Moominmama's Adventures

In which Moominmama considers those who lived in Utah's canyons long ago and learns more about cryptobiotic soils... Gettings to the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park requires crossing through Bears Ears National Monument, also public land but run by a different federal agency and receiving a lower level of protection, one that gives weight to economic and recreational needs. Among other things, that means that a lot of this land provides open range for cattle. While I've often seen cows grazing, this is one of the first times I've seen actual cowboys moving a herd. I came around a corner in my car as this group was crossing and got to watch the two cowboys and their dogs direct this herd down the slope on the other side of the road.  Bears Ears is the focus of a fight involving the Trump administration, which previously shrank its size to open it up for more uranium mining only to have Biden reverse the move.  That reversal is unlikely to hold now, but I want t...

Wherein Moominmama evicts a family of mice and explores the goblins of Goblin Valley State Park... Moominmama is driving around with the windows down, at least for a few more days. It turns out she picked up a mouse somewhere in her travels, a mouse that chewed up part of her cabin air filter to create a nest under the engine cover. She then gave birth. Moominmama spent the better part of a day in Baker, Nevada, evicting the family before crossing into Utah. Mama mouse had not been wise in her choice of accommodations, and three of the babies died. Fortunately, she shoved them out of the engine compartment and dropped them on my passenger-side floor where I could easily remove them. Three others, I chased out by lifting up the car hood and banging on the interior and roaring like a lion. They ran out the same passenger-side exit, and my new friend Robert sucked them up with his shop vac. Six mice total. More banging and roaring later, while Robert took apart areas under the glove box a...

  In which Moominmama rides the Nevada Northern Railway, and hikes in the Great Basin... Moominmama was hoping to take a train ride behind a 115-year-old steam engine here in Ely  (pronounced: EE-lee), Nevada. Dropping by the station to buy a ticket for the next day, I was able to get some photos as they fired up the boiler on Engine #93.  One of the interesting things about this railroad museum is that it's a living history museum (and national landmark under the U.S. Parks Service) with a complete rail yard.  The cavernous machine shop holds up to eight locomotives or other train cars, and a new generation of machinists and mechanics is learning to maintain them.  Unfortunately, old #93 dropped a wheel mechanism after I took this photo, and the machine shop was not able to fix it in time for Moominmama's trip a day later. Moominmama had to settle for a 1950s diesel engine instead - see photo above.  Not the same at all. But as part of the visit to the rai...

Wherein Moominmama hikes in the John Muir Wilderness and joins a ceremony where Japanese Americans declare "Never Again is Now"... Driving into the eastern Sierras is like arriving on a different planet from the sand and sagebrush below. At 10,000 to 11,000 feet, the air has a chill, there's snow on the mountaintops, and everything smells of ponderosa pine and moist earth. Even the bird calls are different. After a week in the valley, the mountains were calling, and Moominmama drove up to hike in the John Muir Wilderness, choosing a three-mile trail up Mount Whitney to Lone Pine Lake. The days had been warm, but I wasn't sure how much snow I'd find on the trail. As it turned out, I got a good 2.5 miles before I had to put on microspikes to navigate the snow, which was firmly packed down. What spectacular views! And fascinating plant life. This is manzanita, a bush with tiny teardrop flowers that will eventually turn into berries. It is related to a bush I'd se...

In which Moominmama hugs a 3,000 year-old tree and thrills to the views from the Alabama Hills in California... Due to a couple of errors, Moominmama did not make her planned camping spot after exiting Death Valley, but this turned into the best mistake she ever made when she landed at the foot of Mount Whitney in the Alabama Hills. She's been drinking her coffee most mornings outside, watching the sun light up the snow and grey cliffs of the Sierras. I am not the only person to feel like I've discovered a gem. Hollywood has used this area around Lone Pine for television and movies since silent film. If you ever watched the Lone Ranger, Bonanza, How the West Was Won or more recently Django Unchained, you've seen the Alabama Hills. They've even been a stand-in for India in the film Gunga Din or for exotic planets in Star Trek. And there's a funny story about how it came by its name. During the Civil War, early prospectors sympathetic to the South named the area after...

  Wherein Moominmama visits the red-light district of Rhyolite, makes a new friend and explores the driest desert in North America... As Moominmama reaches the end of her tour of the Mohave desert, it's hard to imagine that Death Valley has been a place of human habitation for a long time.  The Timbisha Shoshone people have been here for hundreds of years and continue to live here after fighting successfully for the right to a parcel within the national park near Furnace Creek. There are roughly 30-35 Shoshone who live here, and they call this land Timbisha. It has been a land of life, not death, for them. Mesquite trees, which can run their roots deep into the soil to reach the underground aquifer, grow long green pods that will dry and provide a nutritious flour. In the mountains, there are piñon trees with delicious pine nuts (yum!) Co-existence with the parks staff hasn't always been easy. My new friend Alissa, an archeologist who works for the park service here, said one ...

In which Moominmama deals with setbacks, scares and repairs ... There won't be as many photos in today's post because Moominmama had to put her efforts into keeping the Moominhouse operational. I intended to spend a few days at Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area outside Las Vegas hiking, but instead, I'm in the city looking for parts, making calls and troubleshooting. It seems like a close call happens at least once per travel season. This time it wasn't a tornado, but the Moominhouse got sideswiped by an 18-wheeler that moved into her lane before she was out of it! Imagine my surprise! I thought it was just a close call at the time and only discovered we'd bumped when I arrived at my next stop. There, I discovered a window scraped and cracked in one corner. (See photo: fairly minor.) Later, I would find a couple other problems on the same side of the trailer: a fan that helped cool the fridge stopped working, and a storage compartment hinge has cracked. The...