Great Basin National Park
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Back in the 70s my mother and her sister started taking driving vacations.
They would come back with pictures of some of our countries national parks. In
my late teens and early twenties they looked interesting for sure but ehh
there were other things more important in life at that time. After my mother
passed on we went to visit my aunt first in Roanoke Va. and later in Prescott
Az. It was during these visits that she would send us off to some of the
nearby National Parks and we really came to appreciate the beauty of these
special places. Well, this web page is about one of those unique places. Great
Basin National Park is really in the middle of nowhere in the NE corner of
Nevada. The local town, Baker NV, has about 350 residents. There are a couple
little restaurants, campgrounds and tiny motels that serve visitors to the
park. |
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One of the things to do while at the park is to take a tour of Lehman caves.
They offer two tours, a short one and a longer one. I highly recommend the
longer tour called the Grand Palace Tour which is about 90 minutes in
length. The area is known for its dark skies and great viewing of stars. At
the park we went for the night time, ranger led program, on the skies and it
was very well done. |
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The Great Basin area is the largest watershed in the United States
and is the area between Nevada and Utah and includes the basins between
the mountain ranges. Living in SCAL, when a low pressure system and high pressure
system come together over the great basin, the winds funnel through the basin
picking up speed and get forced between the mountain passes into SCAL
further speeding up the winds. When this happens we get what are called the
Santa Ana winds. It is these hot dry winds that tend to cause the high fire
danger and fuel the great fires we have. The park, like when we visited
Lassen, is not very heavily visited because they both are so remote. Our
National Park systems truly are wonderful resources and we have visited an
awful lot of them thanks mostly to my Aunt for getting us started. |
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click photo to enlarge |
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