Resting Up and Doing Repairs at Willow Creek Reservoir

Sunday September 20 Willow Creek Reservoir Nevada

Posted from the top of the willow creek dam with Marty’s internet access.

It got a bit on the cool side last night so I wasn’t too eager to get it going this morning until the sun warmed things up a bit.

I saw my boat as I stepped outside this morning and thought I better get in it and take a little ride in the creek.

I slowly paddled down the creek and things looked like this. The creek has some beaver dams on it to back up this water like it is.

A badger sunning

I was going pretty slow by here when I ran into a badger getting some sun right up there on the right where the high dirt banks start. We didn’t see each other until I was about fifteen feet from it which would of made a neat picture, but my boat was drifting by it and by the time I got the camera up, I was mostly by it and the brush blocked my view. I backed up but it had moved as soon as I was past it.

I paddled down as far as the first beaver dam here and hung for a bit before starting back up the stream, only a quarter mile or so down from our camp spot.

My view as I paddled back up the creek.

And this was my view as I approached our camp. The beaver are responsible for making this a real nice spot.

I’d left Marty back at camp to start one of his repair projects which was to replace his defective battery isolator so he could charge his accessory battery which he needed to run his inverter to run his refrigerator which was full of food for the trip. It also runs on propane, but it was running through that pretty fast so we needed to get the electric fixed up. He almost had it when I got back to camp. A little more work and it was test time. It worked, so that was good.

A break after that, then we tackled our CB radio problem. Luckily I had an extra CB radio which we tried first in my van, but that didn’t fix the problem, so we put the radio we took out of my van in his van and that fixed the problem so now we can shoot the bull when we are traveling around out here.

We worked on a couple more small things and mostly sat around and took it easy and just enjoyed this place.

In the late afternoon, I decided to go for a walk down along the stream a mile or so. I got my camera and headed off, leaving Marty back at camp.

Here’s another view of the beaver dam I kayaked to earlier today as I walked by on the trail.

And this is the next beaver dam below that one as I continued down the trail.

I walked down along the creek to this spot where I turned around and started back.

I veered away from the creek side in some spots on the way back and walked through the desert going through here.

I went by this big red ant nest by the trail. It’s about two feet high and active.

As I came out of the bushes and approached our camp, I could see my kayak was gone. You can see the reservoir dam in the background here.

Just as I entered our camp area, Marty came paddling down the creek and said it was a great little paddle as the part we could paddle was about a half mile long.

We had a little camp fire tonight which we sat around for a couple of hours before going in for the night.

Even with the repairs we did, it was a rather nice day out here in the desert.

Tomorrow we plan to move camp after a leisurely morning. We will try to get a cell fix at the top of the dam here tomorrow on the way out and if we do, I’ll post some blogs with Marty’s internet connection.