Kent Chamberlain and the Red Rock Forests: Pictures

I kept alluding to this thread in the main thread. Indeed, this might be the worthier of the two. I got me some pixels that day, y'all. I'm going to break it up into sections, so you can know what you're looking at. It's hard enough for me to keep it all together; it's been long enough now that I have to group the pictures by date to even know what I'm looking at.

First was some scenic area I stopped at before even getting to Highway 89. It didn't make it into the main narrative because there isn't much to tell besides the pictures. Anyhow, after you make the jump, here's that:

Kent Chamberlain and the Red Rock Forests

It's been a while since the last installment of this series, and I'd better write it up while my memories are still relatively fresh. I never did get back to it, because life has a way of going sideways all at once, especially in Nevada. But here, in the autumnal tranquillity of the Omaha 'burbs, I've got coffee and I've got jazz playing in the background, so let's do this.

I woke up in a Utah rest area off I-70 just shy of Green River. I pulled into Green River soon after that, in search of some gas and coffee. I paid for the gas with my quarter supply, and I made my own coffee with their hot water and some soup cans I've kept for this purpose (usually the hot water comes from my fireplace though). Refuelled, I got back on the interstate, getting back off of it on Highway 89 headed south. I was not yet aware of the price of admission at Bryce Canyon, so I was headed in that direction.

Kent Chamberlain and the River of Treasure: Pictures

As alluded to in my last post, I photographed two things between Denver and Green River: a fire near Avon, and a rest area by the Colorado River with gold on it. So here's the other pic of that fire, oriented as a portrait, which makes it annoying to use in mixed media like blogs because it takes up more picture space than a landscape, which is why I didn't use it in the other post. (You would be surprised to see my blogging process: I put altogether too much effort trying to find just the right pics, in just the right proportions to maximize the amount of pictures in each article without making it looking crowded with pictures. Hopefully I succeed, but I digress.)

In any case, after the jump, literally every single other picture is going to be from that rest area.

Kent Chamberlain and the River of Treasure

When last we left off, yours truly seemed to be stranded in Denver with no way back.

This was possible to endure. First off, as soon as that Patreon payment went through, I'd be able to leave. Second off, living and driving everywhere in one's RV means the only obstacle to staying somewhere is finding parking. Thanks to years of experience, I know a few places where I can park for the night for free in Denver; some for several nights if necessary. So if I had to, I could wait for the payment.

That seemed suboptimal, however, as my dad would say. For one, the crops I'd left behind were just starting to show their real promise. For another, I really hate not being in control of so fundamental a situation as where I can go.

Kent Chamberlain and the Front Range Quest

Not long ago, I took a trip to Denver. A friend from Nebraska had stuff to bring to me, and it was too much stuff for him to bring in one trip. So we decided to meet up in Denver, which was about as far as he could travel between workdays.

Unlike previous trips, I tried a new path this time. I went south towards Ely, then drove across Highway 50 to I-70. This was the first day. After hopping on the interstate at Salina, I trundled on in the darkness until I found a rest area.

Utah got rest areas, y'all. Utah got the best rest areas in America. They have wifi and they look like pic related. This trip is going to be multiple posts long and chock full of pictures, and Utah having excellent rest areas is a big chunk of why. The morning I woke up east of Salina, I hung out for an hour or so checking the news before I went about my day. Considerate Mormons are considerate. I love Utah so much. Fix your weed laws and it might actually be a New Jerusalem.

There are several places along the road that aren't even rest areas per se; they have the basic bathroom facilities that Nevada considers a full-blown rest area, but they're mainly just a place to park and appreciate the view. Local Native artists also sell their wares there, and the state doesn't seem to bother them, which is cool.

Kent Chamberlain and the Mountain of Gold

For a while now, I've lumped all my adventures in Nevada under the collective heading "Nevada agricultural collectiveposting" because, eh, close enough. Unlike other blogs of mine, I'm trying to keep a handle on the number of labels I post, to make the label feature usable to find different "genres" of posts quickly. My overwintering in Omaha's ending, indeed by the time I finished writing this it already has, and there's several picture sets worth of adventures I've yet to tell, because precious little of it has to do with the homesteading. Instead, it's all got to do with goldhunting, or other various and sundry side quests off in the mountains somewhere. If it vaguely made me feel like Indiana Jones as I did it, it'll go in this section.

When I first packed out to go to Nevada, I came equipped with gold panning equipment and an excellent USGS publication from 1973, Placer Gold Deposits of Nevada, as well as the various maps cited therein, all saved on my phone. I've never panned gold before this, but I've watched a really great Youtube channel on the subject, and studying for my geography minor in a region with a lot of nearby coal, oil, and mineral fields equipped me with a basic knowledge of geology and the processes that cause rocks. Being a historian in the American West also required me to learn about how gold panning works in order to understand its role in the region's history. So I don't think I entered blindly.