Day 8, 2021

Walker Lake to Fort Churchill State Park
We had a great couple of days here at Walker Lake. We met some great people from all over the country in the BLM Campground. It was only $6 a night, so not too bad. We found a really awesome spot that overlooks the Lake. It was level and had a picnic table with a cover. Lee picked up a brand new Shade Sail at a yardsale last winter and it sure came in handy to block out the late afternoon sun, but it still let the air flow through.
Didn”t see a lot of wildlife on Tuesday, just some birds and Lizards, but Wednesday was awesome. In addition to the birds and lizards, we were visited by a 4 foot snake that posed for some photos. A couple was walking by and we pointed it out to them. She was all like “can I take some photos?” and he was all like “What kind of snake is it?” Well, how the heck do I know. I told him that it wasn’t venomous as it had a sleek head and not the triangular head of those ‘bad’ snakes. Needless to say, he wouldn’t come very close. And no, I never got closer than about 6 feet.
Then about an hour later, Lee told me to grab my camera as there was a herd of about 30 Big Horn Sheep just passing behind our camp. Got some awesome photos of them, with both my phone as well as my new Canon camera. Can’t wait to look at them on my computer.
Miss Bristol discovered that she has a love of Lizards as bad as Dinky Dawg. It was cute to see them both compete to see who could catch it first. I’ll admit though that it was a little unfair as Dinky was on a chain and Bristol was loose. . Didn’t have to worry too much about the cat though because it was so new to her that she wasn’t obsessed like Dinky is. It’s funny how she comes back when you call her. You’d never catch Dinky coming back. Uh huh, not when there is a lizard around to chase… We also had the custest little mouse in our camp just after dark. Dinky saw it first, then Bristol. Needless to say they both had to go in the trailer when the mouse showed no sign of leaving the camp. Didn’t want either one of them to catch it and play with it to death. We did the right thing and let it live another day.
We considered staying here another couple of nights, but decided to head on down the road. Made it to it to Fort Churchill State Park, just outside of Silver Springs, NV. Glad we got here early, as the park is starting to fill up. We had our choice of 3 pull through spots, and chose the one with the least amount of trees so that the solar would charge the batteries.
The GPS has some funny little quirks sometimes. It took us off of the highway and had us drive down a couple of country roads. It was probably shorter, but it was definately slower because we got behind a tractor doing about 15 MPH. Couldn’t pass it because the road was too narrow. It was okay though, because we were in no big hurry and are used to following tractors because of all the years we spent in the Magic Valley.
The campground that we are in is dry camping, but there are bathrooms and water spigots close by. It has a dump station for when we pull out, so it won’t be too bad. We’ll have to use the generator to run the TV so that we don’t miss any of the 3 Nascar races this weekend. But on the plus side, it’s free camping because we purchased the Nevada State Park All-Access pass that gives us free camping as long as we don’t use the electricity. No worries about that here. This State Park was an actual fort back in the day and is near the Paiute Indian Reservation, so we are looking forward to seeing lots if history and taking lots of photos.