On Friday, we drove from Las Vegas to Ely, Nevada. Wednesday evening, we watched Outdoor Nevada, a show from Nevada PBS. It highlighted several places to visit in Nevada and one of them was Cathedral Gorge State Park. It was just a bit over half way between Las Vegas and Ely, so it made an ideal place to stop for lunch and go for a hike.
We started at the visitor center and learned about the volcanic explosions and the ash that settled on the land. It is soft and easily eroded by wind, rain and human activity. It is called Bentonite Clay.
We drove in as far as we could from the south entrance and stopped at Cathedral Caves.
You can easily walk into the caves, as they reach 25 - 30 feet in height and some are several feet across. This video gives you a better idea of what they are like.
Cathedral Caves is where the CCC (Civil Conservation Corps) worked during the 1930s. Among other things, the water tower, covered picnic area and restrooms are still there, as is the observation hut at Miller Point. We took advantage of the covered picnic area for our lunch, and then set off on the Juniper Point trail for our hike.
Our hike was in the flat lowlands between the hills that have eroded into the Cathedral Caves and other caves. About a mile into our hike, I took this short video of the area.
There was little shade on the hike, as there were few trees (as seen in the video above). But we came across a bench near one of the caves - while the bench was in the sun, we took advantage of some shade from the cliffs for a short break.
We covered a bit over three miles in about 90 minutes - after nearly all of that time in the hot sun, we were ready to get back in the car and get out of the sun.
We drove out of the park, continued north for a short drive and entered the park from the north to visit Miller Point - this is the fourth remaining structure from the CCC work of the 1930s. While there were stairs and walkways to get back down to the base of the gorge where we had hiked earlier, we chose to just look down into the gorge rather than climb down and back up again.
We then continued on for another two hours to arrive at our hotel in Ely, Nevada. Another good day of hiking and driving.
We started at the visitor center and learned about the volcanic explosions and the ash that settled on the land. It is soft and easily eroded by wind, rain and human activity. It is called Bentonite Clay.
We drove in as far as we could from the south entrance and stopped at Cathedral Caves.
You can easily walk into the caves, as they reach 25 - 30 feet in height and some are several feet across. This video gives you a better idea of what they are like.
Cathedral Caves is where the CCC (Civil Conservation Corps) worked during the 1930s. Among other things, the water tower, covered picnic area and restrooms are still there, as is the observation hut at Miller Point. We took advantage of the covered picnic area for our lunch, and then set off on the Juniper Point trail for our hike.
Our hike was in the flat lowlands between the hills that have eroded into the Cathedral Caves and other caves. About a mile into our hike, I took this short video of the area.
There was little shade on the hike, as there were few trees (as seen in the video above). But we came across a bench near one of the caves - while the bench was in the sun, we took advantage of some shade from the cliffs for a short break.
We covered a bit over three miles in about 90 minutes - after nearly all of that time in the hot sun, we were ready to get back in the car and get out of the sun.
We drove out of the park, continued north for a short drive and entered the park from the north to visit Miller Point - this is the fourth remaining structure from the CCC work of the 1930s. While there were stairs and walkways to get back down to the base of the gorge where we had hiked earlier, we chose to just look down into the gorge rather than climb down and back up again.
We then continued on for another two hours to arrive at our hotel in Ely, Nevada. Another good day of hiking and driving.
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