Never heard of it, I shall throw up my hands in self defense and admit this is a national park that had never crossed my consciousness. Unlike you, I have now been there and I liked it.
We drove the scenic road for 15 minutes to to 10,000 feet, turned around and came back down. We had met three young men from New Jersey on vacation in a rental car and they said the hiking was splendid but at these altitudes I get a headache and walking a parking lot is strenuous so we limited ourselves to enjoying the peaks from aboard GANNET2.
I don’t think the photos do justice to this place but it is quite spectacular, and you’ll have to take that on trust. 
Layne was not entirely enamored of the drive up the perfectly smooth scenic road as it was a tad bit too scenic on the drop off side. I tried to stick to the middle of the road but even though this was Friday there was some traffic.
Great Basin was established in 1986 and includes the 13,000 foot Wheeler’s Peak and the South Snake Mountains. There are also bristlecone pines growing here, some of the oldest living things which though revered for their age are not the most majestic tree you will see. I guess we’d all be a bit gnarly if we were thousands of years old.
Apparently the Great Basin refers to the area of land between the Sierra Nevada and Wasatch Mountain ranges.
The park snipped off 77,000 of those acres which is how it got it’s name. It’s basically a huge pimple in a vast sweep of loneliness as Highway 50 runs close by, and as we are now sick of hearing, that is…The Loneliest Road in America!
I had been thinking, for no special reason about Senator Harry Reid, the Mormon from Nevada, one of those old school compromising negotiating getting things done politicians I feel we could use more of in these civil war times. And he it was that got the park created. Of course he was!
And on the subject of old fashioned there wasn’t any toll booth at the entrance, just a welcoming sign and an open road. So much for our Senior Pass getting us free access. Free access for all lowers the tone I think.
Anyway I’ve seen Great Basin, at least a snippet of it and you haven’t. Later on I confess we passed several much better know parks and skipped them entirely. I think Moab will need a return visit one fine day. Anyway back to Baker Nevada, one of those places that Hollywood made famous as places of few people and all of them of ill repute. Baker was indeed not much but what there is proves to be quite pleasant. Baker as seen on the descent from the park:
According to the guys from New Jersey the superintendent of the park is retiring and has come to love this place so much he and his wife are staying and very glad we are too even though we never met them. I know hot showers you take for granted in suburbia but for us finding this on the road is always a pleasure.
Unlimited hot showers with lots of room to stretch out and all for two bucks on the honor system.
I love how these people appeal to our better natures! Being the rule follower I stressed out about leaving it as I found it. They have a washer/dryer too but we had no change and postponed that chore.
I am usually banned from shopping as Layne finds my liberal nature annoying in the food aisles, complaining it’s like shopping with a six year old and she’s always putting stuff back. And yes, I’d have got four strawberry/rhubarb muffins not two, had I been shopping, as they were delicious. At least even with Mrs Grouch-Potato we did at least get a whole one each.
I did my job and walked Rusty. He liked Baker and we patrolled several blocks of dusty back streets. The heart of the Baker Empire. You really want to stop off here even if you don’t care for the unknown park.
Be Nice. The honor system rules.
Rusty sniffed and I did my usual:
The school:
We had to keep going as Layne for some unaccountable reason wanted to make tracks. I had sunk back into the GANNET2 slow motion torpor of travel, ready for no reason to cease forward motion. There was a rather lovely shady campground in Baker not too very far from the excellent wine selection in the general store…but we had Utah in our sights:
Then we saw a big pink Casino sign plumb in the middle of nowhere. There was a gas station and diner and some rooms detached from a motel lobby. In a flash the casino passed by, then the Utah State Line Sign then the motel rooms safely on the non libertine side of the parking lot. “Next Services 88 Miles” and they were not kidding, not a little bit.
Highway 50 to Delta, Utah (Mountain Time Zone) was the emptiest, loneliest stretch of roadway since we got on the Lonely Road at Carson City.
I found a water faucet in Delta City park and after some Laurel and Hardy hijinks with a not-quite-long-enough hose I had GANNET2 facing the right way and just close enough to load ten gallons. Rusty watched with interest.
We droned on through countryside properly farmed by farmers living in clean near tidy well appointed homes. Utah is well groomed and the road signs are crystal clear. The place was growing on me.
Farming not desert.
Blink your eyes and you will drive through Scipio (“Sip-eee-oh”) Utah population 290. It was founded in 1859 with a fort as you might expect in those wild frontier days. It was named Round Valley but a young Mormon lawyer and newspaper editor named Scipio Africanus Kenner helped locals get title to the land to create a Mormon city in the valley.
Lest there be any doubt Kenner was white (less than 2 percent of Utah is black as early Mormons didn’t want blacks in their church) but Kenner’s bizarre first names were in honor of a Roman general (!) Scipio Africanus conqueror of Africa so called, after he thrashed Hannibal’s brother and later Hannibal himself in 202 BC. I guess Kenner’s parents were just another set of doting weirdos naming their children in weirdly inappropriate ways. Anyway I missed Scipio entirely until Layne pointed out we passed through it, hence no pictures of nothing very much.
Our stop for the night was an iOverlander free wild camp on the road to a forest service campground at Maple Grove a few miles south of Scipio.
Not bad thought I and Layne seconded it however Rusty got freaked out by the presence of cows in the distance and their turds close up. He stalked around sniffing the cow pats she staring suspiciously into the bushes before retreating to his bed to give his heart time to calm down.
We arrived around six in the evening but it didn’t get dark till nine so layne and I had time to enjoy the extraordinary surroundings.
The water was freezing, not refreshing and after a minute I was out with numb feet. Rusty never went close even after he started exploring a bit.
Impossible burgers and so to bed only after a flock of wild geese freaked Rusty out one last time while roosting in the trees. A dog’s life indeed.
