Great Basin national Park, Nevada

Great Basin National Park is a long way from everywhere.We left Utah to travel the loneliest road in the United States, Route 50 across Western Utah to Nevada.Great Basin National Park is one of the least visited parks in the system but in our opinion it's one of the best. After all, how many national parks have an natural Arch, a Glacier, and a Limestone Cave. Exactly one. The park also has 13060 foot Wheeler Peak. We camped in the Upper Lehman Creek Campground with Lehman Creek burbling by a few feet away. We would have gone further up to 9,800 foot Wheeler Peak Campground but it was still closed due to snow and was not due to open for another 4 weeks or more. The first day's adventure was Lehman Cave, a Limestone cavern to rival many of the more popular caverns around the country. We took a 90 minute Ranger Guided Tour of some 6 to 8 "rooms" and saw some amazing limestone formations including Stalactites and Stalagmites (of course) but also Shields, Soda Straws, Pillars and many more. We took the cave tour in the morning and decided to do a short 3 mile hike up "Pole Canyon" in the afternoon. Pole Canyon is without doubt one of the most beautiful canyons we have hiked. We continued up the canyon for 3 miles until we hit snow left from the winter at around 8600 feet. On the way back down the canyon we ran into this fellow, a Skink. We rested for a day and went to town in Baker (Pop. 205) for some coffee, bread, and beer (the essentials). The next day we hiked from the Lehman Spring Campground to 10,000 feet to see the Wheeler Peak Campground. The Wheeler Peak Campground, now under 4-6 feet of snow, is beautiful. The sites are nestled in a meadow on the edge of Ponderosa Pine and Aspen forest with a truly spectacular view of Wheeler Peak. We plan to revisit Great Basin in the summer some time when we can stay at this campground, and maybe climb Wheeler Peak. As you can see we hit a bit of snow, but being the intrepid hikers that we are, we were well prepared and had few problems getting up there. After another rest day we drove 25 miles to the trailhead for Lexington Arch, one of the few limestone arches in the country. Most arches, like those found in the Moab, Utah area at Arches and Canyonlands National Parks are sandstone. Lexington Arch is very different in its structure and in the topography of the the area. The terrain is very rugged with steep trails and difficult footing. The arch itself is 6 stories high and is at over 8200 feet. We've seen many arches in our western visits, but this one is truly unique. We have managed to catch many of our National Parks and Monuments in bloom this year, and Great Basin was no exception. As we prepared to leave after 5 days at Great Basin we put it on our list for a return. It is one of the best of our park excursions so far on this trip.

Next: The Grand Canyon, North and South Rims, and Ted's first view of the most famous of all National Parks.