A nominally chronological selection of images from a last couple of weeks in the northwestern corner of the Great Basin as at lastly alone we continue to wander among dogs and grasses while the temperature relentlessly climbs,  Linda, fortuitously, being absent for the heat…

[“Gramma Seed”, always one of my favorites, flame cut by hand in the Libre dirt many eons ago]

Hopeful sprouts of tamarisk [above, for reasons] and willowroot intrusions extruded from irrigation pipes [below]…

Work within the repo continues; shelves, screendoors and, thanks to Jonboy Wags of Fernley Electric, lights at [temporarily] last.  The final hookup awaits “real” power when the new solar oh-so-dearly comes online later in July….

Evening and morning through trees; breakfast and Lefty’s morning ride to the laundry…

In the interim the aforementioned last trip to Alturas occurs…and Moon.  Also, it becomes difficult to convey, really convey, how warm things continue to get for days and nights on end , end on end…

 

But warm it was…a quick trip to Gerlach town and  – “License plates? We don’t need no stinkin’ license plates…”  – not out here on Fury Road West…

…still, even after that brief run into town for the mail, a guy’s gotta eat…

At the end of the first day of Fourth of Juplaya Willey came late, with entertaining tales of rollovers and mired motorhomes on the desert, to make final decisions about trenches and sheds for the solar to be squeezed in between this weekend’s wreckage and the long roll-up to Burning Man, thus tying down our last loose end.  With flashlights we walked the trenchlines, then stood around as the moon rose enjoying tales of wrecks up and down the desert, Special Agent Dan Love of the BLM, and, most fun of all, how to tow a Honda Civic [!] out of High Rock Canyon.  For those few of you who may never have navigated the length of High Rock Canyon allow me to say that a Honda Civic, or anything approximating the legal equivalent of same, is an extremely unsuitable vehicle for that terrain, even if you haven’t noticed the hole some high rock ripped in your oil pan and drive until the engine, such as it is, seizes up.  Willey said it was pretty tricky getting the tow truck in there, too.  A good time was had by all, followed by a last couple of days wherein the heat relented [but the mosquitoes didn’t], Lefty and I made another laundry run in the ’82 Chev, Linda returned and I went back to Parker to reconnoiter, one last time,  the one that escaped the tow truck..

…so goodbye to all that.

But to be continued as we load up for the next installment…

 

M