10-01-2010 Boondocking on 447 and Home at Last

Yesterday, as we left Ely, we both thought that our last night out would be a great time to actually boondock. Looking at the map, there were many miles of open range, what looked to be a lot of BLM land, and we imagined that finding a wide place to pull out would be simple. 

What we didn’t count on was the temperatures in late afternoon along our route.  Nevada is hot.  Most of the time, Nevada is hot.  I know this, but after all, it IS the last day of September.  After turning north on 447 from the Sparks area we started looking for a boondock site.  What wasn’t at first noticeable on the map that I was using was that many miles of the route were included in the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation, not a place to try to camp without specific permission.

The other problem was the temperature.  It was five o’clock in the evening and the gauge read 100 degrees.  Stopping for just a few minutes to take a break and let the dog walk around a bit gave us a pretty good indication that we couldn’t really settle in until the sun went down, or we found a shady side of the hill.  We continued past Gerlock, and after several miles found a wide place in the road that would suffice, but I had a vague memory of a small lake and camping spot where Mo and I had stopped on a day trip in 2003.  There was nothing on my map, but the phone, when it worked sporadically, showed some green areas a bit distant, so we kept going.

The best moment of the day was rounding a steep curve and dropping down to the small reservoir, then realizing that the closed gate wasn’t locked.  The signs indicated private property but allowed recreational use if the rules were followed.  After some maneuvering, we settled the MoHo into a wide spot on a bumpy road, managed to get level, and opened up the fans and doors to the cooling evening breezes.

We camped with the slide closed, but still had plenty of room to cook a good supper and relax with a movie.  I have to thank Laurie Brown once more for helping us to finally understand our inverter!  We have traveled in the MoHo for two years without understanding that the tv and dvd would work if the inverter was on. 

The night was starlit and perfectly still, and even though we were fairly close to the road, the closed gate and complete absence of traffic made it feel perfectly safe. I watched the sun rise this morning over the basalt hills and felt incredibly grateful for this perfect last night.  Our trip home today through Alturas is on familiar roads and landscapes.  Mt Shasta will rise up in the distance to mark the passage and tell us we are close to home. 

I will call my daughter, we will stop at Fred Meyer for gas and groceries for home, we will dump the tanks at our local city park on the way out to Rocky Point. This trip of 7,714 miles will end, and it will be time to start thinking about the next one.

Home at last.