Flash Flood on the Highway

As we were traveling home from a trip to the city, I noticed something looked strange on the highway far ahead, a light colored swath across the highway. What was it? It had to be water. We had seen some storm clouds, but the sky was currently only partly cloudy. A four-wheel drive truck flashed his lights at us when he passed, confirming there was something strange ahead. I slowed down, and soon we reached the water. I pulled over to take a closer look.

What we found was a culvert completely engulfed with water and a whirlpool. Further ahead, the water covered the highway. We could see that the water had been a little higher, so it was nice to know it was going down (and we weren't going to be washed away!).

The downstream side of the culvert showed a raging stream where usually there's no water at all.

 Usually I think of flash floods as being more in canyons, but we were many miles from canyons. Where it was nearly flat, a raging stream swept through the desert.

I wasn't sure how deep the water was on the highway in front of us, or if part of the highway had gotten washed away. We watched a semi slowly move through the water, and I was impressed with how high the water reached on the truck. I wasn't sure how our van would do, so I decided we would stay put a little longer.

Then we saw a pickup truck start going through at a slow speed. An SUV came roaring up to the water, the driver totally unaware that something unusual was going on. I watched her face as she showed surprise that there was water on the highway and slammed on the brakes. She was still going fast enough to make huge rooster tails as she plowed through the water.

We watched a driver from the other direction take it too fast, then decided we would follow a couple other cars.

The water was one to two inches deep, and I could feel the force of it pulling the van to the side of the road. We stayed in the middle of the road, the high spot, enjoying our slow progression through the water. Until some idiot from the other direction appeared, going way too fast and coating our van with muddy water. The kids heard an earful. And then repeated it.

Well, hopefully they learned a little about what to do and not to do in flash floods. Fortunately the highway didn't get washed away, but if you ever encounter water flowing over a highway, don't count on the highway necessarily still being intact! The power of water is immense, and we felt lucky to be able to see some of that.

Globemallow Explosion

 A friend posted about the amazing globemallow out in the desert, so I took a drive out one day to go check it out. She was right, it was spectacular. The desert floor was orange as far as the eye could see.

I had fun taking some photos.

Some cool old cars went by on the highway.

Globemallow usually blooms in the spring, but last year it bloomed in October. I guess it takes advantage of moisture. We had a really wet May, so that must have helped make this such a beautiful globemallow season.

It's always such a treat to get a beautiful offering from the normally drab-colored desert.

A "Glowing" Review of the Nevada Test Site (aka Where They Blew up Huge Atomic Bombs)

Photo courtesy of National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Field Office

About a year or so ago, I heard about the free public tours of the Nevada National Security Site (better known as the Nevada Test Site), the place where they did a huge amount of nuclear bomb testing. With my husband's father being a downwinder (someone who got sick from that testing), I thought it would be a good place for us to visit to learn more about an interesting era in our country's history. The only problem: the tours fill up fast, and there is often a wait of many months to take the tour. (All the tours for 2015 are already full.)

Last October, my friend Matt let me know that the Department of Energy had opened up its 2015 dates. My husband and I filled out a form and applied for the February trip. We had to get a background check, and about a month after we applied we received word we were approved to go on the trip.

About a month before the trip we received a packet in the mail. It contained a page of prohibited items (cell phones, cameras, binoculars, recording devices, incendiary devices, etc.). If any of those items were found on anyone during the trip, the paper warned, the trip could be cancelled. We also had a minute-by-minute itinerary for the daylong tour.

The day before the tour, we went to the Atomic Testing Museum, which somehow managed to make a very interesting topic seem, well, kind of boring. The museum, part of the Smithsonian, was quite a letdown, and not something I'd recommend unless you are really interested in the topic and can go through the museum during a quiet period, when you don't have four or five different videos all running at the same time in a small space. 

Fortunately, the tour was fantastic.

The plan was to meet at the museum at 7:30, have our identification checked, receive a badge, and then board a bus and depart at 8 am for the Test Site. Our tour would include visits to Mercury, Frenchman's Flat, Yucca Flat, Sedan Crater, and more.

Our guide was Ernie Williams, an 84-year old veteran who had worked at the Nevada Test Site beginning in the 1950s. After he retired, a contractor who does work at the NTS hired him and he continues to work part-time. Because he had been there during the tests, he had great stories to tell. And a wonderful memory.

After going through the guard station (run by contract guards), we stopped at the cafeteria in Mercury, NV. At one time this was a huge town, complete with an Olympic-sized swimming pool and a bowling alley. Nowadays the Test Site employs many fewer people, and most commute every day. The cafeteria had bathrooms and vending machines.

Then it was onto Frenchman's Flat. Ernie had us get out of the bus to look at some elevated tracks that had been part of one test. The pressure wave had bent them. We then drove around some of the other buildings that had been tested to see how they would withstand the impact of a nuclear bomb.

What surprised me most during the day was just how many tests had been done at the Nevada Test Site: 100 atmospheric tests and 828 underground tests. These were done between 1951 and 1992. This fact sheet gives a great overview of the history of the NTS.

A total of 928 tests is a lot of tests. Couldn't they have combined a few? (I never did find out the answer to that!)

Some of those tests left nuclear waste behind, and part of the Nevada Test Site is a low-level radioactive disposal area, where they dig pits, put in the garbage (some of it from other Department of Energy sites), and then bury it. We visited the site and saw some of the places where they bury the garbage.

After that we headed north towards Yucca Flat. Before we got there, Ernie pointed out the DAF, or Device Assembly Facility. We couldn't even get close, there was a big guard station on the road there, plus two gun turrets on the building. And the building has a double fence and most of it is underground. This is top secret stuff. The fact sheet gives a hint of what is there: 

"The DAF is a collection of more than 30 individual steel-reinforced concrete buildings connected by a rectangular common corridor. The entire complex, covered by compacted earth, spans an area of 100,000 square feet.

Currently the United States is not conducting nuclear tests. However, the President pledged to maintain an underground test readiness program in the event that nuclear testing resumes. The DAF plays a crucial role in achieving test readiness capability." 

We went over the pass and descended into Yucca Flat. Soon we were driving with big craters on either side of the bus. We even drove down into one, Bilby Crater, and back out again. The craters formed when the nuclear explosions basically melted the rock. Different sized craters reflected the different sizes of the weapons and the different depths at which they were deployed.

We got out of the bus at a huge white building, about six stories tall. This was the site where they were going to do the 829th underground test. They had the hole drilled, the equipment in place, the trailers with the sensing equipment ready, and then George Bush declared a moratorium on nuclear testing. Ernie was not at all happy about that. He said $66 million had been put into this test. I asked if that was the average cost for each test, and he said no, the average was $25-$30 million per nuclear test. Wow again.

They had all sorts of reasons for doing tests. One was to see how much earth could be moved, say in case they wanted to make another Panama Canal using nuclear bombs. (Never mind the ramifications of highly radioactive ground potentially being flooded.) The result was Sedan Crater, the biggest crater. We had a nice stop at it. It reminded me of Ubehebe Crater in Death Valley or Lunar Crater along Highway 6 in Nevada. Except this one was manmade.

Ernie took a group photo of us (no horizon allowed in the photo--it said so on our itinerary, which we were now way behind, but that was okay with all of us because it was so interesting. We also had to make sure we put our temporary badges away. That was very important for some reason.).

Not far from Sedan Crater is Groom Lake, home to Area 51 (and perhaps the reason no horizon was allowed in the photo above?). Ernie helped develop that, but he couldn't tell us much about it. The Google Earth image of it reveals a huge installation, and I wouldn't be surprised if much of it is underground so pesky satellites can't see what's going on. You can see in the Google Earth image below runways and hangars--lots and lots of hangars.


After visiting Sedan Crater, we took a different road and passed by some trenches where troops had witnessed nuclear explosions and had been part of an experiment to see what would happen to them. There were also experiments to see what would happen to animals, houses, and equipment.

We made a stop at the Mercury cafeteria on the way out, then drove the hour back to Las Vegas.

It was a fascinating trip, and I highly recommend it. My husband was impressed with the amount of electrical material left behind. So many electrical boxes, wires, and more. I'm sure everyone who goes on the trip leaves with different things sticking with them. There is so much to absorb. (Here are articles about the tour from The Atlantic, Religionandpolitics.org, the New York Times, and the LA Times.)

To learn more, you can find many fact sheets here. And here's a specific one just about the tour.

Finally, thanks so much to all those who helped watch and shuttle our kids so that we could go: my mother-in-law Sylvia and her husband David; our babysitter, Carmela; and the great carpool friends, Jenny, Jess, and Stephanie.

The New Little Horse Canyon

 During August and September we had exceptional monsoons. Meaning more frequent than usual, and in some places, more precipitation than usual. Unfortunately quite a lot of that rain came on areas that had just burned, causing a lot of erosion. However, many places in the landscape have evolved to adapt to change (it's just that now we have a lot of non-native species that screw things up!). Regardless, seeing the flood damage gives you an awe of the power of Mother Nature.

A couple weeks ago I had the opportunity to go hiking up Little Horse Canyon in the North Snake Range in Nevada. We could see new drainage channels heading to the east. They flowed right over the Gandy Road, which is still in poor shape. Whole trees were carried across the road.

We could see why when we got down into the bottom of the canyon. Places thirty feet high were scoured.

some of the rocky banks continue to collapse.

We kept gawking as we walked along, finding debris in trees far above our heads. It would have been so amazing to see this flood. It actually wasn't just one flood event, but at least four.

When we rounded one corner, we could see that the streambed ahead was fifty feet lower. What had happened here?

It turned out the stream had cut down to bedrock and washed everything off it.

On the left side of the photo below, you can make out the old stream channel, which had been cutting through the limestone. It was only a couple feet wide. Now the stream bed is tens of feet wide. It will be so interesting to see what grows back in this area.

The raging creek snapped trees off at their base.

We don't get a whole lot of flash floods in this area, they're more common to the south. But this summer was definitely the time for them. Fortunately very few people live in this area, so although the amount of land moved was immense, the damage done to infrastructure was minimal.

As we left the canyon, we reached the debris flow, where the water slowed down and debris fell out of the current. Trees littered the bench as far as we could see.

It was a really cool hike, and I hope I can visit some of the other places that were flooded this summer. There's something about seeing massive landscape transformations that puts me in my place. Ha!

Moccasin Mountain Dinosaur Trackway near Kanab, Utah

When we told some friends we were going to Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park, they said to be sure to check out the Moccasin Mountain Dinosaur Trackway. When we got to the State Park, we asked the ranger and he gave us a very nice BLM brochure that had information about how to get to the trackway and also a map with GPS coordinates of the tracks.

You can drive on pavement until the last 2.2 miles. Then it becomes a 4WD sandy road. For a bit I considered taking our van and trying to bike to the site, but in the end decided to take our truck. That was a good choice. For adults, the road would be a challenge, but for little kids hiking or biking, the road would be a little too much with the deep sand. 

The ranger helpfully pointed out the place where people get stuck the most (with a $750 towing bill), and I did have to put the truck into 4 Low to get up that sandy hill. The other thing I noticed is that it's a one-lane road pretty much the whole way. For having such a nice brochure and website, it's not a place that can handle very much traffic. We only saw one other person the during the couple of hours we were there.

Before we got to the trackway, we visited a couple geocaches. The kids are so excited to find these, mainly because they love choosing a trinket. I love getting rid of old trinkets and seeing how long it's been since the last person has been to the geocache. Some are definitely more popular than others.

Then we were there, and it was a much shorter walk from the parking area to the tracks than I expected. Along the way we found some pools of water, and Desert Girl was delighted to be wearing her rain boots.

The tracks are here because this area was a watering hole, and the dinosaurs walked on the wet sand to get to the water, and then sand blew over the tracks. Over time the tracks fossilized, and now the rock above has eroded enough to let them be shown again.

It didn't take long to find our first track. This trackway has tracks from at least six different species of dinosaurs preserved.

Our favorites were the large Kayentapus tracks.

About six of the tracks were preserved in a line.

We also wandered around the beautiful rock for awhile, enjoying the solitude of the remote location and the beauty of the Navajo sandstone.

Eventually it was time to go. Through the puddles, of course.

When we got back home, I found that the BLM has a YouTube video about the track site. It covers a lot of information and gives a good feel for what the track site is like.

Desert Destination: Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes, Death Valley National Park

On our last morning in Death Valley, we headed to the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes near Stovepipe Wells. The kids were ultra-excited, as playing in sand sounded like a really fun thing to do. We decided that our goal was just to get out on the sand. We didn't care how far we went. We purposely chose the morning so the sand and air would be cooler.

 On the way to the sand dunes, I couldn't help but admire the flowering creosote bushes, one of the trademark plants of the Mojave Desert.

 Some of the blooms were already turning to seed.


The kids quickly got out the digging tools (and a net, which they used as a sieve), and got to work. I'm not sure what they were making. I wandered around the nearby knolls examining the sand.

 I saw so many tracks, mainly insects, some lizards, some birds. Quite a few burrow holes were nestled near the roots of the creosote bushes. In some places the wind had uncovered the roots of the creosote, causing it to die. In other places the sand was slowly covering the creosote bushes. These are clearly active dunes.

For sand dunes to form, three things must be present: a source of sand (from the Cottonwood Mountains), prevailing winds (from the southwest), and a place for the sand to collect (often a place with mountains behind it that cause the air to lift and the sand to drop out of it).

 The sand dunes at Mesquite Flat cover a huge area, and soon Desert Boy decided he was done digging and wanted to get up to one of the taller dunes. The dunes here aren't super tall, about 130 feet max, but that is still tall in our book!

 So we headed that direction, stopping to play from time to time. Desert Girl liked having her feet buried.

 As we came across one dune, we found a whole tour bus filming something. It was such a surprise to see so many people so far out in the dunes!

These dunes have been popular in movies due to their easy access. Probably the most famous movie filed here is Star Wars.

 We eventually made it to the top of a tall dune (although not the tallest, we agreed that a tall one closer to us would be sufficient).

 Desert Boy was the first up, but he went back down to help his sister. Aw, how sweet!

 Climbing in sand is a bit of a workout, especially in the steeper sections!

 Almost up, even though it now requires crawling!

 Desert Girl poses with me.

Some other kids and their dad came up on the dune with us, and Desert Boy made friends with them and wanted to spend the whole day with them. He's good at making friends like that. He was so sad when they went their own way. We still had good times ahead, though, like running down he sand dunes.

We had so much fun at the dunes that it made me realize we need to go check out more sand dunes. Many people think of sand dunes when they hear the word desert, but sand dunes make up less than 1% of the Mojave and Great Basin deserts. Nevertheless, several are spread across the area (five sand dune fields in Death Valley alone), making for some interesting biological observations and a great deal of fun!