Wide Open Spaces

The West is big. It's actually huge. There is a ton of wide open spaces that are mostly run by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). A lot of the land that is managed by the BLM is used for cattle grazing, wildlife preserves, mining, and my personal favorite, it's open to us for recreation. Before we left on our big adventure, we hadn't really ever taken advantage of what the BLM had to offer.

A lot of the land has not only wide open spaces and cattle that will roam through your campsite, but amazing natural wonders that are unlike any other place on earth. There are old ghost towns, oodles of wildlife, ancient Native American artifacts, fossils, and great hikes. To see most of this stuff, you have to be willing to put in some time and effort and really get way out there.

During our 9 month road trip last year, our main focus was to see as many National Parks and natural wonders as we could muster. We quickly found that near most National Parks, the surrounding land was often run by the BLM and they had various offices and friendly staff that would point us in the right direction to see some cool stuff. Most of that cool stuff wasn't publicized on any website that we could find, but with a quick visit in a BLM office, we were on our way, out into the great wide open spaces.

When we left Bend last week for this mini 2 week road trip, our only goals were to get some warm sun, hopefully see some natural wonders while we camping out in wide open spaces, and to see some family. On our way south, the warm sun part wasn't looking too good. Brenda had found some BLM land that had some cool stuff to see and that she wanted to camp on near Winnemucca, Nevada. As we were driving through Winnemucca, the temperature was 24 degrees with a wind blowing in the 40's and gusting to the 70's.

Since I know that some of you reading this live in foreign countries and are still way behind the times using the old fashioned metric system, I thought I should translate those temperatures and wind speeds for you. 24 degrees Fahrenheit and 40 mph winds equals -5 degrees C and 65 Kph. I don't care if you are using the old fashioned metric system or our new fangled Imperial system, because either way you look at it, it was going to be a freezing cold night spent in a tent.

It was going to be so cold that I had not so casually said, “Let's get a hotel. This looks miserable!” Brenda's response was, “Don't be a weenie! We came out here to camp and that's just what we are going to do! This will be fun! Remember, we are on an adventure!” Oh, it's so great to have Brenda back.

We spent the night camped next to the Humbolt river freezing our butts off and hoping the tent wouldn't take flight during the big gusts of wind and we had sideways snow pelting the tent with a nice and not so gentle pitter-patter that reminded me all night long that sleep was not going to happen. I'm not going to lie, it was miserable. But I will say it was a beautiful spot and we even saw a real live beaver doing some handy work right next to our home for the night. Pretty cool (pun intended... it was actually freezing...and still pretty cool to see a beaver in action).

Our next night out in the boonies was going to be way out in the middle of nowhere. A good friend of ours told us of some BLM land in Southern Nevada that had some amazing sights to see and he guaranteed no one would be out there because it's really not easy to get to. He also made me promise to not tell anyone where it was so it wouldn't get overrun by other people looking for solitude. Since I promised not to, I can't tell you the name of the region. But I can tell you that it is the very southern area of Nevada, it butts up to Lake Mead, the Grand Canyon, and it's hundreds of thousands of acres with no one around.

This huge slice of public land had us driving for hours and hours down dirty, dusty, rocky, and sandy roads that took us farther and farther out into the middle of nowhere. We found some amazing old mining ghost towns, some colorful canyons and rock formations, ancient petroglyphs, and slept out under the stars. We hiked and explored and we just happened to get lucky because with some rare recent rainfalls in this section of desert, all of the plants were in full bloom. I don't recall ever being in the desert with so many flowers and so much green. It was spectacular.

If you have been following along our adventure for a while, you may remember that about a year ago, we were surrounded in our tent by a big pack of coyotes near Crater Lake. That aggressive pack of wild animals may have left a scar on my brain, because a handful of nights out into this little trip, while we were out in the great wide open, just as the sun went down, the local coyotes started howling all around us. They weren't aggressive and they weren't all that close, but I could hear lots of them...and I panicked.

“I'm sleeping in the car!” was my instant response. I put some more wood on the fire, filled up our tent with everything that was in our car, folded down the back seat, and rolled out my sleeping bag. Brenda just rolled her eyes and laughed. And I'm pretty sure she called me a weenie again.

I honestly can't tell you how many nights I've slept in a tent, but am going to go out on a limb and say it is well past the number of the average American. It's been hundreds of nights and most of those nights were out in the serious boonies. We've had bears roaming through camp, mountain lion tracks next to our tent in the morning, and all sorts of other critters rustling around us at night. Even with all of that, I've never once felt threatened or scared being in my tent. For some reason, that itty-bitty thin wall of our tent has always left me feeling secure. Those coyotes near Crater Lake may have given me a need for therapy, because as soon as I heard the coyotes this time, I was sure we were going to be eaten.

But don't worry because we survived the night. We actually survived a handful of nights sleeping under the stars, in our tent, and finally in the back of our car. The BLM land we were exploring was spectacular. And it was in the serious boonies. We were roughly 50 miles from the nearest paved road and there was no one else around except for the coyotes and the stars at night.

After a handful of days freezing our butts off at night, I was ready for a shower, a warm bed, and 4 secure walls to help me have a peaceful night's sleep. My Dad and step-mom live in Las Vegas and they were on our list of must see's while we were in the Southwest (and they just happened to have a shower and a nice warm bed for us to sleep in...woo hoo!)

So that's where we are at now. We are having a great time catching up with family and finally enjoying the warm sun that we were on a mission to find.