Camping in Great Basin

The second half of our camping trip with Christine and Brenden was in Great Basin National Park in Nevada. It was much cooler than in Zion!! Only got up to mid 70's during the day and down in the 40's at night! Our first full day we did a guided tour of Lehman Cave which was really cool to see!

Drapery or cave bacon (if you shine a light behind it, the coloring looks like bacon).

The kids each holding a piece of stalactite that had been found in the cave years ago.

Cave popcorn

These are the parachute shields the tour is named for and they were fairly large! Really cool formations and very rare.

One of the above pics showed graffiti on the roof of the cave. It was done over 50 years ago and probably from a stick that had been burned on one end. Also in the pics above you see some small tube looking formations hanging from the roof. It takes about 100 years for one of those to get an inch long! Here is Avery with our tour guide.

Next we did a scenic drive up Wheeler Peak and then a short hike.

Later that day we walked to a creek that was running through part of our campground, Baker Creek. The kids decided they wanted to dip their feet into the glacial creek!

Here is a short video of the creek just so you can hear the sound of the water:

Baker Creek

The next day we returned to Wheeler Peak to hike the Bristlecone trail which was about 4.8 miles and over 1,000 feet elevation gain. The top of the trail is around 9,100 feet and we definitely went through snow on the trail.

The Bristlecone trees were really cool. They live in fairly cold, desolate conditions where the wind can get pretty strong. The ones we saw were around 3,000 years old! We also saw some that had died but they were still upright and can stay upright for another 250 years after they die.

We also hiked to one of the glacier lakes in the area. Very pretty!

After that long hike, we returned to the visitor's center so the kids could be sworn in as junior rangers. Then we did a short walk to see the original entrance of Lehman Caves. It is now blocked from human entrance but they have a special cover on it so that the bats can exit and enter at will.

Ending with a family picture by our new camper. It was a great camping trip!!