GEO-tography: Lakes

More and more these days a criterion we look at when we decide where to go for a ride into the back roads, is: "Oh look, it goes right by Lake Whatchamacallit."

If rivers and streams are the noisy adolescents, lakes have got to be the wizened old grand dad whose porch you'd like to sit a spell on. They've got a whole different feeling to them, and it's a rare one indeed that doesn't make you wish you had your fishing pole with you… and your folding lounge chair… and a cold drink.

Snapping a photograph or two to bring back and show the family can even make your ride through the desert seem ten degrees cooler. And getting a good one shouldn't be too difficult as most body's of water are quite photogenic.

However, there are a couple of points that you need to watch for when you point your camera in their direction. They are most often characterized by their quiet beauty or reflective charm.

Reflections

While you are trying to focus on the water, actually take a moment to LOOK at it; what do you see IN it? I mean besides the ducks. Often it's the reflections in the water that make a photograph stand out.

Lakeview Mine Loop

What I'm calling the "RZR Gang" – Hugh, Vicki, Jerry and Gordon – took their latest offroading adventure down to Lake Mead, only this time onto the "back porch."

The western edge of the Gold Butte peninsula is probably close to being the most remote area within 500 miles. (How remote is it?) It's so remote that even Harry Reid doesn't think he needs to include it in his "let's block off Nevada" wilderness bills.

Of course there is the fact that the Park Service pretty much already owns between three and ten miles depth of shoreline all around the lake under the Lake Mead National Recreation Area (NRA).

There used to be many people down that-a-way working in the several mines along the shore – including the one that they visited on this trip; but now about the only warm blooded things there now are the wild burrows.

Offroad: Mesquite to Overton Nevada

We've posted before about the offroad trip from Mesquite to Overton touching both the Virgin River and the historic Old Spanish Trail, but the trip is such a yearly tradition it deserves re-gifting.

The first of this month (Jan 2013) Hugh took Gordon and Mary, Jerry and Chellen and Craig and Vicki on the trip and stopped at Sugar's for lunch. Often, because the trail is so dusty and filled with "whoop-de-do's", the wives don't go; but, after the recent rains everyone got out on the rigs.