Duke and I have made two back road trips with our new four wheel drive truck recently,
Sunday we drove through High Rock Canyon. To get there from Reno we headed north past Pyramid Lake to Gerlach. Gerlach has only about 300 residents but it is the largest settlement in an area of about 10,000 square miles according to the Moon Handbook of Nevada. The Moon Handbook also described high Rock Canyon and how to get there.
From Gerlach we headed north on highway 34 which turns to gravel after about 20 miles. After several miles of gravel road we turned off on the 4 wheel drive road. The High Rock Canyon is this amazing canyon with 800 foot walls of rock and a narrow very difficult trail going through it. The trail is part of an intact segment of the original emigrant trail to Oregon. We found one of the carvings on the wall from an original emigrant from Wisconsin who went through the canyon in 1855. The trail was very rocky and remote. We saw only two other people. Our new paint job got scratched up a bit and we had to drive through a couple of creeks hoping they weren't too deep. It was a beautiful day with beautiful scenery. The icing on the cake was the herd of pronghorn antelope we saw racing across the hill above us as we left the canyon.
If you would like to see all of our pictures from High Rock Canyon they are available on Flickr here.
Sunday Duke and I decided to drive to the fire lookout on Verdi Peak which is directly west of our house, The road is very rough but the drive is only about 20 miles and the 360 degree views are stupendous. We could see Mount Rose, Boca and Stampede Reservoirs, our house and down town Reno. Wow!
If you woudl like to see the Verdi Peak pictures on Flickr they are available here.
