back into Nevada, crossed the Fortynine Mountains, dropped into Long Valley just north

of Vya, navigated

23 miles of 34,

stopped briefly after 34A veered off into the Sheldon Refuge at a CCC Cabin,

open and available for overnights as would once have been customary everywhere in this country [now most places you find are totally trashed, shot up, whatever; it was wonderful to find one that wasn’t].  From there steep washboardy gravel took us up to and over

Bald Mountain Summit, down past the historic Refuge Headquarters to pause at Charles Hapgood’s Last Chance Ranch, last surviving ranch in the area until the Audubon Society and Boone and Crockett Club bought it and 34,000 acres [expanded to 540,000 in 1936]

in 1931 and the house shown below became the first Refuge Headquarters. From 1936 to 1942 the Civilian Conservation Corps made improvements throughout the Refuge

and across much of the remote west which last to this day….a day we pressed on east to Swan Lake Reservoir which in all my years passing through here I’d never seen dry and

where Bryan spotted a small band of Pronghorn inexplicably running

to intersect us

as we headed north to the our turn, a road less traveled between an unnamed canyon

into which we ultimately descended and Catnip Creek to the north.

Slow but not excruciating progress took us to within sight of the IXL Ranch which was much drier

than expected and looked, until we reached the gate, uninhabited at which point

a young couple in a 4X4 side by side with a red heeler dog turned around to leave…up for the day from Badger Camp, 49 miles across the Refuge.  Hope we didn’t spook them and wish we’d talked a bit more but off they went, tearing up the hill we’d so gingerly eased down a short time before while we put together a rudimentary lunch on the tailgate

before site exploration and, in my case, documentation.  Were I doing an abandoned buildings series now there’d be more than enough to work from from just from this brief visit though back when Ted and I were making prints this was still very much a working ranch as it wasn’t folded into by the Refuge until 1991. Not much can be found about it online although even

 recent mapping shows it to be intensely green [you wouldn’t know that this year]

and it was doubtless an important part of the local economy for many decades until

cattle were legislated off the land.

A little after one we were out the gate and on our way home; up lower Guano Valley thinking

about Bill Witherspoon squatting north of the highway [which wasn’t there yet] at the

Shirk  Ranch to make sky watercolors sixty years ago, Highway 140 which we took through 30 miles of Memorial Day traffic [all three of them] to Adel where at least the Warner Valley

was verdant and from there gravel south to California’s Surprise Valley, at which point

Bryan drove to Cedarville for gas and, back in Nevada,

over cricket-stained 447

to the dusty desert and home

for dinner.

306 miles, eight hours… a good and interesting companion making it all less worrisome

than being out there alone though not the same of being out there alone…