Saturday morning once again around the ponds,

this time with a rare sighting of goslings and

then,

second try, the Smoke Creek Road to 447 and

up

to the Cali line.

Surprise Valley, Cedarville,

Cedar Pass with uncommon clarity,

Alturas, errands at the hardware, foods from the Holiday

and, sadly sighting the place little Lefty was last alive, barely, out of town.  A year ago…

last time I was up there, too.   299 east, Cedarville again, trading books

for books [but not for gas] and across the causeway to pavement’s end, 8A and Nevada where, one wet March in 1967, I went slithering clueless over those high plateaux with Rick, Ernie and Ernie’s girlfriend in Rick’s father’s red Ford pickup.  Pavement ends, Nevada begins; same as it ever was and except for Highway 140 – the “Winnemucca-to-the-Sea Highway – being punched through and paved from Adel to Denio sometime before ’72 nothing else out there’s changed since aside from what the BLM’s draconian restrictions on grazing the green desert

have done to the ranches.  So, over the hills to

Long Valley and lunch…then instead

of continuing 125 east to Denio into what were back then Parts Unknown it was south

towards Gerlach

with a small detour near the upper reaches of Little High Rock Canyon to look in on

Denio Camp

and the Reservoir, all quite scenic on a quiet Saturday afternoon.

Returning to 34 the only interruption in seventy + miles of solitude was a sprawl of motorized recreationalists unloading ATVs from giant trailers and opulent motorhomes below Hog Ranch Creek [not shown] until, emerging from Leadville Canyon,

I met a white Cadillac Escalade at the ford*…but intersected no one else all the way through the Hualapai, into Gerlach and home, groceries gotten.

 

*A GM at a Ford…