Friday June 26, 2015 Black Rock Crossing on the Bruneau River near Rowland Nevada
I wasn’t real sure what I wanted to do today. I was thinking of going over and checking out the Black Rock crossing from this side, as it was only about eleven miles from this camp.
Big critter
As it was, a critter woke me up late last night running around in my engine compartment. I got up and chased it away, but it was still there this morning, so I opened the hood up and cleaned out all the grasses and stuff it had already brought into the compartment. I was mostly concerned about fire as it put a lot of dry stuff right on top of the exhaust manifold. I looked for damage, but luckily didn’t find any.
It was nice and cool as I got it going so I decided to cook the bread dough I made the other day. Simplest way to do that is put some olive oil in my woke, just a little on the bottom and roll little pieces of dough to cook until I get these. Already olive oil flavored.
I sat around taking it easy for a couple hours while it was still cool and finally made up my mind to drive over to the Black Rock crossing to check it out.
Just after I got back on the main road from the ranch these two birds took off in front of me and I followed them quite a ways until they finally took off. Chuckers, I think.
This is what some of the main road in this area looked like as I headed for the turn off for the crossing.
There wasn’t too much out, I did see a couple of these antelope heading away from me.
I turned off onto the crossing road and I had about five miles on this road until I got to the part of the road that headed down to the crossing.
As I neared the edge of the canyon of the Bruneau river, I could see the road that goes up the other side of the canyon. I’d been on the top of this road once from the other side and determined that mostly the little quad runners were going down it and it would be a bit rough for this van, but likely jeepers could do it.
I made it to this point and the road did the same as it did on the other side of the crossing, turned to little quad runner tracks and real rocky, so being out here all by myself, I decided not to do it and stopped to think about it.
I walked down the road just a little ways and looked back to the van, before getting back in and turning around.
From that point I could see the road coming down the other side a little better. It doesn’t look like it gets used much.
I decided to head back down the main road to McDonald’s creek road, which I’d been on almost up to this point about a year ago and camped at the old ranch. But today, I had found another camp site right where the creek road joined this main road so I went there and set up for a nap as it was getting hot and almost noon. It’s a fairly good camp site, as there’s a creek in the tree and the tree provide a little shade and there is a breeze blowing through most of the time. I plan to drive up this canyon and check out the McDonald’s ranch sometime late today. I also remember there was a good spring along this road with water coming out of a pipe which I could use to refill my water supply.
The road to McDonald’s ranch
Around three PM I tried the road to McDonalds ranch. I only got a short distance as it was over grown and more another narrow quad runner road, so I had to turn around and head back.
It’s getting late in the day, so I head back down to Scott’s ranch just a short distance down the road. But that rat will get back in my engine compartment, so I head on down to the meadow past the main ranch, where I think the horse goes at night.
The county road graders caught up to me as they were parked where the road turns off to Scott’s ranch, but I think they went home for the weekend as they were from Elko, a ways south of here.
The meadow
I drove down into the meadow and found a place to park that overlooked the meadow.
Evening walk around the meadow
Once the sun went down around seven, I started a walk down by the river on the left side of the meadow and then back up the road in the middle.
There’s more man made dams to irrigate this field in the older days so there is lots of river water here.
This was the view of the river at the lower end of the meadow where I turned and walked back on the road.
The marmot
I’ve just started my walk back to the van which is on the other side of this meadow. I was walking up this over grown road when I spotted the marmot which had stayed perfectly still as I approached.
Apparently I was in it’s way as it wanted to scoot down a trail in the grass, but I was blocking it. As I got next to it on the road, it bolted for the trail and was gone.
Although it may not look like it, this meadow is a feeding place of many marmots. They have trails all through it and as I walked I could often see the tops of the grasses shake as they ran off to keep out of my way.
That’s it for another warm day in the desert. It’s just now starting to cool down nicely today at around eight thirty, so time to relax for the rest of it.
Nice day exploring around.
