- Miles today: 601
- Trip total: 7697
- Weather: Hazy, 96F in LV at 09:00. Scattered clouds 90F in Ely NV at noon. Clear and warm.
- Roads: Straight and long. Cruise control.
- Theme song: "Leaving Las Vegas" by Sheryl Crow.
- Teresaism: "You would have to turn it into a lesson."
- Today's lesson: The Wisconsin Glacier
The original plan was to visit
Death Valley National Park but the
forecast for today was 115F and we learned in Las Vegas that our air conditioner can't keep up above 100F and that could get us into trouble. So we altered our course and began the trek toward home via the most direct route.
This took us north across the high Nevada desert. On the advice of Don's brother Dan, we used a straight, direct route on state highways that avoided the interstates but probably saved us several hours. It's much more interesting to see what is out there anyway, like the highway to
Area 51.
Following the eastern line of barbed-wire and the random government vehicle, the road was nothing more than high desert, rocks and sagebrush with uninterrupted cruise-control for hundreds of miles. Don't expect any more stories of high-adventure at this point, because we are just heading home.
After so many days in the desert, Teresa says she is ready to get back to the Evergreen State (although it is where we live in western Washington that isn't also rocks and sagebrush).
I tried to make the scenery more interesting by pointing out to her that the rock formations in the Mohave region are here, but they are tumbled and rolled by the glacier that covered the area during the last ice-age and greated the
Great Basin.
You can mark the very point where the glacier halted its advance by the tumbled rocks and boulders that are all clustered over a short span, where they were no longer being pushed southward as the glacier receded. North of this line, the glacier's sediments were deposited along with rich soil layers from repeated breaches of the
Lake Bonneville Ice-Dam, creating the broad valleys and sweeping hills of northern Nevada and southern Idaho.
Driving north like this, you can trace the path of the receding glacier, from southern Nevada and the wind-weathered rocks of the Mohave, through the glacial terminus and up to the northern part of the Great Basin. Archaeologists are still looking for the alien
SUV's at Area 51 at the southern end of the basin that started the global-warming cycle that melted the
Wisconsin Glacier 20,000 years ago.
Back to Idaho, we crossed the Snake River at Twin Falls just as the sun was setting, avoiding having the sun right in our eyes for the drive west.
This took us north across the high Nevada desert. On the advice of Don's brother Dan, we used a straight, direct route on state highways that avoided the interstates but probably saved us several hours. It's much more interesting to see what is out there anyway, like the highway to Area 51.
I tried to make the scenery more interesting by pointing out to her that the rock formations in the Mohave region are here, but they are tumbled and rolled by the glacier that covered the area during the last ice-age and greated the Great Basin.
