Our plan was to visit Great Basin National Park. But first, there was a bird to be seen in Las Vegas. We drove 1100-1200 miles overall.

1. Roseate Spoonbill in the Las Vegas area. Poor guy is very lost.
2. Cell phone tower “disguised” as a palm tree.
3. Road runner in Las Vegas area.
4. Me in shorts, a tee and my Tilley hat at Cathedral Gorge State Park. This is the “fashion” portion of this post.
5. Cathedral Gorge SP reminds me of Cappadocia in Turkey.
6. Ward Charcoal Ovens built for the silver mining boom. The miners stripped the area of trees in the 1860s for the smelting process.
7. Who showed up but a film crew to shoot a commercial promoting travel in Nevada. There were way too many of them, and they just took over. We were about to leave, anyway.
8. Golden Eagle. These birds are HUGE!
9-10. Bristlecone Pines. These trees, growing above 10,000 feet, are among the oldest organisms living on earth. These were about 3000 years old. Fun fact: Nevada, which is largely desert, has two state trees, the bristlecone pine and the pinyon pine. We hiked six miles at over 10,000 feet, and I did fine, which was a relief. I’m not as out of shape as I thought I was.
11. I loved this sign. Someone was offended by the description of the trees’ “grotesque beauty”, and so they scratched out grotesque. I think the sign was wrong. The trees are not grotesque at all.
12. Three toed woodpeckers along the trail.
13. We stayed in a motel in Baker, just outside the park. The motel was just adequate, but the related restaurant was outstanding. For breakfast, in honor of millennials everywhere, I had avocado toast with locally grown tomatoes. Delicious!
14. View of the Loneliest Road in America. Life Magazine named that stretch of Hwy 50 in the 80s.
15. Beautiful skies
16. Map

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