Thursday July 25, 2013, Bruneau River, Rowland, NV.
Camped at Scott’s Ranch near Rowland NV.
After I got going this morning, I decided to go for a little walk to check out some rocks I saw across the river from me. On the way, I saw this big scat. Too big for a coyote, maybe a wolf, or a Mountain lion?
This is what the rocks looked like. I was looking to see if there were any rocks moved by man to make something over the years. There is about a six foot diameter hole where the bush is growing that was made by man, Indian’s or prospectors? There were a lot of nice looking, interesting rocks in these piles.
I spent about an hour walking over those rocks to check them out, then went back to camp for a rest.
I got the van rolling shortly after that and headed north toward Rowland, NV. The road went down into a valley on a fairly steep road that I should of dropped it into low range to save some brakes, but I didn’t.
This is the view of the road I took to get to Rowland.
The road headed into this canyon. The place I camped in, is just to the right of the big green tree at another place with even more big green trees, Scott’s Ranch.
I headed into this area to find the place the road crossed the Bruneau River at a not so much used place. Before I knew it, I was across this nice bridge, which was a surprise, because I thought the crossing might be a bad one. There was only a couple of holes in the wooden bridge decking, an easy crossing.
The river view looking down stream from the bridge.
The up stream view of the river from the bridge.
I spooked a bunch of merganser ducks as I approached.
This is the abandoned Scott’s Ranch where I camped for the night.
This is the view looking north from camp.
The van in camp with the new stove oven out to do some cooking.
I tried cooking some bread sticks from the dough I made a few days ago from my tortilla recipe. This was the first time I used the oven to cook. I didn’t preheat, just put them in thinking they might expand a little while the oven reached heat. Only problem was, it never did reach the 350 degrees F. I was trying to cook them at, so I ended up leaving them in too long and burned them. They were hard as a rock, but I did learn something about the stove for future use.
Luckily, I had some other dough left from making tortillas, so I changed tactics. I rolled the dough into rolls and cooked them in my wok with some olive oil to fry them in.
This worked out much better than the oven. I had some home made wild plum jam I made and brought with me, so I smeared some of that on top of the rolls. I ate all but two of them, which I consumed later that evening.
After another rest, I decided to drive the van on up to the end of the road which showed about a half mile on the map before it ended.
This is the canyon I drove into, near where the road stopped on the map, but it kept gong past where it stopped on the map.
I traveled the road about a half mile beyond, before finally turning around when the road got too bad.
Below is where I turned around and headed back down the valley.
The is the view of the Scott’s ranch barn as I came back down to it.
I drove back to the bridge to put some crawdad traps in the water under the bridge for the night. Then looked for the road that went over the hill to the Diamond A ranch I was looking for. I found a spot where it looked like the ranch dumped all their dead animals over the years. Lots of bones. The bones distracted me and I didn’t see the road I was looking for. When I got back to camp, it looked like the road was someplace past the bone pile. I’ll check it out again in the morning.
I also walked down the river from the bridge to a big meadow looking for that road, but didn’t find it.
The sun was going down as I returned to camp for the night.
Scott’s ranch is a couple old houses, trashed, a big horse barn and a cattle barn, some garages and shops. It’s deserted and a little spooky at night, although no spooks came out to get me, there were some weird noises during the night.
Tomorrow I plan to pull my traps and look for that road and either way head over to the Diamond A Ranch near Jarbidge, NV. I’m thinking of camping by a big spring area, if I can find it.
Another nice day.
