Adventuring Around North Eastern Nevada

Monday May 1, 2, 3, 2017 Willow Creek Nevada Posted from Elko

Headed for the Willow Creek Reservoir today

I had a peaceful night and got on the road around ten headed for Winnemucca. I went to McDonalds first to post yesterday’s blog. I always seem to have a problem getting hooked up but after some playing around things started to work as they should and I posted the blog and checked email and a few other things.

Next, was downtown to gas the van and then on through to the south side looking for the BLM office I knew was there somewhere. I was there back in the 1970’s to get maps, but that was a long time ago and so I wasn’t sure where exactly it was. I turned on the street where I thought it should be and wasn’t finding it, but just as I was thinking of turning around and looking elsewhere, there it was.

A nice lady helped me out getting some new maps of the Jarbidge and Mountain City areas. They didn’t have the best old map I used to have so I settled for what they had.

Got back on 80 east for about twenty miles and turned at Golconda out into a big mining area. Most of the roads are mining haul roads so are in fairly good shape most of the time.

I’m headed northeast on the Midas Tuscarora road.

 

The yellow sign warned me no winter maintenance.

I was headed to the Willow Creek Reservoir about ninety miles. I stopped by this spot I’ve camped at before to have a look at the creek.

 

I wasn’t planning on camping in this spot, but plans get changed. Play it by ear, I say.

Anyway, I continued on as I only had a couple miles to go to the reservoir through this area.

 

But with only about a mile to go I came to this spot and had to stop to look things over as it didn’t look good.

 

I got out to have a look and see if there was anyway possible to get through.

 

There was just too much water and mud and it looked like something a lot bigger than my van got stuck in that big hole last winter. You could tell from looking around the area it got a lot more water than usual last winter.

I got turned around and headed back to the closest camp site I knew of which was about a mile back down the road where I stopped to check out earlier.

I had some dinner and a nap and then went for a little evening walk up along the creek.

 

I saw a few ducks that were too quick for a pic.

Just as I was about to turn around and head back some movement caught my eye up ahead so I watched and this marmot showed up on this rock.

 

On the way back I was going to walk back on the road, but instead crossed it and walked along here when this wet spot caught my eye, so I went up to have a look, then headed back down to the van.

 

I was headed back to camp after my walk and almost there and it will be dark soon.

 

Since I can’t get through this road I’ll have to figure something else out tonight. There was a big mining area just down the road from here I’ve never checked out, so maybe this is the time to do that.

Nice day, the road closed is just part of adventuring.

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Tuesday May 2, 2017

 

I thought about what I should do today with the road I wanted to take closed and all. I decided to try to find a road around the closed part of the road as the place I wanted to explore looked like there might be one of more four wheel drive roads to the other side of the road closure.

There was a small problem with this thinking in that the snow hasn’t’ been gone very long and there are wet spots and muddy spots on the roads that could make things difficult.

There was a big mine out where I was headed so the main road was fairly well maintained.

 

But the four wheel drive road I needed looked like this with no maintenance and a bit wet.

 

I went through some wet spots and some with a little mud when I came to this one. I got out to scout it and decided to go for it and made it ok.

 

Almost got stuck

After going through some more wet spots and mud for several miles, I bottomed out here. You can see the fresh dirt in front of the van where I got stopped and almost stuck. I was able to back off the dirt to where I am parked now. The ground is still too wet to keep the tires from slipping into ditches.

 

As you can see this is a four wheel drive road. With some work I got turned around here and headed back to the mine road. It was a shame as I think I was only a few miles from making it to the other road on this road

 

Headed to Elko

All that meant I was headed back to highway 80 at Golconda and headed east to Elko which I did.

I gassed up the van in Elko and tried to post a blog, but the internet connection wasn’t too good and I gave up trying to post and headed north towards Mountain City on highway 225.

I had some ideas where to camp but wasn’t sure where I wanted to camp so I watched for National forest roads going off the main one I was traveling and found a road just south of Wild Horse reservoir. I didn’t get the name of it.

 

Lots of bugs and mud on the windshield, eh.

I travelled out that road about five miles then turned around and went back to a spot I saw on the way in.

Tonight’s camp spot

Here’s my camping spot for the night by this water that’s likely a river but I don’t know it’s name as I don’t know what road I’m on.

 

I was looking at the white stuff on the rocks across the road from me in the middle there.

 

I could see some big nests but I didn’t see any birds. My wild guess would be owls.

 

That raps up another day.

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Gold Creek Guard Station

Wednesday May 3, 2017

Nope, not owls

Once I got it going this morning I walked over to the big bird nests I saw up in the rocks yesterday to see if there were any birds I could see nesting. I could see one bird up there, but I couldn’t make out what kind of bird it was?

 

Back at camp I put my stuff away and got ready for travel. My plan was to head north towards Mountain City but stop at Wild Horse Reservoir and turn onto the road that goes to Gold Creek Camp ground and also over the hill towards Jarbidge. I figured I was going to get through at there’s still too much snow on the ground, but I thought I’d at least check it out.

One of the roads to Jarbidge

This is the road I took when I left the main road at Wild Horse Reservoir. You can see there’s still snow on the mountains where this road goes.

 

I made it to about a mile from the Gold creek campground and ran into this so I turned around knowing this way to the Jarbidge area was closed.

 

It’s nice to have a short wheelbase van when one needs to turn around in this kind of situation.

I got turned around and headed back down this road about a mile and turned onto the guard station road.

 

Gold  Creek Guard Station

I had to cross this creek to get to the guard station, but luckily it wasn’t too deep.

 

The guard station looked like it hadn’t been used in five years or so. I decided to camp here for the night in this spot.

 

During the day I took several short walks around the place checking it out. No one else was around.

About the only critter I saw today was this goose out in the field just before dark.

 

There’s a few marmots around too, but they’ve been to fast for the camera.

Tomorrow I plan to head to Mountain City and then to the Indian reservation and north a bit. Hopefully I can post my blogs along the way. There’s a small lake I’m looking at for a camp spot at Grasmere.

Nice day.

Posted from the Duck Valley Indian Reservation from their computer lab