Monthly Archives: April 2023

Flagstaff AZ April 23

Two major objectives on this trip: Great Basin National Park and visiting relatives in Flagstaff Arizona. Great Basin National Park was established in 1986 and represents a small portion of the great basin area of the western US. The great basin area stretches from southern Idaho and Oregon to just north of Las Vegas and over into Zion national park area of Utah.

The great basin is marked by water courses that stay within the region. There is no outflow of water to any river that leads to an ocean. This huge geographic region is marked by multiple mountain ranges with valleys in between. Since it is a desert area, there’s not a lot of water. What do you do is see small rivers and lakes scattered throughout the region.

Thus, there is a wide diversity of topography, flora and fauna. However, the repetitive nature of going up a mountain side to a pass and then going down the other side of the mountain and through the valley up to the next mountain range, repeating that process again and again, is the common theme of this region.

Great Basin National Park is 300 miles from Las Vegas and about 250 miles from Salt Lake City. We chose to fly into Las Vegas as a cheaper flight alternative. Fying into Vegas also gave us the option to add on a quick trip, visiting Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument, just north of Las Vegas.

Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument does not have a visitor center. It does have some temporary trails. We were able to pick up the National Park Service passport stamp at Lake Mead national recreation area visitor center about 25 miles east of Las Vegas. We made stopping here on Tuesday afternoon our priority after landing at the airport.

The Lake Mead visitor center gave us an opportunity to observe the lowered water level of Lake Mead, see the visitor center film once again, and enjoy the profusion of wildflowers around the visitor center. We stopped in Boulder City for dinner, having a great barbecue meal at our second choice restaurant. The first choice was closed for the filming of some movie scene but we were very pleased with the Fox Smokehouse Barbecue. We spent the night at the Tru hotel located close to the airport, giving us easy access to Lake Mead, and to Tule Springs.

Wednesday morning we drove up to Tule Springs, leaving the hotel around 8 AM. There are no permanent trails established yet. Tule Springs Fossil Beds is going through the park planning program and the temporary trails are the best they have to offer at the moment.

We rarely like to just drive from one destination to another so we stopped at Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge. The wildlife refuge contains some of those streams and a small lake contained in the great basin area. There was a pleasant half mile walk along the water course, mostly in shade. The visitor center was closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays so we had a snack outside on one of the benches.

We stopped for lunch in the small town of Pioche, Nevada, population about 1400. The diner was empty when we walked in but 10 to 12 people came in while we were there, providing a bit of people watching opportunity. We gassed up once again, as we were leaving town, at the local Sinclair station, as Chris conversed with the owner, who came out to wash our windshield.

Our lodging destination was Hidden Canyon Retreat, located about 10 miles outside of the almost deserted town of Garrison, Utah. Great Basin Park is in Nevada, Lodging opportunities are rare. Hidden Canyon retreat was a very pleasant find, located as the name implied down in a canyon by a stream just outside of the park boundary. We had a high clearance vehicle because the road to the resort is gravel, but was in good shape and could’ve been handled easily by a car, at least at this time of year. Hidden Canyon has a little store that provides basic food purchasing opportunities and we picked up our dinner for the two nights and breakfast in their store before proceeding to our room.

We drove to the national park the next morning. It’s the end of April, but the roads to the top of the 12,000 foot mountains are still closed due to snow. We spent the time before our 1 PM cave tour watching the video, reading exhibits, and going on two hikes located at two campgrounds not far from the visitor center.

Lehman cave is one of the star attractions of Great Basin National Park. Our 90 minute tour was led by a volunteer who did an excellent job explaining the cave and the various natural wonders one can observe in the cave.

Friday we left the resort before eight in order to reach Flagstaff at a reasonable time. The first section of the drive continued the great basin topography of mountain ranges and valleys as we headed over to interstate 15 in Utah. From interstate 15 over to Flagstaff was territory we have experienced several times before. However, we managed to stop at one new spot, Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park, in southern Utah.

Coral Pink Sand dunes was on our list, even though we have been to several other sand dune state and national parks, because of its name. I was hoping for more of a pink color to the sand dunes, but it was more in the coral range. 

The final drive was along US 89 past Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument with its colorful, extremely high ridges. We also stopped at Lake Powell and photographed the lower water level in this lake where we had houseboated for a week in 2015.

Ed and Chris. Flagstaff Arizona April 23