Final days in Ely

Our trip to Ely, Nevada has come to a close.  I have enjoyed our 5 weeks here, the peacefulness of the area has forever stamped a special place in my heart.  For here it was where we spent a big part of Wes's "newborn" phase.  It seems he is growing in front of my eyes and changing so much every day.  I will cherish these days we got to spend together, learning and growing together as a family.

In our last weeks in Ely, we were able to check out a few more of the area attractions.  We drove about an hour outside of Ely to the Great Basin National Park.  Unfortunately the day we went it was pretty overcast, making for a very foggy trip up to the top.  You could see thru the clouds that the scenery was spectacular, however we couldn't see much that day!  We had intentions of taking a cave tour at Lehman caves, however the 1:00 tour was full and they wouldn't allow children under 5 years old anyways.  The next tour started at 3, and with the weather the way it was, there wasn't much to do to occupy us for 2 hours.  We did enjoy a nice leisurely Sunday drive though!

The following weekend we traveled to Garnet Hill.  The rumor is, after a good rainstorm, you can actually find stones laying on the ground.  We had a nice little picnic, watched a huge storm roll in and hiked around for about 10 minutes before it started to snow!  We decided with baby it was just too cold to keep going.  Back at the truck we ran into another couple that had found a few small stones, but they had rock picks and hammers.  Oh well, we still had fun!

*Pictures to come - check back soon!*

Our last attraction in Ely was the Historic Ward Mining district and the charcoal ovens.

The white pine county school district had developed an interpretive trail around the charcoal ovens, supposedly outlining some of the historic landmarks of the area.  However the trail was very unclearly marked.  Their was another couple about my age their and asked if Wes and I wanted to tag along on the hike.  Somehow we missed the 3/4 mile interpretive trail loop and started up the Riparian trail.  Not sure how far we walked the trail, but it was uphill and we walked for about 30 minutes before we decided we were on the wrong trail :)  30 minutes uphill may not sound like such a bad deal, except when you are at 7,500 feet elevation, wearing flip flops, COMPLETELY out of shape and packing around a 10lb sack 'o potato's on your chest.  Needless to say, it was a beautiful day and we did enjoy ourselves!  

 

On Tuesday, June 7th, we packed up and left the KOA of Ely and headed east towards Ogden Utah.  The next job has brought us to the beautiful ski town of Huntsville located in the Ogden Valley just outside of Salt Lake City.  Come back soon to learn more!