Another day of bugs

Another day of bugs... and caches. And gravel roads. And wild horses, and cows. And spectacular scenery.

We spent the entire day driving north through the Dixie Valley, which runs for about 160 miles sandwiched between ranges of mountains. Interesting things going on there, but it's all government land (we think). All day long, white pickup trucks passed us, idling on the shoulder of the road while one of us fetched a geocache, going both directions. Toward the end of the day, we found a geothermal plant and chatted with one of the white truck drivers, asking him the best route out of the valley. He'd never gone out the north end, so couldn't help. So we did the logical thing: we just followed the trail of geocaches, and they led us down the right dirt road.

There was no private land or ranches until we reached the northern end. There we found irrigated hay fields and range land for cattle. The rest was sagebrush (not my favorite) and dirt and rock. (But I think my sinuses are finally getting acclimated to sage and juniper, after 3 weeks of living in it.)

The valley holds a 620 cache power trail; we did only 150 of them before we had to stop and just drive; even then, we didn't make it to Winnemucca until after dark. We did cache #620, just for fun.

Our day was bookended with a morning sunrise (with a surprise glimpse of snow on mountains), and an evening sunset.