Great Basin National Park in Nevada gets its name because it is located in the Great Basin desert. The park has a cave (which was closed), Wheeler peak, Bristlecone pines, the only glacier in Nevada, and tons and tons of stars. I could even see the milky way.
We arrived in Great Basin on Friday June 26th and camped here for two nights. All 
campsites were first come first serve. That didn’t worry me because this is not a popular National Park and it seemed like it would be easy to get a spot. Well, we arrived about 2pm on Friday. The sign at the entrance stated all campgrounds were full. What? We were not expecting that. We decided we had to verify and we drove to Lower Lehman campground, and drove through. There are 11 sites in this campground and yes they were all full.
Then we drove to Upper Lehman campground. There are 24 sites there, and yes they were all full. Now we have two strikes and are getting a bit worried. We then went to the visitors center to see if any park rangers were which – it was completely closed. We did end up seeing a park ranger driving around and asked him about camping. His suggestion was to drive through all the campgrounds and see if there were any sites. Hmmm, that’s what we were doing. On a side note, the park stamp was available at the cafe next door.
So off to the third and final campground that was open in the park, Baker Creek Campground with 38 campsites. This campground is on a maintained dirt road at 7,500 feet. What do you know, we did get lucky and found a spot. We were so relieved! This National Park is pretty remote and the closest town is Baker, NV with one gas station a few houses and no campgrounds. There are not a lot of other options in the area. The campground had pit toilets and no potable water, but we had a spot! We then go out our chairs and watched the other campers arrive and try and find a spot, there were quite a few. The campground was full when we walked around it later in the evening. It was pretty warm here, even at the higher elevation. Yes, Baker Creek ran through the campground, we didn’t get a spot close to the creek though.
Bristlecone Trail and Glacier Trail
The next day we drove the Wheeler drive and got some hiking in. We hiked to the Bristlecone Trail to see the Bristlecone pine trees. Some of which look dead, but are not. They are very old, grow twisted, found at high elevation and have very hard bark that keeps them resistant to bugs, disease, etc. Then from there we continued on to the glacier at 10,800 feet. There were 5 kids in their 20’s laying around by the sign. We chatted with them and overheard them talking about how old they were getting. ha! One of them had a dog she carried up in her backpack. Dogs are not allowed on any trails in national parks. On our way down we took a side trail and hiked to Teresa Lake, an alpine lake. We ate lunch at a picnic table at the trail head. The parking lot is pretty small. When we got here there were only a few cars in the lot. At lunch it was full and cars were parked down the road.
Baker Creek Trail
Later that evening we hiked from the campground to the Baker Creek trail. We saw a majestic elk standing a little ways off from us. He didn’t move at all, just stood there surveying the land. We came across some other hikers who warned us of a hawk who was buzzing them. We carried on and on the way out we didn’t see the hawk, but on the way back, the hawk flew right over our heads screeching! Hubby went back and got the hawk to dive at him again and videoed it. The video didn’t come out that great though.
Stars
Sunday morning we were up about 3:30am. The air conditioner went out in the van on Friday. There was a loud screeching noise and then the a/c didn’t work. Since we didn’t have a/c and would have to drive across the entire state of Nevada we needed an early start to beat the heat. Well, the stars were just beautiful. There were so many stars out you couldn’t see the big dipper or recognize constellations, but you could see the milky way. Alas, I have no pictures of that since the cell phone wouldn’t cooperate and the good camera had the telephoto lens on it and wasn’t cooperating either, or maybe it was user error because it was so early.
Star gazing, the bristlecone pines and the glacier are on the must see list for this park!
momof4boyz 