Our four more or less weekly 194 mile runs for groceries, tire repairs, hardware + recycling from Wall Spring on the Smoke Creek Desert to Alturas, California;

First trip – 10 June;

Highway 447 and back of Alturas Tire… [trip home not shown]

Second trip – 18 June;

Over the summit on 447;

Some hours later, Eagleville, California, and south…to 447 across Duck Flat…

Third trip –  26 June;

Post Post Office 447 north from Gerlach, NV; again across Duck Flat + towards Cali…

Some several hours later [recycle; groceries; wheel and tire repairs], south [bottom of Surprise Valley on Nevada side; Duck Valley]…and home.

+ mas…one more trip [leaking rear axle seals] before decamping for Colorado,

Which would be fourth – 01 July;

Once again 447 north, Duck Valley, Duck Flat, et al;

To a day awaiting axle seals and wandering about Alturas in the heat…

Until at last on 299 leaving Cedarville, CA, 2:30 in the afternoon, 96 degrees, to see how the roads on the Nevada side of Surprise Valley were; surprisingly good for eighteen or so graded gravel miles south;

Looking west across Surprise Valley to Eagleville while looking for a road continuing south;

…but nothing south from there; the only possibility diving onto a dry lakebed below Eagleville’s abandoned airstrip, so, not wanting to risk locked gates at the other end [a fairly new habit around here that can lead to considerable inconvenience exiting the back country] I went [a little] west…

to return to 447 south [with a slight detour around the west side of Duck Lake] to the road formerly known as CR 33 despite what those idiots at the assessor’s or google earth will tell you…and home by 4:30, 07 01 2014, the day d-CON, my favorite Rat Poison, was declared illegal in California…probably by rats.

…and that would be us, 67 miles short of Sutcliffe, at least until July 7th.

 

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