Galloping Over Basin and Range

Like a horse with her nose turned toward the barn, I headed across northern Nevada.  Having enjoyed John McPhee's Basin and Range, as part of his Pulitzer Prize winning Annals of the Former World, I was primed to understand and appreciate the vast spaces that could have been boring.  To quote Amazon:

"The first of John McPhee's works in his series on geology and geologists, Basin and Range is a book of journeys through ancient terrains, always in juxtaposition with travels in the modern world—a history of vanished landscapes, enhanced by the histories of people who bring them to light. The title refers to the physiographic province of the United States that reaches from eastern Utah to eastern California, a silent world of austere beauty, of hundreds of discrete high mountain ranges that are green with junipers and often white with snow. The terrain becomes the setting for a lyrical evocation of the science of geology, with important digressions into the plate-tectonics revolution and the history of the geologic time scale."

The basin and range province consists of numerous mountain ranges separated by flat plains, over which, when heading east or west, you drive up....and down....and up....and down....and.....  A geologist once compared the many narrow, north-south parallel ranges to "an army of caterpillars marching toward Mexico."  Because of our lingering spring rains, the hills and valleys still wore a lovely veil of green that thinned to wisps as I moved westward...and patches of snow dotted the higher mountains.

Of course on a scorching day, this requires coffee...preferably a Frappuccino (or a fascimile because Starbucks has that name copyrighted).  Who knew Winnemucca would offer a great place, Global Coffee?  (https://www.facebook.com/globalcoffee.nv/). The owner has mounted a world map on which visitors are invited to write their home town.  It made for interesting perusal while awaiting my coffee...which was delicious.

There wasn't much room in California to add Atascadero!

 

And after the final rise, into the Sierras, I settled into Truckee, CA, happy to have a comfortable and interesting place to stay, both the town and the very old (1873) but renovated Truckee Hotel.