And now for the rest of the story...

Here are a few pictures of various hikes we took while at Great Basin NP.

Our campsite for 10 days, no power, no internet, no television...YAY!

The wildlife around our campsite was fun to watch!

We followed a rafter of turkeys down this path but they never allowed us to catch up and get a clear picture of them.

I can't resist the flowers! :)

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These signs are not aligned with pathways and have destinations that don't always jive with our printed map...bummer.  After a few missteps trying to figure out where to go, we're now very skeptical that we made the right choice....another bummer.  So far we've always made it back to where we started from at the end of the day!

After our trek to the summit of the timber creek trail, it opened up to a beautiful, huge meadow.  And on the way down the backside of the meadow we came across this cage with one side broken apart.  It immediately made me think of my brother-in-law, Phillip.  You have to imagine 2 grown (old) men watching a television show called Mountain Monsters.  The show was, to put it bluntly, totally stupid!  It's about a small group of men traveling across the Appalachians looking for Bigfoot and other "legendary" creatures lurking about the hills.  They never see the creatures but rely on locals to describe them and they always end up building huge, fancy cages to capture their prey.  Every time the cage is destroyed and nothing is ever trapped.  We just couldn't help ourselves from tuning in to watch every week and having a good laugh!

On the way back down we enjoyed cool respites along Timber Creek :)

And now for the rest of the story...

This National Park is accessible through 1 gravel road.  There are no gates but a ranger passes through every once in a while.  Wendy and I are always reading the rules and regulations that are posted, mainly for wild animal sightings and fire restrictions.  Not everyone cares about the postings so we occasionally have to approach others and  inform them about the fire bans.  Now, most of the them have California/Oregon/Washington plates on their vehicles.....go figure!  It is frustrating sometimes, but we do our best and if we have to move, we move.  It is what it is.  There really haven't been any major issues, until the night before we were going to leave anyway.  We woke up at 0230 to a strong smell of smoke.  We've been experiencing smoke in the skies for weeks, but no smells.  More and more campers were ignoring the fire bans. So I got up to confront yet another camper but could not see any fires around.  One couple was outside getting their rig ready for departure and I asked them about the strong smoke smell.  They relayed to me that a fire was around somewhere but didn't know how far away.  So.....Wendy and I decided to play it safe and leave immediately.  Not a very difficult decision!  We got out of Dodge and went to a gas station parking lot and spent the next couple of hours there after securing the ok from the station manager.  The uncontrolled fire was 50+ miles away by ELY, NV.  We were still glad we left in a hurry as it at least gave us some experience with hasty departures at 0230.  On a good note, the breakfast there was very tasty.  And so we moved on, thankful again!  It's still really hard to believe west coast residents thought it ok to build a fire with all the problems their states have.  Rules or no rules, common sense should prevail.  Here ends my rant once again.  We are safe and are thankful to God!