Hurricane, Utah

 

We decided to take a “different” route from Carson City to St. George, UT.  This is Hwy 395 at the east end of Sonora Pass.  This pass is always closed in the winter.

We went through Bridgeport, and I took a couple of shots of the Hunewill ranch off in the distance.  I spent a week there many, many years ago horseback riding.  This cattle ranch has been continuously operated for well in excess of 135 years. Hunewill originally hauled timber for the booming town of Bodie in 1861 and built the ranch house in 1880.  Bodie is a State Historical Townsite located on a 15 mile dirt road nearby.

We then continued on to Lee Vining,  turning west on US 120.  About five miles later, we wound up turning around as 120 was closed.  I took the coach off-road to turn around (forgot it wasn’t 4-wheel drive) and had the truck behind actually go under the hitch, causing damage to the hood and grill.  For this to happen, the truck had to be below the hitch.  I guess we were lucky we did not get stuck.  After the obligatory crying over the damage, we backtracked to Mono Lake, bypassed Bodie (the road was closed) and went through Hawthorne, home of the Army Ammunition Plant and the nearby “test” facility for Sandia Labs.  (Sandia/Lawrence Livermore Labs are heavily involved with VERY scary stuff . . .). There were camouflaged bunkers for miles with below grade railroad tracks (we could see only the very tops of the engines). No, I did not take pictures.

These are pictures of Hwy 395 in the winter:

We crossed over to Nevada 375, known as the Extraterrestrial Highway.  After going through Rachel, epicenter of the sightings, we decided to camp out in the open desert.  We travelled for 37 miles without seeing another car, then 25 miles until we saw the second car.  This is our desert campsite, a flat spot amongst the rolling cacti laden hills. We were visited by terrestrials during the night, in the form of range cattle.

Driving into the sunrise we noticed a new, small spider crack in the windshield and promptly made a reservation with SafeLite.  We need to get their app installed on our phone, this is becoming commonplace.  They took us right in and made the repair within an hour.

It is supposed to rain tomorrow and our original plans were to visit nearby Zion National Park . . . .