A couple of weeks ago my husband and I took a short road trip through north central Nevada. When we take a road trip we like to get off the beaten track and follow the back roads. What that means in Nevada is that we often go hours without seeing another vehicle. It also means that we see a lot of gorgeous scenery and interesting wildlife.
On our most recent trip we camped the first night in the Santa Rosa Range in Falls Creek Canyon and hiked to Falls Creek Canyon Waterfall. Falls Creek Canyon is just off US highway 95 forty miles north of Winnemucca. The camp site is about four miles east of the highway at the end of a very rough rutted road. It was a beautiful site and we had it to ourselves.
The hike to the waterfall is short and relatively easy. We had to cross the creek a few times and I got my feet wet. Duke did better. The route is described as hike 5 in the book 50 Classic Hikes in Nevada by Mike White. We were there April 25th and there was a lot of water in the creek and snow on the peaks surrounding us. We were camped right next to the creek.
It was a wonderful warm evening. We cooked our steaks over the fire and watched a marmot play nearby, When the full moon came up it was the perfect end to a wonderful day.
From Falls Canyon we drove around to the east side of the Santa Rosa Range to the Singas Creek trail head which is described as hike 6 in 50 Classic Hikes in Nevada. We did a short hike and then headed east across the Owyhee desert to the Independence Mountains and camped at the Jacks Creek camp ground. Along the way we had a flat tire and had to turn around at one point when the road was washed out. Since we no longer had a spare tire and since a big storm was coming in we decided that it probably wouldn’t be prudent to explore any remote back country roads. so we headed to Elko.
We stopped to look for interesting rocks and fossils at several sites in the area including the old mining town of Tuscarora.
Elko is a town we stayed in on one of our road trip last year. There are four Basque restaurants in Elko. Last year we ate at and really enjoyed Biltoki. This time we tried The Star Hotel Basque Restaurant which is the oldest of the four. They were very busy even though we were eating late. We also noticed that there were a lot more woman than men. That was undoubtedly because Elko is such a thriving mining town. The food was wonderful , the service was great and ambiance was fun.
If you would like to see all of my pictures form our trip you can see them on Flickr here.
View Road Trip North Central Nevada April 2010 in a map
