AdventureTaco - turbodb's build and adventures

Your substation looks like something telephony related. Probably an underground repeater station for copper cable. The giveaway are the 19" open racks.

Gotta say, Elko was easily one of the coldest places I've camped. Especially when the wind blows.

Nice pics too!

 

that sunstar...fire!

 

Wow. Your photography is always so amazing. Thanks for taking the time to post it all. It's always awesome to see.

 

Hand Me the Binos, I Think That’s a Tank | Connect the Dots #2
Part of the Connecting the Dots in Nevada (Oct 2023) trip.

I don't know how cold it was when my alarm went off just before sunrise in the Tobin Range, but despite the fact that we were several thousand feet lower in elevation, it felt colder than waking up at the top of Lamoille Canyon. The fact that the entire tent - and the top comforter - were covered in a thin layer of dew-turned-to-ice probably added to that perception.

I knew we wouldn't be getting any sun in our bottom-of-the-canyon location, so instead of dwelling on the wet tent, I found myself hoping that the drone wouldn't complain too much about battery temperatures as I launched it into the sky.

We'd parked near the Eureka Mine, but my first order of business was to fly a couple miles away - and some 1800 feet up - to see what we'd missed the previous evening at the Tip Top Mine.

Heading up, I got a great view of the Mt. Tobin, towering over the rest of the range, just as the sun was greeting the day.​

Following the road, I eventually found its end - at the Tip Top Mine. Definitely something worth checking out!​

The drone is fun to fly in wide open spaces like this, and I spent a few minutes swooping here and there, eventually working my way back towards camp. Unlike my fingers - which by this point were numb - the drone battery was finally warming up, and a rather disconcerting message about imminent failure due to "Battery temp too low..." finally faded from the screen of the controller.

Not far from where we'd setup for the night, the Eureka Mine seemed like another great place to poke around for a bit.​

One of the cabins was a little worse for wear.​

Soon enough, the drone was back on solid ground, and I was stuffing my hands in my pockets as I woke @mrs.turbodb to let her know that I was heading over to the mine. After inquiring about the temperature - which I may have oversold slightly as being "not that bad" - she let me know that she'd abandon her cozy cocoon and follow in a few minutes to check it out.

I'm not sure when, but the last few hundred feet of trail - between where we'd camped and the cabins - washed out at some point, the creek carving a 4-foot deep, 10-foot wide gully where the trail had once been. The "go around" that has been created is an off-camber disaster that'd kept us from pushing all the way to the end of the road the previous evening. With a bit of daylight, we measured the height difference at the 55" track width of a 1st gen Tacoma and came up with 38".

It doesn't look bad from here, but that's a 35 degree off-camber "nope" from us.​

As I walked into camp, one of the first things I noticed was this post and box. Unfortunately, it was empty - no claim papers to be found.​

The main cabin was still in quite good shape, several windows still clad in glass, and a couple doors still swinging freely.​

Active from 1955-1958 and then again from 1968-1970, the eureka mine produced more than 100 flasks of Mercury in 1956, though production trailed off from there. An inclined, oil-fired retort with two D-type chambers was used during the first period, resulting in more than 250 flasks of Mercury in ground that contained more than 200 pounds of Mercury per ton of ore.

The original mine owners - Low and Fred Miller of Basin Mining Company - sold off the mine to Harry R. Brown in the 1960s. Though Brown would work the mine until 1971, he'd recover very little additional Mercury, eventually selling again to F. J. Miller & Associates, who have not worked the mine since that time.

Western Mining History​

By far, the most interesting structure on site was the D-type retort. At the time, we didn't know what type of mine this was and figured it was some sort of concentrator for whatever shiny metal was being mined.​

The top of the retort is clearly where this style gets its name.​

Nearby, old pans that were once used to extract Mercury - a totally safe operation, I'm sure - were strewn about.​

Above the camp, this old water tank - shrouded in wooden planks, hid in the trees.​

About this time, I heard a whistle from the main camp area below - my companion was up and about and enjoying her own path through this old mining camp. Excited to show her the retort, I ushered her in that direction and wondered again at how the crazy contraption worked.

By that point, we'd pretty well exhausted what there was to see in the camp, but we could see an orange tailings pile and what looked like an open cut on the hillside above, so we continued to follow the road out of camp - in what seemed like entirely the wrong direction - which eventually led across the wash and up to the mining area.

Along the way, this dugout once served as the blasting shack. No fireworks remain, unfortunately.​

Where all the magic happened. Any adits or shafts from the main digging have now collapsed.​

It wasn't yet 8:30 in the morning when we headed back to the Tacoma. At the bottom of the ravine and still in the shade, the layer of ice - both inside and out - was unchanged from our last observation, and without some intervention, it wasn't going to dry out anytime soon.

Luckily, we had the perfect solution - fold the thing up wet, drive up to the saddle where a fork to the Tip Top Mine took off up the hill, and unfurl the tent in sun while we hiked up to investigate. With any luck it'd be dry by the time we got back, and if it wasn't, I could manually dry it while @mrs.turbodb assembled turkey sandwiches on the tailgate.

Up we go - 900 feet of elevation gain between us and our destination.​

As we climbed, the views unfolded behind us. We discovered a couple spots that would have made fantastic camp sites if we'd been able to evaluate them in daylight.​

At just under 1.5 miles, It didn't take long to get to the mine - or at least, what was left of it. Like the Eureka, the Tip Top Mine was a Mercury mine, though it was only a surface mine and a much smaller producer. There wasn't much left - evidence of digging, a relatively small waste pile, and a few boards that were once a small cabin.

A lot of work to build a road; Then, little to show for it.​

Only the bit of tin with a round hole suggested that a cabin once housed a wood heat stove in this location.​

The real treat up here were the views, and as we headed down, we soaked in a cloud-shrouded Mt. Tobin and the orange, Pinyon Pine-speckled-hillsides that reached toward the sky.​

After a quick lunch - prepped while I put away the now wonderfully dry tent - we climbed into the Tacoma and headed west. It was noon, and we had a lot of ground to cover if we were going to get to Walker Lake by nightfall.

We didn't make it far before I was out of the truck snapping photos. As usual.

Since it'd been dark when we'd come in, we hadn't seen Rim Peak at all.​

Nearly back to Golconda Canyon, we ran into what we thought was another concentrator, but was actually a Mercury retort.​

The views didn't stop, all the way into Pleasant Valley.​

Out of the mountains, roads smoothed and our speeds increased dramatically. It was perfect, really, for those of us not driving to sneak in a quick after-lunch-nap, making those of us who were driving, just a little bit jelly. Turns out the private-land-gods were looking out for us drivers though, a few rather intricate gates requiring the nappers to get out and open them.

When barbed wire just won't do.​

Twenty miles later we transitioned from Pleasant to Dixie Valley, plumes of steam rising in the distance. My copilot - now unable to sleep after hopping in and out for the gates - was all over this development, discovering in the Roadside History of Nevada that what we were seeing was the Dixie Valley Geothermal Power Plant. Positive that we wouldn't be allowed close enough to get a photo, I pulled over on the side of the road, climbed onto the tent in the back of the truck, and pointed my longest lens toward the complex.

A large black pickup approached us from the gate as I was climbing back to the ground. Had we stumbled on a top-secret installation?​

Any concern about the approaching pickup was quickly alleviated - after a short spike of adrenaline when it slowed to a stop and the window rolled down - when the driver asked us if we knew our way around. Like us, he was just out exploring, not at all associated with the top-secret generation facility that I'd snapped a few photos of.

A few minutes later, we discovered that we could drive right through the Geothermal Power Plant. Silly us.​

This pressure relief (?) was loud.​

The highlight of the plant, however, was not the plant itself. It was a nearby strip of pavement - and corresponding structure - that caught my attention and required a more in-depth investigation. After all, where better to park than in an empty airplane hanger or on an active runway?

What I would give for a space like this.​

Like looking out a picture window.​

Zero-to-... yeah, never mind, it's a 5,500lbsTacoma.​

Sure that we'd experienced the best that Dixie Valley had to offer - but not knowing much of Dixie Valley at all - we pulled off the runway and resumed our southward heading, a few hours of dirt remaining before we'd join US-95 at Lunning. To us, Lunning is a rest stop, though it is also technically a town - that one of us calls the loneliest town in the United States, second only to nearby Mina.

Predictably perhaps, we were completely wrong about Dixie Valley.

When the town of Dixie Valley was first founded in the late 1800's, it was to mine the salt, potash and borax discovered in the area around 1861. In addition to minerals, the valley also sported a copious water supply, a feature that was largely ignored until the early 1900's. Until then, a sum total of fifty families were ranching the valley, using the natural water spewing from underground springs to grow alfalfa and raise cattle for nearly a century.

In 1955, the area was acquired by the US Navy to be used as part of the Fallon Range Training Complex (FRTC). As part of this acquisition, all residents of the valley were relocated - many against their will - in many cases, their land and buildings demolished in order to deter them from returning.

The FRTC has served as a vital and irreplaceable asset for training naval aviation forces for more than 75 years. The FTRC includes four Bravo (B) ranges and the Dixie Valley Training Area, typically used for convoy training, fixed‐wing and helicopter night-vision device training, helicopter mountain‐flying training, and combat search and rescue activities. The ranges are used to train deploying air and ground units in a realistic environment and prepare them for overseas operations.

Nevada Expeditions
and Naval Air Station Fallon​

It was the last point that would turn out to be the most interesting, but before we would discover that, we stopped at the old abandoned Bar3 Ranch so we could wash our faces and bodies while temps were in the low 40s °F, rather than nippier temps we'd been getting once the sun went down.

While washing our faces, I stumbled on this canon, which I initially assumed was some sort of military contraption.​

It was a contraption all right. On closer inspection - of the low-gauge barrel, firing system, and aiming apparatus, I confidently declared it the Dixie Valley Potato Cannon.​

We weren't sparkly clean, but - after a good scrubbing with washcloths - we were both grateful to be cleaner than we'd been, and once again we headed south along the west side of what we'd soon discover to be the Dixie Valley Training Area. So mundane was the drive that I don't even remember what each of us was doing when I happened to glance to the east and then pressed firmly on the brake.

"Hand me the binoculars, I think that’s a tank out there!"​

@mrs.turbodb wasn't all that surprised, so she must have been reading about the range as we were driving through it. Regardless, once I confirmed that I wasn't imagining a tracked beast in the middle of nowhere, a new urgency - finding a way out there - became our top priority. After a bit of map tapping, we set off, looping around and eventually finding ourselves pulling into formation.

If anyone knows what types of tanks these are, or any history of these particular specimens, please do share - comment below, email me, whatever!

​

Ready to roll. Actually, not yet - I want to look inside first!​

Someone beat me to the turret.​

We expected the tanks to be stripped carcasses, but while they were clearly inoperable, they were much more complete than we ever envisioned.​

https://www.youtube.com/embed/tb9g-2A1itQ?si=zVOSDPO3VXpPsyhh
Even the tiny turret on top of the big turret sill rotated like it'd been greased only yesterday.​

Not sure if selfie or "look at that boy and his toys." ​

Pretty sure that barrel is not real, either, but dang, still cool.​

Not the friendliest of faces to see in the rear view mirror!​

We probably poked around on that first tank long enough that we were lucky to escape a live bombing run from the good folks from Fallon. Eventually though, we had to move on, a second tank (again, please share if you know what it is) not more than a hundred feet away, the rear doors open as though the infantrymen had run for their lives.

This one had no cannon and a weird ramp on top.​

Inside, we tried turning everything on. I think the batteries were dead.​

At least we'd know how to target any planes coming in on a practice run.​

The driver's seat was a little... exposed.​

It was - as you can likely tell - a really fun experience. Surely there are more of these beasts in the valley, and with a bit more time, it'd be fun to find them all. Today, however, we had places to be, so we reluctantly climbed back into our indestructible steed and resumed our journey south. Along the loneliest road in Nevada.

At least we could travel quickly toward nothing.​

We arrived in Hawthorne - our route technically taking us next to Lunning, sorry Lunning - just before sunset. The largest town we'd pass through on our journey, we made a quick stop at the grocery store and filled up the Tacoma with fuel before heading to nearby Walker Lake. We've spent the night on the edge of the lake numerous times - usually in a push to somewhere much further south - so we knew that while earplugs would be necessary to filter out the noise of truck traffic on the highway, we'd have nice views and an easy jump-off point for the morning.

Luckily, given that with the sun below the horizon it was cold, a dinner of chicken wraps and camp setup were quick, allowing us to jump back into the still-warm cab of the Tacoma for an hour or so of reading and photo transfers.

By then, it was 7:30pm and pitch black outside. Or as pitch black as it could be with the full moon rising in the east over Walker Lake.

Moonstar. (f/22, 30 sec exposure)​

A little more light. (f/8, 30 sec exposure)​

It was time for bed.

 

That airstrip and hangar is very cool. I found it and pinned it for some future trip that may or may not happen.

 

The first tank looks like a M551 Sheridan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M551_Sheridan

The second hull, the camo one, is a M109 self propelled howitzer. Not sure on the exact model without the gun and a few other features. I’ve never seen the ramp over the top of the turret before. I’ve got a bit of experience with the 109.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M109_howitzer

 

Gruelling Hike or Heavenly Hot Spring? | Connect the Dots #3
Part of the Connecting the Dots in Nevada (Oct 2023) trip.

One of the dots I'd hoped to connect on our trip through Nevada was hiking to the top of Boundary Peak in the White Mountains.

Boundary is an interesting peak. Appropriately, it sits on a boundary - the state line between Nevada and California. At 13,147 feet, it's the highest peak in Nevada. And hilariously, along the same ridgeline - less than a mile away, and just across the California border - Montgomery Peak rises 298 feet above Boundary Peak, yet Montgomery Peak does not rank amongst the top 100 of California's highest peaks.

Sounded like the perfect peak to hike for an underachiever such as myself - at once both the tallest, and yet also "easy."

Or maybe not. Our foray into Lamoille Canyon just a few days earlier - with more than a foot of snow at 10,000 feet - gave us pause. The hike up Boundary would start at 9,000 feet and climb 4,000 feet in four miles, temperatures ranging from 15°F when we departed the bottom at 7:00am to a balmy 30°F at the top, if we arrived around noon. And so, I offered an alternative to @mrs.turbodb: push south toward the trailhead, or use the day that we'd allocated for the hike to visit one of the coolest hot springs I'd ever discovered, saving the hike - and its associated dot - for a future adventure.

In hindsight, I can't say I was surprised by her answer. Hot springs are one of her favorite things.

With a new itinerary, we made a second adjustment, opting to explore a nearby mine - or at least the portal of the mine adit - near Walker Lake before heading for a soak. It was a place I knew about - having camped nearby on my Last Minute Rush trip - but I'd only investigated workings lower on the mountain, unaware that there was a mine even higher.

Shrouded in shade, we got an early start.​

Switchbacks.​

Playing with the drone, our ascent was not the speediest, and most definitely reconfirmed my lackluster piloting skills, even upon setting the drone to "track the Tacoma." It was about half a mile from the top - still 400 feet below the upper mine - that we ran into trouble. Though nothing dangerous, the grade of the road increased at the same time that the composition of the road base changed to loose, 4-inch-and-smaller rock, making traction - even with lockers - no better than my piloting prowess.

So, we backed the Tacoma out of the road and into a switchback - just in case some other crazy explorers happened to head this way on a Sunday - and hoofed it the rest of the way on foot.

Totally not what I thought was happening as I checked out the small opening of the portal.​

Sure enough, we were in the right place. I'd recognized the road as I'd watched an episode of Abandoned Mine Exploring with Tom and Julie entitled Interesting Greeting At The Portal Of This Nevada Mine, and as I peered down into the blackness, I smiled at what I saw. We wouldn't be venturing into this adit - we weren't going to slither in like Tom and Julie did - but it was fun to know that I was in the same place Tom had been when he enlarged the opening so they could go in.

The rails look enticing; the animal skeleton, not so much.​

After a quick glance from @mrs.turbodb, we headed back down to the truck, our sights now set on a soak. There was only one problem: as I pulled out my Lenovo Tab M8 FHD (which I very much like), I discovered it was off. Thinking it'd simply shut down due to the extremely cold temperatures, I wasn't thrilled, but I certainly wasn't upset. That wouldn't happen until a few seconds later, when as I powered it up, it greeted me with the "Welcome to your new tablet" experience, all of the apps, maps, and GPS data I'd downloaded to it, gone.

​

Luckily for us, @mrs.turbodb had her phone on hand with Gaia installed, so after a quick stop in Hawthorne - to download the tracks for the trip to her phone - we were on our way, if a little less conveniently than when we have a tablet mounted to the dash.

Winding our way through the mountains on Lucky Boy Rd.​

Hello Sierra, where's all your snow?​

Final approach.​

It was only as we were a quarter mile from the spring that I realized that - though this place is extremely remote and a well-kept secret - we might not be alone on this beautiful fall Sunday. And, sure enough, as we rounded the last bend, a family of four - and two old Jeep CJs with a trailer - were parked a few dozen feet from the stone-lined pool.

Initially disappointed, their presence turned out to be a blessing. They'd arrived Friday afternoon to find the pool nearly full of sediment - the spring unvisited for months before their arrival. They'd spent the better part of Friday evening and Saturday morning draining, scrubbing, and refilling pool - the water now crystal clear, the cemented stones ready for use. And just as we were arriving, they were packing up to leave!

Talk about two lucky ducks!​

After a quick cereal breakfast we soaked in the 104°F pool for about an hour. This gave the Jeeps - which would surely travel slowly as they pulled the trailer along the narrow, rough road - some time to get ahead of us, and afforded us another opportunity for a not-a-real-bath-but-better-than-cold-washcloths cleaning.

And then, we were on our way.

Climbing out of a valley that hides a heavenly hot spring.​

As would repeat many times on the trip, there was plentiful pavement between one destination and the next. That was expected with a trip like this, but it was still nice to have dirt under the tires once again as we headed towards Rattlesnake Flat and a spot that ********* had shared with me after I'd been in this area previously.

Another basin, indistinguishable from so many in Nevada.​

Guardians of Rattlesnake Flat, waiting to collect their toll.​

Our ultimate destination lay south, but before heading to the cabin-under-a-rock, we were in search of some rock art that'd initially been described to me as "on the road 17 miles from Hawthorne." This - we joked after making several turns on lesser and lesser travelled roads - was obviously enough to find the place, my eventual request for a bit more detail on the location, completely unnecessary.

Over a range and into another basin.​

There they are!​

Neither of us was expecting much from these petroglyphs. In our exploration, we've found - generally - that high-desert art is less detailed and had generally been more heavily weathered - than the rock art in places like Utah and Arizona. A big part of this - I think - has to do with the difference in surfaces, the sandstone pallet affording a significantly nicer medium than the porous volcanic stone in which to work. Still, it's always fun to find rock art and wonder at its origin, so no matter what, we're always up for the hunt.

And boy, were we in for a surprise. The rock art here was fantastic - some of the best we've seen in the high desert of Nevada!

Intricate carvings and recognizable images!​

I really enjoyed this design, as it wrapped around the edge of the rock.​

Triangle sunstar. These ribbons of triangles were similar to some of the designs we saw in Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area.​

This panel - and all the rocks strewn around it - was the largest.​

Pooping bird man jumping rope.​

It's always interesting to see how one element extends into another and wonder to the meaning of the original artist.​

It was getting late - only 90 minutes until sunset - when we wrapped up our wanderings around the petroglyphs. It'd taken no short amount of time to reach them, and we knew it'd take even longer to retrace half that distance before heading to cabin-under-a-rock for the evening. We'd definitely be eating dinner in the dark!

This guy flew over us at a few thousand feet - landing gear out - as we were climbing back into the Tacoma.​

From the basins we'd spent the afternoon exploring, we wound our way up into the granite boulders of the Excelsior Mountains, the sky slowly changing from a brilliant blue to a range of pastel purples and pinks as we gained elevation. Temperatures - pleasant throughout the day - were dropping by the minute.

Granite erosion is always so intriguing.​

As the road joined a wash, an old steel cable marked the location of what was likely the entrance to a mine.​

In my pre-trip research, I'd had the opportunity to chat with a few good folks who'd visited cabin-under-a-rock themselves. One of them mentioned that either the east or west access to the site was extra sketchy, a tidbit that I'd failed to mention to my travelling companion, largely because I'd dismissed it as immaterial.

That, dear reader is what they call cocky. And you know where that gets you.

At any rate, after the first semi-sketchy obstacle - one that required a tad bit of spotting from @mrs.turbodb, something she is not a fan of - we ran into an extended stretch of wash that looked as though it could cause problems. Knowing that it'd be better to retrace our route earlier rather than later, we got out to scout.

Ummm.​

While I made sure I could find a line down the wash, @mrs.turbodb spotted this little guy. Only about eight inches long, he'd unfortunately been caught out in the cold too long.​

Looks doable.​

Picking our way down through the decomposing granite, I related the information I'd heard about either the east or west approach being more difficult than the other. We each found ourselves hoping that this was the difficult approach, as we'd otherwise be in for quite the adventure when we tried to leave the following morning. Even tonight, our progress had been slowed dramatically; as we exited the wash, we still had nearly 10 miles of mountainous shelf roads to navigate in the dark.

The twilight on this granite wall was striking.​

Lights on as the final colors of sunset fade from the sky.​

It was just after 7:30pm when we arrived at cabin-under-a-rock. In no time, I was setting up the tent as the components of chicken wraps were warmed and assembled on the Coleman camp stove by my similarly famished companion. These wraps - we've come to realize - are a tasty alternative to our should-be-patented taco-rritoes, and contain largely the same ingredients, with the exception of the meat component. Not only that, but a side benefit of using chicken fingers - that are simply warmed in aluminum foil - is that there's even less cleanup when we're done!

Dinner wrapped up (ba-dum-dum ), it was back into the warmth of the cab for one of us, while the other couldn't help but to play around with the LED puck lights a bit, hoping to gain the approval of those who'd introduced him to the pesky little things.

Not long after - hoping that our adventure out in the morning would be easier than our evening's adventure in - we snuggled into bed as the moon rose over the ridge to the east.

We still wouldn't know what it really looked like until morning.




.​

 

Bass Camp and Beyond | Connect the Dots #4
Part of the Connecting the Dots in Nevada (Oct 2023) trip.

Hoping to get some photos before the sun was up and the cabin-under-a-rock was lost to the shadows, I set my alarm for too-dark-o'clock, and hit the snooze button a couple of times before finally pulling on my pants and climbing down the ladder to a beautiful morning.

Even before the sun was over the horizon, the glow on the granite hillsides was magical.​

This old water tank caught my eye.​

Suddenly in a rush against the sun, I scampered up the hillside in search of a location where I could capture the entire camp. This - given the car-sized boulders that stood in my way - was a ton of fun, though I could have done with some gloves to keep my hands a little warmer this early in the morning.

I arrived just in time for the warm sky that precedes the blue.​

Lots to explore in the daylight!​

I didn't wander around long before the sun was up and - like the moon the previous evening - a dark shadow began chasing me down off the hillside from which I was looking down on the cabin. With all that reflected light, it was time to get a closer look at the structure itself - and the interior - before heading to a digging that I saw a little further up canyon. And by now, I wasn't the only one out exploring!

I thought the water collection system that they'd devised was pretty cool; @mrs.turbodb climbed the rock, and there were concrete gutters all over the top, directing water into the 1,000 gallon tank.​

Some people ask me why I like finding mines, cabins, and rock art - to me, it's the thrill of the hunt (and seeing cool stuff), sort of like geocaching. In this case, it was a geocache too!​

So many cabins are ruined when folks carve their names into the wood. I thought the solution here was a good one!​

After poking around the cabin and other buildings - all of them emptied of their secrets after years of visitation - we set off to explore the tailings pile that we'd noticed a little further up the hillside. Now in full sun, it afforded us a nice place to warm up a bit, our puffy coats, hats, and gloves all battling the cool shade that was likely prized by the one-time-occupants of this camp.

There wasn't much view from the cabin, but I bet it was always a pleasure to exit the adit. The views stretched for miles!​

@mrs.turbodb made it to the platform first, and a grin on her face when I arrived suggested I was in for a treat. Sure enough - tucked into the mountain - an adit opening begged for exploration. Nothing screamed excitement here - like the cabin, surely this adit had been picked clean over the years - but I gathered up the LED puck lights and plunged into the darkness.

Patriotic adit.​

Ghost train.​

Ghost train when a bat (that I hadn't noticed) felt I was a little too close and abandoned his perch for one deeper in the darkness.​

A little further into the adit, I found this cool wooden ladder below a "stope that was a nope" for yours truly.​

As always, fussing around with the LEDs in the mine took longer than I imagined it would, more than half-an-hour passing before I emerged into the daylight, my companion having cleaned up around camp, gotten breakfast ready, and re-organized the interior of the Tacoma. Perhaps, more, longer mine explorations should be in my future! For now though, I quickly put the tent away and began to retrace a path we'd previously seen only under the illumination of the Diode Dynamics SS5 pods.

The Excelsior Mountains were living up to their name this morning!​

Along the way, we stopped at the Ex-Defender guzzler, where a note warned pet owners to keep a close eye on their animals; the government has set traps here (presumably to catch predators hunting the bighorn sheep that use the guzzler). Anything - including pets - caught in the traps apparently become government property!​

Before long, we completed the lollipop section of trail to the cabin-under-a-rock and turning east, we hoped the trail out would be easier than the trail in. We'd soon find what we hoped was a good sign, and - as any good Gold Rush fans would do - we stopped to take a closer look.

Hopefully, this Caterpillar D-9-G had been hard at work in the direction we were going.​

Dozer sunstar.​

The Cat had been hard at work and in no time - by which I mean more than two hours faster than our trip in - we were speeding along Teel's Salt Marsh in the Marietta Wild Burro Sanctuary, toward the ghost town of Marietta and a slew of mines tucked into the surrounding hills. Not that any of them were necessarily worth exploring.

There turned out to be more in Marietta than I'd realized, and as the history of this place was revealed, we stopped to take a look at a few of the old ruins and the sparsely populated cemetery.

The craftsmanship was apparent in the two long walls of this building - so straight, so tight.​

The stones here almost appeared to be dry laid.​

Established in the late 1870s, Marietta was not a typical central-Nevada mining camp. Its fortunes were based not on gold and silver, but on borax and salt. The salt mine was first developed in 1867 at Teel's Marsh, one of several salt marshes in the area. The salt was transported by camel to Virginia City, where it was used in processing ore. The borax was discovered a few years later. Marietta grew up out of the Teel's Marsh borax operation in 1877, and within a year it had several businesses and more than 150 residents.

Francis M. Smith, who would soon achieve renown as "Borax" Smith, was working in the Columbus Salt Marsh, about twenty miles southeast, when he learned about Teel's Marsh in 1872. He took a sample from a dry lakebed there, and it proved to be rich in borax, or colmanite. Smith immediately staked a claim on much of the area. Full-scale borax mining began within months of the discovery. Smith and other miners constructed borax-processing facilities at the southeastern end of the marsh. Wagon trains hauled the borax to the train depot at Wadsworth, about 115 miles north.

The success of the operation led Smith to create the Teel's Marsh Borax Company, precursor of the Pacific Borax Salt & Soda Company, which eventually controlled the world borax market. Smith's genius was in recognizing that the mineral could be profitable if marketed correctly. Prior to his efforts, borax was used primarily in pharmaceuticals. Since he was sitting on such large reserves, Smith began promoting the substance as an effective cleanser. He created an immense market for his product, and in the process became one of the era's most successful industrialists. Smith eventually moved farther west to larger borax deposits in Death Valley and became famed for his twenty mule teams that carried the borax out. His naming the product Twenty Mule Team Pure Borax was another example of Smith's marketing acumen.

Smith's departure after the borax discoveries in Death Valley meant the eventual end of Marietta. By the 1890s Smith's company had ceased mining there, and the town began its slide into oblivion. Today the most prominent ruins are the stone walls of Smith's company store. East of the store is the foundation of the stamp mill and, buried in the sagebrush, a handful of dirt mounds where the town cemetery was.

In the 1990s the federal government created the Marietta Wild Burro Range at Teel's Marsh, the nation's first wild-burro refuge, setting aside 68,000 acres as rangeland for about eighty-five burros. Visitors can see the burros from designated viewing areas [known as "the desert" ] around the marsh.

Roadside History of Nevada​

The crosses in the cemetery were newer, but there were a couple dozen or so unmarked graves of those who'd toiled here in times past.​

1880 | Lest we forget.​

I'd marked a maze of roads leading to more than a handful of mines in the hills behind Marietta. While only one of these appeared to have anything of interest in satellite imagery, we spotted a couple structures a mile up the road and decided that they ought to be the first on our list.

Or not. Less than 500 feet further, a cable gate was strung across the roadway, our path blocked.

So tempting.​

Ultimately, my maze was reduced to a single passable trail, the various branches either similarly gated or unused for so long as to be untenable for travel. The passable trail however, was splendid. Recently graded, it was as though work was once again set to begin at terminus of the road - the Endowment Mine - though clearly no actual mining work had been performed.

We did not expect this, but at least some of the glyphs appeared to be authentic (old).​

Passing half a dozen old mines, only a couple cabins remained; nearly all of the structures and machinery removed long ago.​

As is nearly always the case in the desert, as we gained elevation, we were rewarded with ever-expanding views.​

The Endowment Mine was the first mine in the Marietta district, producing silver-lead ore in the late 1800's. Several thousand feet of workings - including three winzes and numerous stopes and raises - perforate the mountain on five different levels.

By 1877 - near the height of production - the mine and five-stamp mill (soon to be replaced by a ten-stamper in 1878) employed as many as sixty men, with shipments during the month of September amounting to over $16,000 and new mineral discoveries at the 400- and 500-foot levels were said to be worth $155 per ton.

As with many mines, production fell off dramatically, and by the late 1880's, the mine was no longer in operation.

However, while many Nevada mines closed during World War II, the Endowment Mine and its owner at the time, Mark G. Bradshaw, was granted an exception to produce the lead, zinc, and silver - now vital as strategic metals - for the war effort.

Forgotten Nevada​

Built on either side of the wash, the only structures we found were two workshops and a headframe.​

This workhorse helped to extract ore from an inclined shaft just uphill from its location.​

An old machine shop, near the entrance to the main (lowest) adit.​

The buildings were interesting, but the highlight of the Endowment was our discovery of the adit entrance, just behind a rather large pinyon pine tree that'd grown up next to the wash. Several elements of this adit were intriguing, and somehow I even got @mrs.turbodb to venture in a few hundred feet - with only a few four-letter words and "this real doesn't seem safe" statements echoing as we plunged deeper into the darkness.

We are definitely going in.​

NOTICE: The assessment work has been done on this ground for the 1985-1986 assessment year. This property is not open for location. Louis DeRoussi, La Fortuna Mng. Co.​

A blasting room at the entrance to the adit looked like it'd just been built.​

Colorful ore and an old barrel.​

These tracks led up from a lower level - perhaps the 400- or 500-foot levels where the richest ore was found!​

Just mine-ing my own business. ​

It took us about an hour to check out everything - that we were comfortable looking at without more lights and ropes - at the Endowment mine, and knowing that we had another big exploration slated for the afternoon, we pointed the Tacoma back down the road towards Teel's Marsh where a quick drone stop allowed us a closer look at the mine-behind-the-gate that we'd spotted earlier.

I never tire of mouth-of-the-canyon views.​

Hey guys.​

Those two cabins, after the best kind of hike. No steps, thumbs only.​

And there's the hole they were pulling from!​

One ridge over, I turned to @mrs.turbodb and showed her the remote control screen for the drone, "You think they were following that vein of orange?" (duh)​

By now, it was 1:30pm and we needed to get a move-on if we were to make it to our campsite - one I'd been anticipating for many months - before nightfall. In reality, we had no chance of making it before nightfall - we'd be lucky to squeeze in dinner before it was dark - but we were naive enough not to realize how long the next foray into the mountains would take.

Leaving the Marietta Wild Burro Sanctuary, a Nevada basin like so many others. (Have I said that before? )​

We weren't really going all that far - just over a range towards Rhode's Salt Marsh - before heading up a nearby canyon. Like those around Marietta, these were - at one time - covered with active mines, few of them successful and all of them now out of commission. Of them, the Silver Dyke mine - obviously a Tungsten operation (duh! ) - was the one we sought on this fall afternoon.

Located at the very end of the road, we hoped for no gates and passable trail.​

Climbing to just over 6,500 feet, we were making great progress as we passed through what appeared to be a series of old miner cabins and the foundation of a mill and around a corner that revealed a large wooden ore bin towering over the wash.

Excitement builds.​

It was right about here that the road became significantly less traveled. Still, it seemed doable and - like good American's, avoiding physical exertion at any opportunity - we pushed on with the skinny pedal.

Of course, that lightly traveled two-track should have been a hint, and a quarter mile later - about halfway to the ore chute and associated tailings pile - the road was completely washed out. The hillside above - as well as the hillside below - had fallen away, only a narrow foot trail winding along the scree field. It was time to back down.

After retreating to a spot where we could turn around, we set off on foot to check out this beast.​

The amount of timber these guys hauled up here and assembled always amazes me.​

Tracks once stretched across this bin. Usable ore dumped was through the railroad rail grizzly bars and into the ore chute. Waste material continued on, to be dumped off the end of the structure and onto a 100-foot-tall pile that reached the bottom of the canyon below.​

We didn't spend long at the ore bin, mostly because I'd marked a waypoint for the mine a little further up canyon. Actually, it was behind - or as it would turn out, on top of - a nearby hill, and with the non-satellite maps we'd downloaded for offline use, it was hard to tell what route would be the most efficiently deliver us to our destination.

It's here that I should mention my takeaway from this conundrum: namely, when route planning before a trip, it's easy to look at satellite imagery and think, "I'll remember this when we're on location." The reality is - at least for me - you won't. Often times the planning takes place weeks (or months) prior to the trip, and at the very least, there are a half dozen or more of these places that will just be remembered. A better idea - and one that I've adopted after this trip - is to mark any interesting structures with some guessed label (e.g. old mill?) - and to also enter any notes that will be helpful when on the ground. Possible routes, for instance!

At any rate, our only option was to pick a canyon and hope for the best. So, left it was!

We passed this old dugout in the wash - a little surprising (that it hadn't been swept away) but also a good sign that we weren't the first to pass this way.​

This intriguing old barrel was a little further up the canyon. With rails around the circumference and a hole-plus-hinged-opening on the end, we had no idea what it'd been used for.​

Eventually, we came to the remnants of a couple old cabins. Built onto terraces on the side of the wash, both had collapsed completely in the years between the abandonment of the mine and our visit, but the plethora of mattress frames and old stoves - perhaps the most common trash we find in the desert - left no doubt that a night or two were spent in these parts.

Inside one of the stoves, a pile of papers from the mid-1980's. You know, DOW 4,321!
(As of today's closing, up 795% to 34,338.)​

Pushing higher, we now realized - simply by looking at where I'd marked the general area of the structures I'd seen on satellite - that the Silver Dyke must have encompassed most of the ridge between the two canyons we'd considered hiking. As such, it seemed only prudent to scramble up one side and down the other, turning our much-longer-than-we'd-anticipated hike into a loop.

Hopefully we could do it before the sun dropped below the horizon. You know, because we hadn't brought any water, warm clothes, or food. #AlwaysPrepared

As we were summiting the ridge, @mrs.turbodb noticed this old worn iron plate. Weighing more than 50lbs, it once served as the anvil for a stamp mill that pulverized ore pulled out of these shafts.​

Making it to the top, we finally spotted the point at which I'd marked what I'd thought was interesting about this mine. There, on the opposing hillside, several tailing piles spilled down into the canyon and near the bottom, a headframe and shed were nestled into the trees. Picking our way down, we headed in that direction.

There wasn't much left of these structures, and we didn't have time for any adit explorations, but they were fun to find nonetheless!​

Just around the corner from the workings, several old hand-stacked stone foundations climbed up the steep hillside - foundations for an old mill. Two timbers - each more than 50 feet long and 24 inches square - rested on one level. On another, an enormous piece of steel rusted along the old access road.

What is this thing that was once part of the mill?​

By now it was obvious - even to us - that an exploration that we'd expected to take half-an-hour was going to end right around sunset. As such, we decided, the prudent choice would be to make dinner when we returned to the Tacoma, rather than driving to our final destination for the night before filling our bellies. No matter what - with three hours of driving - we were going to arrive well after dark; we might as well eat dinner while it was still dusk.

Whlie @mrs.turbodb prepped our chicken wraps, I snapped a quick shot of the cabins and old mill by which we'd parked.​

I thought this weathered wood - installed diagonally, which was a bit unusual - looked nice in the evening light.​

As with much of the mine, the mill had seen better days.​

​

Highly recommend. I'm sure others have done it, but I first got this idea from Ben @m3bassman on a memorable trip many years ago to Canyonlands.​

Dinner done and the sun below not only the hills but the horizon, it was getting colder quickly. Gear was stowed, and we climbed into the cab, the heater working furiously to blow cold air onto our extremities until the engine warmed up enough to spare a bit of the love with the occupants. We'd had a full day of mine exploration - all three sites a smashing success - and so it was with high spirits that we pointed the Tacoma downhill towards US-95 and ultimately, for the ghost town of Nivloc.

It was a place I'd been wanting to visit since I'd sleuthed it out in my incessant investigation of Google Earth. A place that was no secret but that seemed reasonably unknown. A place with a full-intact railroad trestle.

The only question that remained - would we be allowed onto the property to check it out, or would the whole thing be secured behind locked gates? Only time would tell, and we probably wouldn't know until morning.

​

Looking down from the Silver Dyke, it's always special to see the earth's own shadow - Belt of Venus - on the horizon.​

 

Great read on places I've been. I thought the Endowment Mine was the San Francisco Mine but I will take your word for it as I'm sure you've done more research than me. Looking forward to the Nivloc write up.

 

I've been pretty bad at replying recently. Busy with trips and stuff at home is my (lame) excuse.

Thanks Ian. You're right on with the substation - someone who knew what it is contacted me and said the phone company put those up in the 50s. You know, when people used phones to (gasp) talk.

Thanks, I wasn't sure when I took it, but I was pretty happy to see it on the confuser when I got home!

Thanks so much, always nice to hear.

Nice! Plenty of places around there to camp as well it seems, and lots of mines to explore (I hear, now having returned) if you get bored of searching for more heavy equipment (of which there is also a lot more, I hear).

Yep, that jives with the info I got from others as well. Apparently that tank has an "aftermarket" barrel on it too - the original was much shorter and heavier gauge.

Nice! I still owe you a reply to your PM. I'll head over and do that now!

Nivloc was a pretty cool place, should get that posted on... Monday or Tuesday, I hope.

 

↑
That airstrip and hangar is very cool. I found it and pinned it for some future trip that may or may not happen.
Nice! Plenty of places around there to camp as well it seems, and lots of mines to explore (I hear, now having returned) if you get bored of searching for more heavy equipment (of which there is also a lot more, I hear).

There is a steam shovel in the mountains in that area too. I have it pinned for a future trip but I'm not sure if it's accessible from the Dixie Valley side anymore after last summers weather. I say summer because roads were washed out between May and August this summer in the Gabbs area.

 

Nivloc | Connect the Dots #5
Part of the Connecting the Dots in Nevada (Oct 2023) trip.

Moonlit headframe.​

We arrived at Nivloc at what appeared to be midnight but was - according to multiple timekeeping devices - only a bit before 8:30pm. Still, even under the bight-as-day moon, we knew better than to poke around this old ghost-town-mine-site in the dark, so we unfolded the tent, read the most boring books ever on our Kindles (me: Bourne Ultimatum, @mrs.turbodb: Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent), and climbed into bed as I left the camera snapping one eight-second exposure after the next.

I'd hoped to capture some amazing timelapse of the stars - and perhaps Milky Way - cascading across the sky behind the headframe - but instead ended up with a rather boring series of 1600 Milky Way-less photos that I promptly moved to the "reject" folder on my return home.

You know what I always say:

"If you take enough photos, some are bound to be decent.
And a whole lot will be a stinking pile of poo."


​

The following morning...

Once again hoping to snap some photos before the sun crested the horizon - so as to avoid the shadows that would surely add all sorts of crazy contrast to the wooden structure of the train trestle - I was up before the sun and wandering around like a kid in a candy store as morning broke.

Oh man, did we hit the jackpot or what?​

All of those night shots, and this one in the morning is my favorite.​

Surely this must be safe? I was contemplating poor life choices while my companion was still warm under the covers.​

Good morning, sun.​

I could have wandered around for hours as the sun climbed into the sky, but I knew it'd be a lot more fun to share the discoveries with @mrs.turbodb, so I whistled across the trestle - which I'd now proven to be 100% safe™ - and soon enough she was bundled in three layers of clothes and ready for exploration.

Pilot's note: A flying camera can still hover after nicking decommissioned power lines, but will require propeller replacement.​

100% safe™.​

With an audience, it was even more fun to threaten - and then execute - my daring stroll across what was surely the 100% most dangerous™ trestle in existence. However, try as I might - and I think I was close to success - I was unable to convince her that it would be a quicker way for her to get to the other side of the ravine as well.

And he lived to write another day.​

The silver and gold deposits of Nivloc were first discovered by Tom Fisherman - a Shoshone Indian - in 1907, and a short time later were named for an early mine owner, William H. Colvin, by reversing the letters of his last name.

The mine soon faded, and it was not until the mid-1930s that the Nivloc mine was worked again. This time, it was Harry Stimler - the same man who, with Tom Fisherman, helped to get Goldfield started when they discovered the Sandstorm Mine - and as a result interest was more substantial. The property was soon developed with a large steel headframe erected over the 540-foot-deep main shaft and a large rail trestle constructed to transport ore from the mine to a nearby 200 ton-per-day cyanide mill for treatment.

A townsite was soon formed and a post office was established from 1940 to 1943. During this time - Nivloc's peak years of operation - over $3.9 million in silver and gold were produced. However, the mine was shutdown during World War II, and while substantion ore remains at extremely low levels in the mine, the cost of extraction has resulted in little work being done in the post-war years.

Forgotten Nevada​

Across the trestle, the old mill foundations crumbled into the hillside. The only remaining wood bits, a couple of old tanks, that likely once held perfectly harmless chemicals used to process ore.​

Below the mill, a huge pile of barrel tops.​

Salt? I don't know that we've ever seen barrels of salt.​

Turning back to the trestle, we marveled in its construction. It's rare to find something like this - in relatively good condition - at an old mine site with reasonably easy access. And, the more we looked, the more we wondered aloud to its use over the years.

Ultimately, we decided that the trestle had once served a shaft on the right side of the gully, the track continuing where it now appears cut off. Later, once that ore was exhausted, the actual trestle - over the gully to the left and to the not-very-interesting-at-night headframe - was constructed to take advantage of the same ore bin.

Are we the only ones who try to figure out how the decaying pieces of a mine once contributed to the effort?​

Even after all this, there was still more to discover. Climbing the ravine under the trestle - perhaps in another attempt to get the smarter of us to walk across - we found the entire hillside to be covered in crucibles! We've seen these before at a handful of sites, but never have we seen the thousands that were present at Nivloc. As I poked around looking to collect a range of colors - of which there seemed to be many, likely due to whatever was being melted inside - @mrs.turbodb found an old bit of slag that was amazingly light!

Every. Single. One. Broken.​

A rainbow of color (wish I'd found an entire crucible with the iridescent blue) and a bit of airy slag.​

By now - having wandered around for more than two hours - it was getting on 9:30am and time for us to consider the remainder of what we had in store for the day. Largely, this consisted of more driving - nearly across the width of the state - to a location that I'd heard was the "perfect spot to park if one was interested in seeing low-flying military aircraft."

Since I am literally that person, it seemed like a great place to have a down day, and hopefully an air show. But, I'm getting way ahead of myself - we still hadn't checked out the Nivloc mine buildings!

There were three buildings on site, and despite differences in their construction, they were all used - at least, most recently - for the same purpose.​

Storage of drill cores! Millions of them.​

I spent entirely too long looking at the core samples, and by the time we headed out of camp it was 10:15am. Also, we were heading the "wrong" direction, my always-finding-cool-things-to-investigate-in-her-history-books companion having discovered that a little further up the road was another large mine: the Sixteen-to-One Mine.

Sometimes we wonder why people mined where they did, but that landscape definitely screams "I'm full of minerals."​

Most interesting to us at the Sixteen-to-One Mine was something labeled Ebley's Tunnel on the map. After my recent trip to Montana, and the surreal experience in the Boulder-Wickes Tunnel, I thought we might find a really cool adit that would be large enough that I could convince my daylight-loving companion to wander into.

Upon our arrival, we quickly found this man-made arch.​

We wasted no time in checking out the view on the other side.​

I can understand making a window in the hillside for a view like this.​

This - we reasoned - couldn't be the tunnel, and while we did discover an adit entrance, it was nowhere near the spot that'd been marked on the map. Additionally, a thick cluster of willow - fed by more than 50 gallons of water per minute pouring out of the mine - were blocking the portal, which meant there was no way we were going inside.

I'll have to save that for a return trip. Perhaps with Mike @mk5, who is definitely crazy enough to wander into places like that.

Instead, we headed back to the Tacoma, and then to the end of the road, where one of the largest tailings/waste piles we've seen lined the wash for more than a quarter mile.

This window looks fantastic no matter which direction you're facing.​

You can just make out the (white) tailings pile in the center of the photo.​

We found this old boot mixed into the tailings. Sure, boots wear out, but are you really carrying an extra pair when you're up on the pile?​

We also found this old drill tip and excavator (or bulldozer) tooth!​

By the time we were done at the Sixteen-to-One, it was lunch time - or nearly so. Lunch on this particular day were large bowls of Life cereal - a change from our usual Honey Bunches of Oats with Almonds or Cheerios - and I think the reviews were mixed. It was much sweeter than I expected, but I think we both enjoyed the crunch. At any rate, a bowl of cereal doesn't last long and once everything was put away, we finally got ourselves on the road a little before noon.

Colorful ridge.​

Lunch behind us, one of us was mid-nap as we neared Tonopah. Usually a town we only see in the dark - and nearly delirious - as we cannonball from the PNW to Death Valley, our approach from the west was slowed by the blinding white light of what I consider to be one of the most ridiculous power plant styles in existence.

Another of these plants - the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility - sits outside Primm, and from our understanding when we visited previously, was a hilariously poor decision to build and operate:

Built between 2010-2014, the Ivanpah Power Station is a solar thermal power plant that uses nearly 175,000 mirrors to focus sunlight on three boiler towers to generate steam and power special turbines that generate electricity. Capable of producing 392 megawatts, it was built on public land as a joint project between California and the U.S. Government - at a cost of $2.2 billion. Ironically, despite being a solar thermal plant, it burns natural gas for several hours each morning to warm up the boiler towers, emitting nearly twice the pollution that California allows for power plants and factories.

Wikipedia​

​

This facility - the Crecent Dunes Solar Energy Project - was built around the same time and seems to have been a similar debacle. For a time - between 2019 and 2021 - it produced so little usable power that it was completely shut down. Today, it only delivers power at night. Strange, given that it is a solar facility.​

Then, for a few hours after filling up with fuel in Tonopah, it was wide open roads from nothing to nowhere.

Nothing.​

Nowhere.​

Local riffraff. Not happy to see us.​

Then, seemingly in the middle of an obscure oblivion, a hot spring. Not just a steaming hole in the desert, this one was at one time developed, and to this day seems to be a rather idyllic setting in which to enjoy the warm waters - if only it were a little closer to anything or anywhere. It was posted for No Trespassing, but with the gate unlocked, we couldn't help but to take a look.

They don't get much nicer than this!​

I really liked this logo that someone had left on the ladder.​

After a quick snack - those after-lunch naps can really suck the energy right out of you - of apple and trail mix, we were back on the road and on the lookout for aliens. Or at least for their vehicles - our eyes scanning the sky for any glint or glimmer - as we were now traveling on NV-375, more commonly known as the Extraterrestrial Highway.

Unfortunately - though as usual - we'd forgotten our foil caps, so anything we spotted was easily erased from our brains by aliens over the next several hours.

Funny how an F-117 is considered a UFO. Government conspiracy? Probably! ​

Clearly the folks in Rachel, NV were wearing foil caps to capture this prime specimen on their tow truck.​

Umm, dude.​

Continuing west, we were now less than sixty miles - a bit of pavement and a lot of dirt - from the GPS coordinate that I'd gotten from some internet stranger. A plan surely destined for success. Continuing along NV-375, the nothingness of the nowheres was really starting to get to us - or at least to me - and as we passed through a Joshua Tree forest in a basin like all the rest, I pulled to the middle of the road to capture the moment.

If there aren't aliens, how did their trees get on our planet?​

Don't worry, traffic was light here.​

Some large fraction of an hour later, we turned off onto dirt and headed south - only a little more than 30 miles from what internet strangers promised to be the perfect spot to observe the most secret of America's military might screaming overhead, mere feet off the ground. And that's when my "plan destined for success" ran into the brick wall of reality - or more to the point, the barbed wire fence of Area 51.

We were less than halfway there, and we could go no further.

So we did what any good adventurer might - we set up camp outside the gate and wondered if we'd see any high-speed chases - you know, American military might fighting the good fight against the enemy invaders.

Camped at the edge of Area 51.​

Possibly our last sunset if an intergalactic battle unfolded overnight.​

In reality, we weren't really sure what to do. One the one hand, we weren't that far from my random internet waypoint - certainly not at speeds of 600mph that the jets might be flying. On the other hand... random internet waypoint.

It was a problem we'd need to solve in the morning, for now, we had chicken wraps to prepare before brushing our teeth, donning our tin foil caps, and crawling into bed.

 

Some smooth pavements, I drove through a lot of that on a trip to Sacramento. On our way home we spotted at least 3 snakes coiled up on the pavement keeping warm just after sunset. It's definitely an amazing place for a night of star gazing. Tonight is the New Moon so I bet it's going to be brilliant, best chance to see the some UFO's

 

BROTHA what’re your current miles sitting at? Been following you since day 1 it feels like keep the story comin’!

 

Yeah, this time of year, the snakes definitely congregate on the pavement! Gotta watch out for them, since it's such a shame to see them flattened all the time.

Sitting right around 256K or so. Fewer miles this year with the truck stored in Vegas between trips. Was putting 40-60K/year on a couple years ago!

 

Love it! Cheers!!

 

60 Seconds Out | Connect the Dots #6
Part of the Connecting the Dots in Nevada (Oct 2023) trip.

As was the warning that crackled over the military scanner for one of the most exhilarating moments of the trip, this story is a short one.

- - - - -​

As you may recall, we'd camped as close as we could to a random point in the middle of nowhere Nevada that an internet stranger had shared with me as one that had nearly uncountable - there were so many - low level military flyovers.

And again, as you may recall, we were only "as close as we could be" due to the fact that we'd run into the boundary of Area 51, our progress to the actual waypoint, halted by signs threatening death. Or worse.

Hoping for the best - but knowing from experience that the first flights don't start until 8:00am - I was up before sunrise in hopes of catching the first plane just off the desert floor.

Thirty minutes before sunrise, a few clouds caught the long rays of the sun.​

Fifteen minutes before sunrise, the bright green spikes of the Joshua Trees contrasted splendidly with the changing sky.​

Two minutes before sunrise, I was back at the Tacoma - with it's dusty desert shoes - contemplating a return to the warm comforters from which I'd ventured.​

It was more than an hour later - perhaps even two - when we climbed out of the tent to greet the day. Naturally, we'd expected to have the tent ripped away by a low-flying bomber, but that pilot must have been out sick for the day. Instead, we heard jets high above - way above commercial traffic - their afterburners kicking in as they played in the sky.

"What should we do?" asked @mrs.turbodb.​

The obvious answer was obvious. We'd gotten bum info and it was time to cut our losses. But as with most humans, the sunk cost fallacy runs strong through my veins, and I suggested that we hang out in camp until 11:00am, at which point - if we hadn't found the need for earplugs - we should just continue on our way towards Las Vegas.

It was 8:52am when I said that, and by 9:01am we were headed out - but not towards Vegas.​

Listening to a few more jets, the roar seemed to be emanating from the adjacent valley, so after a bit of hemming and hawing, we decided to go park ourselves on the pass - the idea being that we'd double our chances of seeing something, and hopefully drop into the appropriate valley for even more excitement.

Sitting on the pass, we did - technically - see more, but only just barely.​

And - though it may seem that the day was turning into a bust - this is where things got interesting. As we'd driven to the pass, we'd spotted three vehicles parked just off the road.

"I wonder if those guys are looking for planes too?" said the lady in the passenger seat.
"Nah, they're probably just out for a hike," I replied.
"On a Wednesday, in the middle of nowhere?" she asked.​

It was a question that hung in the air, unanswered. Unanswered until I happened to glance up a nearby rise and - for the second time this trip - said "Give me the binoculars, I think there are people up there with cameras."

In fact, there were people up there with cameras, and the cameras had long lenses.
Holy smokes, they *weren't* out for a hike!​

After a bit more back-and-forth, @mrs.turbodb convinced me - despite my embarrassment at the length of my longest lens - that we should at least head up to the top to introduce ourselves and see what was going on. So that's what we did.

Where you guys going?​

Campfire?​

Apparently, the wrong question to ask a bunch of guys when you find them in their secret photo spot is, "You guys do this often?" so naturally, that was the first thing out of my mouth. I followed that quickly with the only more inappropriate question in my arsenal, "Where else do you guys go?"

Awkward silence and non-subtle attempts to brush off the suggestion that they ever went plane spotting with their 600mm, $10,000 lenses were the only response, so @mrs.turbodb tried a different tact, asking more normal questions, like, "Where you guys from?"

Turns out we'd caught up with Jamie (and another British photographer), Chris (who owned a Tacoma), Derek (a Canadian nurse), and the reasonably local leader (from Vancouver, BC, Canada) of the group whose name we never caught. All of them - to a tee - quite welcoming once it was clear that we weren't there to out their special spot.

Just before 11:00am when we reached the summit, these "guys in the know" confirmed for us that there'd been no low-level activity so far, and that the morning wave of planes were largely on their way back to base. Bummer.

As they did, their scanners would pick up radio traffic - completely gibberish to us but meaningful to them - and from time to time they'd get excited to hear that a certain plane or another were flying in the sky above.

And then, Jamie got a text. Apparently - as is probably common in circles such as these - the guys were friends with some of the pilots, and had alerted them to the exact location they'd be sitting - for three days - hoping to snap some photos. Not only that, but - apparently - when the pilots know the photographers location, they often go out of their way to oblige the long lenses!

In that moment I learned two very important lessons: One, I've been doing it wrong in Death Valley all these years and (B), I need to make some new friends. But for now, that was neither here nor there.

And so, the wait began. There were nine planes that knew our location - two F-15Es and an F-15EX, and six F-35s, four of them Australian. With just under two hours on the practice range, there were two windows when they might drop in on us: either within the next hour as they arrived at the range, or in a little under three hours when they were on their way back to base.

Or maybe, not at all.

An hour passed, then two. We monitored the "squad" (sorry, I have no idea what to call this conglomeration of America's greatest) on the scanner. They were still in the air. The guys ate lunch. We stood there like the noobs we were.

And then, "SIXTY SECONDS OUT FROM THE PHOTO POINT," the scanner squawked.

All hell broke loose. Men turned into boys. Cameras - that cost more than many small cars - were pointed to the horizon.

"THIRTY SECONDS OUT"

"There it is, over the dry lakebed," yelled Chris, as shutters began to click, and everything became a blur.

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Buzzed by an F-15EX (with OT tail). So badass.​

Adrenaline was high for many minutes after that first plane went by. Apparently, there are only two F-15EXs in existence, so capturing one out here in the middle of nowhere was quite the win.

But soon we started asking, would there be more? We still had an hour until fuel reserves would be running low, but a quick glance between me and the huge grin on @mrs.turbodb's face all the confirmation I needed to know that we should hang out a little longer.

And the next two passes went similarly to the first. A call over the scanner with less than a minute to prepare; semi-organized chaos as shutters chattered away like machine guns; and then furious flipping through camera rolls, hoping that the perfect shot had been captured in the process.

Except for @mrs.turbodb - she was having a great time taking pictures of the picture takers.

Boys and their toys.​

The second plane to come through was an F-15E with and ET tail and not-totally-gray paint scheme.

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And the third flew below our position - less than 400 feet up - twice, one of the times no more than 200 feet off ground. Damn, that was rad.

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I'd snapped more than a hundred photos in just seconds. The guys who knew what they were doing had an order of magnitude more. Plus, theirs were all in focus. But the winner in all of this craziness - at least as far as I was concerned - was @mrs.turbodb, who happened to catch one of the passes on video, the roar of the engines and snapping of shutters enough to take us back to those moments every time we watch.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/j-cQnTFyUng?si=mPRtcYpzeDER_fig
The highlight reel.​

So yeah, that was about the most awesome way to end a trip ever.






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We were on top of Lassen and got buzzed by a fighter. The second pass was inverted. My goodness!

 

Wow! So bizarre yet very intriguing. Thanks for sharing. Epic as always.