Great Basin National Park Website
When you find out on Friday that you need to be in Idaho for work on Monday we've found that the best thing to do is to turn it into a family vacation. All you have to do is drive for 2 days from Arizona, work for a few days while the family explores Idaho, then head down to Nevada to check out the oldest trees in the world. Simple as that.
Great Basin National Park is on the border of Nevada and Utah, but the great basin itself spans parts of Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, California, and into Mexico. It's the largest endorheic watershed in North America. That's just a fancy way of saying that any of the rain or snow that falls in the basin never reaches the ocean, there are no outlets from the basin.
The park is an international dark sky park so it is known as a great place for all things astronomy. In the summer they have Ranger led astronomy programs on Thursday and Saturday nights. We lucked out and happened to be able to go on Thursday night, but we were unlucky with the weather... it had rained too much in the afternoon and the amphitheater was flooded so they cancelled the event for that night.
We went back to the park on Friday morning with our plan in place: hike up to see the oldest trees in the world then explore the depths of Lehman Caves. We got a later start than we wanted and it took us an hour to get to the park from where we were staying in Ely, NV but we hit the trail on a nice partly cloudy and perfect 58 degree day. An hour or so later, after almost dying from the altitude, we made it to the Wheeler peak bristlecone pine grove just in time for a surprise rain and hail storm. It passed quickly and was actually a refreshing treat after the hike. The bristlecone pines are really cool looking twisted little trees, and they have been found to be over 5,000 years old. They grow really slow and are found near the tree line, this grove is at 10,500 ft.
We headed down the mountain quickly to make our appointment for the cave tour we had booked. The cave system here is a lot smaller than Carlsbad or Kartchner caverns, but it has some really unique features, like cave turnips, rose terraces, and rare cave shields.
This park rates at 5 out of 5 stars based on our standard criteria.
Rating Criteria: Fun, Scenic, Ease of Travel, Wildlife, Crowds
We also made a couple Pit Stops during the week. We went to Shoshone falls, Jump Creek falls, MK Nature Center, Hagerman fossil beds, Nevada Northern Railway Museum, and Horseshoe Bend.
