Everyone Needs Darkness Art Exhibit

There's a super cool art exhibit at the Lehman Caves Visitor Center in Great Basin National Park called "Everyone Needs Darkness." School kids from across the Great Basin were invited to do art for this theme, and the results were quite impressive. I took some time one day to enjoy the exhibit.

Next to the artwork are displays with the artists' names, title, and description. Here we have "Children Need Darkness" by Elle from Layton, Utah and "A Mirror in the Darkness" by Burklie, Sam, and Rylee from EskDale, Utah.

Some exhibits were three-dimensional, like the bottom one in the photo below titled, "Draw Back the City, Let in the Night."

I didn't know what this was at first, but then read the title, "Embraced by the Night." The description is precious: "We wanted to show how important the night is to the world. We made the earth being hugged by the night sky..."

In this textile piece, each student decorated a piece of fabric and they stitched them all together.

There are too many pieces of art to show them all in this post, but here you can see the theater wall covered.

More artwork is shown out in the lobby.

Finally, three more pieces, with descriptions at the bottom. Check out this 3D owl from Eureka, Nevada student Scarlett.

This Great Horned Owl by Henderson, NV student Athena.

And this "Moonlight Dance" by Henderson, NV student Adina.

The show runs through September 8, which happens to be the Astronomy Festival at Great Basin National Park. It's worth a visit!

Desert Girl Helps at a Branding

It was time for another branding, and we wanted to see more. We headed down to the action, where the moms and calves had already been separated.

It didn't take long to see some action. First the roping, which included roping the head and then roping a hind leg.

Then once the calf was secured, it was time to vaccinate, ear tag, ear cut, and mark the calf.


Desert Girl wanted to take some photos. Here's one from her perspective.

And she really likes the horses, so she got lots of horse close ups.

And another.


There's so much action during a branding, that it's captivating to watch.


Of course working with such a beautiful backdrop doesn't hurt!

It's always fun to try and get some different perspectives too.

Desert Boy helped for a bit with the calf wrestling, but he took an elbow to the eye and went home early. It turned out the elbow wasn't too bad, but his allergies were, and his eyes were nearly swollen shut.

Desert Girl did better. She wanted to help, so Aunt Tana gave her lessons on the first job: loading the ear tagger. Since it contains a pesticide, she had to be careful not to touch her face.

Breanna made the calf wrestling look easy.

And back on the barrels, Desert Girl was getting the hang of her job.

She was quite serious about doing a good job. She also enjoyed it.

It's cool seeing these traditions carry on and the kids learning about them and participating.

Till next time!

Notch Peak-Tallest Limestone Cliff in North America

When we look off to the east, we see the profile of a mountain with a sharp drop. It's called Notch Peak, and it has about a 2,200 foot drop down its limestone face. Whoa!

It's a great spring or fall hike. My husband and I had done it many years ago, pre-kids. We decided it was time to take the kids and headed out there on April 22, 2018. We followed directions from Road Trip Ryan to get to the trailhead. It was definitely a 4WD/AWD road about 2 miles from the trailhead. We found three other vehicles parked there, including a couple camping. We got organized and started up the easy-to-follow trail.

We kept our eyes out for arches and saw three.

We saw lots of pinyon pine trees and Utah juniper. This tree had a lot of exposed wood and was really beautiful.

A few flowers were blooming like this phlox.

Everyone was still in good spirits with big smiles at this stage.

It was fairly warm. This western fence lizard even made an appearance.

We kept going up the canyon, and I was so excited when we started seeing bristlecone pines!

We reached a snowy patch and had to do some scrambling. Yep, this is the trail!


The kids liked munching on the snow.

Then it was time to come out of the canyon. This is where it got hot and the kids weren't having so much fun.

I stopped to wait for them and took some photos of Ibex playa to the south. We've camped there a couple of times.

And Sevier Lakebed, which had some water in it, to our surprise. It was a very calm day with nice reflections.

You can see how happy Desert Boy is.


Finally we reached the saddle, with fantastic views. My husband and the kids took a rest and then started up to the summit while I took a little detour to the north to check out more bristlecones.

These trees are great. I could easily spend a whole day up here visiting them.

Coming back to the saddle, I had a fantastic view of Notch Peak.

Down below is the narrow canyon that reaches the peak from the west side of the House Range.

I scampered up to the top.

And then I had to hold the camera over the edge for a photo. Woohoo! Base jumpers like to come to this 9,658 ft summit.

I went down the summit the other direction a bit to get another angle.

Meanwhile, at the top, this is what was happening.

That meant I had time for more photos!

Then it was time to get them up and get a family photo. It was such a nice day. We had packed layers, but it was so warm we didn't need any of them. We drank a lot of water.

Then it was time for the hike down, which was beautiful. But we were all getting a little tired. Round-trip this hike is about 7 miles, with a 2,700 foot elevation gain.

Finally we made it back to the trailhead and our vehicle. This is a really great hike, I definitely recommend it. But not on a hot day. Our high was about 75 degrees and we got toasty, even with some lingering snow. For another account and directions, check out Girl on a Hike blog.