Mem_weekend_2018

The Pony Express was a short-lived (1860-61) express mail route to California that used relays of horses between stations about 10 miles apart all across the West. It became highly romanticized, and is still remembered today, because one of the young riders was William ("Buffalo Bill") Cody, who decades later dramatized the operation in his Wild West Show. The service, which never made money, was rendered obsolete by the completion of the transcontinental telegraph in October 1861. This section is by Dry Creek in Lander County, central Nevada. View is looking east back across Bean Flat. There was supposed to be one of the stations near here, and we were looking to see if we could find a foundation, or something, but evidently the site is now on private land. The stations were, for obvious reasons, located at water sources, and so it probably was in the drainage of (not completely) Dry Creek, now the location of an active ranch. Interpretive signs (inset) here and there mark the route. Modern US 50 ("The Loneliest Road") parallels the route a couple of miles to the south (off to the right of the picture).

Historical marker by Dry Creek, Lander County, Nevada.

The hike's only half over, but he thinks it's been long enough! Trail near Hickison Summit in the Simpson Park Mountains, Lander County, Nevada.

Tuff boulder showing spectacular cavernous weathering.

Simpson Park Mountains, near Hickison Summit, Lander County, Nevada. We didn't see a soul all day while hiking here--on Memorial Day weekend!

View southwesterly from the Simpson Park Mountains, from one of the trails off Hickison Summit on US 50. Snow-capped Toiyabe Range in the distance--the persistence of the snow cover this year is why we weren't hiking over there! Big Smoky Valley below them. Lander County, Nevada.