Leslie and David's Wanderings: 25 August 2021 Basin and Range NM

We planned our route so we could visit the last National Monument on our list in southern Nevada on our way back to Las Vegas. Basin and Range NM is run by the BLM. There are no facilities, only a couple of poorly marked trails, and very little information available from the BLM office in Caliente. We discovered in our research that there are no signs on the highway to point you to the NM. There are several well maintained dirt roads (old mining roads) that crisscross the NM that are accessible from NV318 if you can figure out where to turn. So we headed south on US6 out of Ely to NV318 and south on NV318. A bit south of the small (and we do mean small) town of Sunnyside we picked a dirt road heading southwest into the general direction of the NM. We then checked our All Trails app and fortunately, it showed all the roads into and out of the park, we had chosen well. We went into the park on Timber Mountain road all the way to Water Gap. This took us across the northern part of Coal Valley. The road was in excellent shape and we found ourselves going 35-55MPH on the dirt and gravel road. We saw on Prong Horn Antelope on that road and three more on the next road. We stopped in Water Gap to take in the views of Garden Valley (and the mountain ranges to the west) and eat lunch. Surprisingly, we saw several vehicles come through the Water Gap, presuming they were on their way to Adaven or Cherry Creek (little towns just outside the west side of the park). After lunch we head back to the southeast on Seaman Wash Road to NV318. Again, the road was in excellent shape and we were cruising quickly across the southern portion of Coal Valley. Back on NV318, we backtracked north to the White River Narrows and hunted around until we found the petroglyphs we had read about. Being a BLM NM, nothing is well marked including the petroglyph panels, but we were able to find them and enjoy the 2-4000 year old art. The largest collection of petroglyphs in southern Nevada are in the narrows. With the Behemoth covered in dust and dirt, we headed back to the Wanderer. After three very busy weeks of travel, we were happy to be home with nowhere to go for a while.