles up the road.
Made it to Willow Creek Reservoir
I pulled into an overlook area near the dam of Willow Creek Reservoir and this was the view of the lake from there. I can see a few RV’s way up there on the right shoreline.
No one’s in my camp spot
From that same spot I can look down the backside at the creek. I plan to camp down there by the creek and now I know no one else is in my camp spot, so I’ll drive on down there and make camp.
I spied this coyote checking me out as I drove on down to my campsite.
The water is down quite a bit
Here’s my camp spot. I was surprised to see the water down so low as the beaver had it dammed up last year.
Checking out the broken beaver dam
So I took a short walk down along the creek to have a look at the beaver dam. It wasn’t doing too good. I don’t know what happened. There was a den just up stream from this dam and if the beaver were still using the lodge they would of fixed this dam as now their lodge would be out of the water and not a safe place.
The was my view of my camp site on the way back from checking out the broken beaver dam.
I’m not sure what I will do tomorrow, but tomorrow I’ll figure it out.
Nice day.
Friday October 14
Light rain
I woke to light pitter patter on the van roof this morning. It was just barely spitting.
What to do
I wasn’t sure what to do, stay here or move on to another camp spot. Since I wasn’t sure how much rain we would get, I decided staying here might be the right thing to do as I’m only a couple hundred yards off the gravel road. If it rains hard, lots of the roads in the desert turn to slimy mud also known as snot. I elected to stay here and see what it was going to do
Walked down the creek
Once I got it going I was going to go for a little walk down along the creek, but the sprinkles picked up so I waited them out until about three when they let up so I headed down along the creek bank which looked like this.
Spooked a big ol owl
As I was walking I spooked a big owl by it’s hole in the ground and it flew across the creek and landed and stayed there.
It’s a fairly large owl about eighteen inches high and just sat and checked me out as I passed on by.
Freshly dug hole
I went by this freshly dug hole in the ground, about eight inches in diameter. There’s lots of these kinds of holes along the creeks bank.
Washed out beaver dam
I stopped to check out the broken beaver dam to try and make out what happened to it. It seems lots of water had to go by to wash out the bank on the right that way, so maybe it was something natural.
I continued on down the creek for about a mile and a half before turning back.
Dams all broken
All the beaver dams where broken for as far as I walked down the creek.
Walking up the creek to the big dam
I headed back to the van for a much needed nap and sat around in the van until about five thirty when I decided to go for another short walk up the creek to the dam outlet.
I saw something move up stream which turned out to be a muskrat.
This is what it looks like just below the dam. The water is coming out of that tunnel and spilling into the creek.
All these beaver dams are good
All the beaver dams above where I parked the van are not broken like the ones below the big dam. I’m not sure if these got broken and the beaver fixed them or what?
It started to sprinkle lightly again as I headed on back to my van. I made some dinner and that was pretty much my day.
