September
26th, Yosemite National Park, CA
Joyce and
I were working on doing better with regard to our schedule or actually, I was
doing better about estimations on travel time due to a bit of a lecture on the
topic by Joyce. I needed to hear it and
vowed to do better. My usual style of
‘laissez-faire’ was not working when it comes to getting to campsites before
dark. And let me tell you, it really
does make a difference.
Needless
to say, we had a lot of miles to cover and managed much to our disbelief to be
on our way west by 8:30 that morning.
The most important focus of today’s driving through the rest of Nevada
and into the Sierra Nevada mountains was watching our gas tanks and good water
intake. The gas issue was the absolutely
most important thing with long expanses of highway through remote nothingness
and no facilities whatsoever. One of our
first stretches was 167 miles before the next gas station. I was grateful for the reliable Mini because
even if one had AAA or roadside assistance it wouldn’t do you any good since
they couldn’t be reached. Not a cell
signal for miles and even GPS was sketchy.
Of course, GPS wasn’t needed as there was only one road and only two
directions to go. We went full blast
forward and I do mean full blast woohoo!
I was
determined to make up some time if possible and what better highway to do it on
than this. We were on Highway 6 that crosses Nevada, just below Highway 50.
It is flat in the basin areas with hardly any turns so within no time I
was accustomed to cruising at close to 100 mph.
We were checking our time versus the prescribed time and I managed to
chop off an hour from the norm during that 167 mile dash. What fun and no concern for getting nabbed by
radar….it’s not worth the time or expense to patrol that highway.
It was
still a long day of driving even with the high speeds across Nevada but we
finally got out of the Basin and Range territory upon nearing Mono Lake. It was intriguing to see the Great Basin but
I have to admit to feeling some relief at getting out of it. There just isn’t much room for error out
there. If you ever find yourself driving
across that territory, pay close attention to all the precautions. It’s serious business out there and not a
place to flake out.
We came off that basin area with the shock of
Mono Lake. One moment you are surrounded
by flat desert and the next you go up a slight incline and summit to look down
on a huge lake with forested mountains beyond.
This lake was near the edge of the eastern entrance of Yosemite so we
were getting close….or so we thought.
No comments:
Post a Comment