Great Basin National Park

If Jason can tackle his major construction project at nine pm, I can certainly tackle the blog.  "Stack the washer and dryer."  It sounds so simple--a great solution to the calisthenics currently required to switch the laundry.  Little did I realize it would involve rerouting the dryer vent, extending the plumbing for the washer hookup, a whole bunch of drywall, lath, plaster, and who knows what else.  The really exciting part is that Jason needs to leave tomorrow morning for Green River and won't be back until Saturday evening.  While I have every confidence that Jason can and will get the job done, I also suspect a laundromat could be in our near future.

Since I'm not particularly handy with a hammer, allow me to at least share photos of our Labor Day camping trip to Great Basin National Park.  Our experience would not have been the same without Charles and Susie.  We love their company, we devour their food, and we totally rely their help.  Through a minor miracle, they snagged the very last campsite at Wheeler Peak Campground for us all.  Given the name, I think it was meant to be.

Exploring our "home" for the next three days.

A lovely place to rest our heads.

Camp chores are always more fun when they involve an axe.

Savoring our hot dog roast.  Grandma Susie even brought her rolling pin and made dutch oven apple dumplings for dessert.

Annika was ecstatic about the corn on the cob, not because she likes to eat it (which she does), but because there were a couple of corn silk worms in the corn husks.  Since these caterpillars had come all the way from Grandma Susie and Grandpa Charles's garden, she was allowed to keep them, unlike all the other critters found in a National Park.  One of these corn silk worms lived with our family until just a week ago when it finally morphed into a rather homely corn earworm moth.

Talia warming up by the fire in the morning.  We were fortunate that the weather was unseasonably warm for Labor Day.  While it may have been toasty in some parts of Great Basin, the conditions were perfect for the high altitude of Wheeler Peak Campground (just under 10,000 feet.)  One of the neatest things about Great Basin National Park is that is spans six different ecozones ranging from low desert to high alpine tundra

The view from our campground was pretty spectacular.  We really couldn't have asked for a nicer place to stay.  In truth, we have Papa Kay to thank for this lovely campsite as well.  Over a year ago, he explored Great Basin National Park and highly recommended this campground.  In fact, we had originally planned to camp at Great Basin over Memorial Day, but everything was covered in snow.

On Sunday morning we headed into church.  While the chapel in Garrison, Utah was less than ten miles from the park entrance, we failed to remember that it was in a completely different time zone from Nevada.  We made it just in time to figure out that sacrament meeting was over, but enjoyed the second hour of classes.

Afterwards, we headed to Lehman Caves for the Lodge Room tour.  Great fun, at least once you passed the screening for White Nose Bat Syndrome. 

On the way back, we stopped by Wheeler Peak overlook to see if we felt crazy enough to actually tackle the mountain.

The next morning we decided that we were.  Here we are at the beginning of the trail.  Walking with Annika was slow because she kept pausing to feed her pet bird (a random stick she'd found.)

Talia, Brooklyn, and Eli are far more seasoned hikers.

Stella Lake.

We didn't pause for lunch until we'd reached the glacier, about three miles in.

Food always tastes better when you've been working hard.

A bit farther up the trail we discovered these man-made shelters/wind blocks.  Annika decided they needed to be improved.  Right around this point, the group also decided to head different directions.  Grandpa Charles kindly offered to take Annie back, accompanied by Brooklyn and Talia.  Meanwhile, Jason, Susie, and Eli decided to tackle the summit.  In retrospect, it's probably a really good thing we didn't all decide to go to the top.  The summit was a lot farther and steeper than it appears in this picture.  While Annika did great walking back, she would have really struggled continuing on.

A smiling Grandma Susie, despite the very thin air.


It was incredible to see the flowers thriving in such a harsh environment.

At last, the top!  I was super proud of Eli for sticking with this challenging hike.  He wasn't feeling great at this point, but he made it!  In the process, he learned that altitude sickness is real. In fact, I offered him the canned oxygen that someone had left in the mailbox, but he wanted to leave it for someone who needed it more.  As soon as we headed back down, he immediately felt better and was glad that he'd persevered.

Here's Susie signing her name at the summit. 

Wheelers atop Wheeler Peak.  13,044'--that's no small feat.  As the second highest peak in Nevada, Wheeler Peak rises between Timpanogos (11,752) and Kings Peak (13,534).

In truth, we hustled down the mountain and broke camp in a hurry; we managed to get everything packed up with just minutes to spare before the storm hit.  For purposes of this blog, however, here are some final photos of the lovely weekend we shared.

And the grand finale--a peach pie shake at the Ashton Burger Barn in Delta, Utah.  So tasty!  Thank you, Grandma Susie and Grandpa Charles for joining us on this fun Labor Day adventure.

On last update: I dozed off thirty minutes into composing this blogpost.  My sweet husband, on the other hand, stayed up all night working on the washer and dryer.  I woke up at 5:45 am just in time to help him stack the dryer. In any normal situation, a laundromat would indeed be in my future, but I married Superman.  (A sleepy Superman.)  I love you eternally, Peanut Butter.  --Jelly