We really enjoyed our stay at Eureka Gold Country Inn last night. They had the nicest bath towels, great coffee and the first hotel to provide a really nice breakfast. Eureka was settled in 1864 by silver prospectors. Mining has been economic mainstay until this day. In their heyday, they had 50 mines that produced lead, silver, gold and zinc processing more than 700 tons of ore a day.
We didn’t leave until around 8 am to allow the sun to get a little higher in the sky. Since we are heading East now we have the morning sun.
We pretty much traveled 320 miles in the Nevada and Utah desert today other than a side trip to the Great Basin National Park. Thankfully this morning was cool and I enjoyed that before the heat in the afternoon.
We are riding on the route of the Pony Express.
Picture stop.
Hard to image the temperature change from the heat in the desert in the valley to snow in the mountains.
The desert floor was very windy as you can see a great location for windmills.
We have had to fight a lot of wind on this trip, especially through Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico. But also some really strong gusts in California and Nevada. Several times on this trip the wind has been so strong you have to lean your bike into the wind like going around a turn.
We were looking forward to this National Park because you climb to over 10,000 feet and it contains Wheeler Peak Glacier. This glacier is the southernmost glacier in the Northern Hemisphere.The park also is known for it’s bristlecone pine tree. A cool fact is that the oldest nonclonal organism ever discovered was a Great Basin bristlecone pine tree at least 5,000 years old. It was cut down in 1964 by a graduate student and US Forest Service personnel for research purposes.
There are not a lot of guardrails on the climb up the mountain so you had to be very careful on the motorcycle and were limited where you could stop and take pictures but the views were amazing.
Looking from 10,000 feet down into desert floor.
Shortly after leaving the park, we crossed into Utah. This was a cool mountain. Most of this section of Utah was not very scenic but this mountain range was nice.
This almost looked like the salt flats. We have driven on the salt flats in 2016 and it is further north in Utah but I think this must also be salt.
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