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| Sand Mountain, NV |
Apologies for the sporadic blog posts as of late. We've been so busy these past few weeks that I haven't had the chance to post much. Although I've recently posted more on my Instagram account than on here, it was done mainly out of convenience (there: a photo and a few sentences; here: connecting thoughts to a photo = takes more time and work). Still, I prefer blogging to document my zany long-winded ideas and thoughts.
Speaking of zany, we took a short break last weekend and drove on a long, lonely stretch of US Route 50 in Nevada to Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park. The drive was a surprisingly picturesque, two-lane highway with few drivers on the road and the occasional tiny middle-of-nowhere town thrown in. Sure beat urban city congestion! Right before we zipped into the mountains to the state park, the road ran through a wide swath of white sand called Sand Mountain. Turns out the sand is from ancient Lake Lahontan, which dried up nearly 9,000 years ago. (I had first thought it was an expansive salt flat.) Dotting the edge of the sand were dark pellets--they were everywhere. However, the pellets were not animal droppings like I had initially thought. Upon closer inspection from out the car window, we saw that these pellets methodically spelled out words. Most phrases were of the lovey-dovey variety (i.e.: "A <3 G"), but once in awhile there read some humorous, bordering on concerning, words like, "POO" and "LSD." But when you're driving 75 mph down the two-lane highway, you have better things to look out for--namely oncoming traffic and maintaining the speed limit--and the words blur into indistinguishable dots of jet black on soft, almost blinding white sand. Funny thing, there wasn't an ATV or a soul in sight. It was as if the words had magically appeared on the rolling sand dune. Above us, the thick fast-floating clouds added to the mystique of the drive, casting moody shadows on the road and sand and then, just as quickly, shrouding them in intense sunlight. Rain was predicted for the next day at the state park, so perhaps these quick-morphing clouds were thunderheads hovering just a day away.
Intrigued by the sight, I snapped countless photos of the white sand, the clouds, and the sky--dizzying myself in the process as my husband drove us onward to our destination: Berlin-Ichthyosaur State
Park.
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Part II of this road trip can be found here.
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