Living well in Tamarindo, Costa Rica: Travel, Land Cruisers, Gardening, Food, and Jewelry

Moab 2008 Trip, Day 7

Tonopah Station. It was cold, they take dogs. Other than that, I don't have much to endorse.

Tonopah proper has some older buildings that I liked

More old buildings in Tonopah

And old cars. There is plenty of "old" there.

...and a CREEPY "clown motel". I'm afraid of clowns, a little, and this place looks to me to be straight out of a Stephen King novel. I *almost* wish we had stayed there. Just to say we did. (note freaky 2/3-size painted guy on wall)

More old. More Tonopah. Pretty mountains

On the road again... with great, big, fluffy clouds

Nevada desert dropping into Eastern California desert

I wish that I had noticed the highway marker before clicking the shutter

Doggy break. Sage.

I have no idea why I took this picture, hope you enjoy it.

Probably an awesome trout stream. Owens Valley, California (and no, we didn't have rods nor licenses, dangit)

First of several hot springs with some hippy-dippy self-appointed caretaker who turned out to be a real peice of work. The best description I can offer is that he was a burnt-out surf goat type who was feeling territorial about "his" mungy little hot spring in the middle of almost-nowhere and sent us looking for a "better" one...

...which lead us down some well-maintained fire roads with towering trees

also soaring vistas -the Eastern Sierra in California is pretty. Go there.

We finally found the "super secret" springs that the Goat had described. So secret that they had posted signs, and were entirely concreted in and no camping allowed.

At least the setting remained spectacular, but we decided to press onward

Soop. Surveying the Scenery serenely.

A lousy picture of a pretty building

Now *this* is more like what we were looking for!

Natural hot spring cascading down into a natural pool formed by naturally(?) stacking rocks in a rough pattern.

Complete with wildflowers

And more wildflowers

and more wildflowers!

Majestic trees, seen from our campsite

We even needed a little 4wd to get to our site

After a soak in the springs, we built a firepit and enjoyed a tasty dinner.

Our site

I like the progress of my insulation when everyone else stayed pretty much the same.
Left to right: Steve, Annette, Seth, Soop

Soop put on a different hat, I'm sporting down jacket. The tropis will do that to you.

Campfire beats Casino 10/10 (but isn't as warm).

Labels: 4wd, 4x4, california, camping, day trip, expedition, land cruiser, nevada, photo, vacation

# posted by Steve Broyles @ 5/02/2009 12:50:00 PM 0 comments

Moab Trip Day 6 (from 2008)

Holy Late posting, Batman! If I don't get this wrapped up in the next few days, I'm about to get lapped by a whole year of procrastination! Yikes!
In case you haven't been sitting on the edge of your seat awaiting this installment in the saga you go back to the all the Moab trip posts or each installment: Day 1-3, Day 4, Day 5.

We started the day in Bryce Canyon, UT at a huge hotel where we zonked out the night before after a very long afternoon of trying to nurse along an automatic transmission that didn't want to go. You can also go see this story with fewer pictures per page.

woke up to see a teepee (tipi? teapea? TP?) across the pond

Ducks, too. You just never know what to expect in exotic Bryce Canyon.

Always sad to see a Cruiser on a towtruck. But better than seeing it drive 12mph for 4 hours. The truck and our travel buddies rolled off towards an auto transmission shop that came highly recommended by a friend in California. Soop and I pointed in that general direction, but figured we had many hours to kill exploring.

First step: drive through hole in rock.

I could post dozen of pretty shots with interesting rocks in them. I probably will. These are "hoodoos" and the stuff for which Bryce Canyon is famous.

The park itself is on my list of future places to visit, but they don't allow dogs, so it wasn't such a good idea for us on this trip.

This may look like your average, shot up road sign...

...but in fact, it is a shot-up road sign that limits access to a road that doesn't exist. Not the weirdest thing we would see today.

Old School Camper!

We climbed up into the mountains again, headed towards Cedar Breaks, which is purported to be lovely.

Turned off on a random fire road, trying to make the drive take longer, and see some sights. Great fire roads!

"the fence...protect from livestock..." Might work better if it were a little less.... broken.

Along the way, we stumbled onto this nifty spot. Big underground cave. Very big.

The entrance is basically a hole in the ground- lava formations- bats- good stuff.

Look! I'm in a cave! In Utah!

Colman was a little reluctant... so we left him at the surface, probably better for the cave denizens anyway.

Cave interior. I'll bet it is a lot of fun to go spelunking here, but that wasn't on our agenda for the day.

... and the batty areas are blocked off so that folks like us don't disturb their hibernation, which can be lethal as they could lose precious heat/energy that they need to make it till spring.

The mountains here are much different than those we were seeing just a few hours before. And the fire from 20 years ago had really left its mark on them.

Another entrance (exit?) for the same cave, some distance away from the first one.

But wait! There's more!

Antelope. They were pretty frequent along the road. Driving at night around here must be a little dodgy.

Crazy lava flow in the middle of nothing. We never did find out what the story is behind these... they seem to just be a big seam of lava rock that stretches a few miles from one non-descript point to another non-descript point.

Adding a Steve for scale

More lava flow (floe?)

Up up up goes the random road we chose.

Another change in trees.

Hmmm.... Ya think the road isn't open just yet? Bummer. No Cedar Breaks for us. :( We debated pushing through, it wasn't far to where we wanted to go, but we didn't have a winch, no snow clothes, didn't expect anyone else to come by, and didn't want to spend several hours shoveling ourselves out of being stuck. Discretion won the day.

So instead we stopped on the highway and had lunch. I'll bet that when the road is open, this isn't nearly as peaceful a place to eat.

Since we were killing time anyway, we made delicious fried sausage sandwinches and soaked up the view.

What a view!

Summit, Brian's Head in the background (which is probably more interesting when you are traveling with someone named Brian) Starkly beautiful.

Nice looking little town of Parowan, UT

Not hard to find churches in Utah, some are impressive.

We finally arrived at the Transmission Wizard- I've since forgotten his name, but the guy was great. He got Seth and Annette's truck running better than ever (a few tweaks) in just a few hours. Apparently we had the good luck to get a guy who had spent years perfecting the art or repairing this particular transmission.

Not every car gets in and out of there in just a few hours, apparently.

Considering the drug problem in this part of the world, we think they might consider changing the name of the place.

The old train station (mission?) in Caliente. I think Nevada, by now. Cool old building.

Gratuitous self potrait

Not much else to photograph out on highway 375

...and a few more...

Uhm, "How much fuel de we have?" "I'm sure that there is a gas station... somewhere"

You've seen these mountains before, in movies about barren places.

"So this is it? The actual *middle* of nowhere?"

Nowhere to the left

More nowhere that way too.

But there must be water, somewhere. Read the sign. I'm guessing this isn't such a fresh-smelling place on a hot day.

Impressive.

Yet another type of rocky rock

And then we found Rachel, Nevada. Probably the weirdest place I've ever been. But they had some gas, and they had cold beer, and the people were really friendly.

Yup. Rachel.

As it was getting late, and the "whole town" was sold out of rooms due to a bike ride, we pushed onward.

The bar. Rachel, NV. Not an outpost of liberal thinking.

Rachel's bar

What alien town bar would be complete without a mind-scan protector?

Happy travelers: Soop, Steve, Annette, Seth

They filmed part of ID4 here, apparently.

Rachel. I'll never forget you.

The Lisa Loeb look-alike bartender told us about some hot springs nearby where we could camp, but to be careful, because the owner was a real jerk and got mad at people for camping there... we checked it out...

...but decided to move along as it gave us a distinct "beginning of a bad story" vibe. After driving too far, we ended up in Tonopah, NV: the stargazing capital. Also a big stinky casino. But it was a warm place to rest and it had been a very long day.