Checking out the Baker Creek Marmots

Hello, yellow-bellied marmot (Marmota flaventris)! I was hoping this species, so I piled some kids in the van and we headed up the Baker Creek road. Even though it was an overcast afternoon, we easily found a marmot in the middle of the road.

He lifted his head to sniff, but then went back to digging his hole in the road.

We kept going closer in the vehicle, and eventually he decided he should depart. He waddled over a few feet to the side of the road. They can weigh up to 11 pounds, and this one has certainly been eating well. The most amazing thing (to me) is that marmots hibernate for eight months of the year. He's only been out a month or two and has already found enough greens, insects, and eggs to eat to pork him up.

They burrow in colonies, with a dominant male for the group. They live in the western U.S. and Canada.

Although some marmots whistle to warn each other of predators, I've never heard them whistle in Great Basin National Park.

They can live up to fifteen years, although the ones that dig holes in the road usually get hit by cars.

Marmots spend about 80% of their life in their burrow. Look at the dirt on this one's nose!

I did manage to photograph more than marmots. Here's a snow buttercup, one of the first flowers to appear after the snow melts.

I enticed the kids for a short walk. Just to the second bridge! Then the boys turned back.

But Desert Girl was ready for more, so we went on to the fifth bridge.

It started raining and even hailing. We enjoyed it.

It's so nice to be exploring further up the mountain! The snow is rapidly melting now.

Visiting Pattern's Spring Valley Wind Farm

The local schools went on a field trip to Pattern Energy's Spring Valley Wind Farm. I had wanted to learn more about it, so I arranged to take most of the day off work so I could attend. 

The school bus pulled up to a tan-colored building in the middle of the wind farm that is easy to miss from Highway 6 and 50.

We went inside and they had chairs arranged for us in their big open part.

But before we listened to a presentation, we did the morning stretching. That was a nice way to get started!

Then we learned a lot of interesting things about the wind farm. There are 66 turbines, each with a turbine size of 2.3 MW for a total project capacity of 152 MW. The blade length is 49m/161 ft. The project area covers 7,673 acres, and during operations 77 acres are being used. They have a 20-year contract and are in year 5 now. The project generates energy equal to the needs of about 40,000 homes.

The turbines were manufactured by Siemens, and they have a 10-year contract to do the maintenance. One of the maintenance workers showed us his industrial harness and all the attachments and explained what it was like to climb up inside one of the wind turbines.

Then we went into the work room and saw the monitor that showed nearby lightning strikes. They stop operations if lightning strikes are within 30 miles.

The turbines are also monitored by Pattern's home office in Houston, Texas, and by Siemens' home office in Denmark.

They had this really cool poster on the wall. There are blinking red lights on top of some of the turbines  at night for air traffic, but they try to keep all other lights really low so as to not disturb the night skies.

I like how the poster features bats. This project was quite controversial because it is located near Rose Guano Cave, a migratory stop for more than three million Mexican free-tailed bats each summer and fall. When they started in 2012, they were getting over 500 mortalities in a year (mainly due to bats getting close to the turbines and the change in barometric pressure causing their insides to rupture). Fortunately this story has a mostly good ending. Pattern Energy agreed to installing an infrared beam across the entrance of the cave to count how many bats are exiting. As many as 2,000 bats per minute can leave at a time. When the counts are high, the turbines don't start at 7 mph, but at 11 mph instead. Bats fly more at the lower wind speeds, and Pattern isn't losing as much revenue at that lower wind speed. The result has been a decrease in bat deaths, to about 100 per year. Bird deaths have always been lower than permitted, although about one golden eagle per year is killed. (This LVRJ article has more info.)

We saw a screen showing the status of each wind turbine.

While we were loading the bus, I got a photo of the substation. A big reason this wind farm was located here is that there are major transmission lines that pass through from Delta, Utah to Los Angeles, California. Pattern Energy sells all the energy they produce to Nevada Energy.

 It was a stormy day, with lots of passing clouds. The turbines were turning. They can turn up to wind speeds of 56 mph, then they are turned off to prevent damage.

We got off the bus at the last wind turbine before getting back on the highway. A few lucky kids got to wear helmets and get a little closer. Notice the snow on the ground, it was a cold day for late April!

Everyone else stayed by the bus.

We craned our necks up to look at the very tall wind turbine. Each turbine is taller than a football field--about 426 feet high!

Here's a truck for scale, but it still is hard to process how big these are. The blades at the ends can go up to 200 mph.

We watched, mesmerized.

Overall, it was a super interesting field trip, and I was glad to learn more about the wind farm. The employees there seemed very concerned about being good stewards of the land while they extracted energy from the wind.

Our day wasn't over, though. We headed further north to Cleveland Ranch, a ranch started in the mid-1860s by Abner C. Cleveland. This became the largest fenced ranch in Nevada for a time. Cleveland was a Nevada State Senator. You can read more about the history here , or for the definitive history, check out this free 440-page PDF by Lenora Healy (paperback version costs $18). The LDS church now owns this ranch.

The kids were treated to a hay ride.

The ranch is beautiful, but it was cold that day, as evidenced by these icicles.

We also went on a walking tour of the historic structures, including Cleveland's original log cabin and some of the storage sheds.

The kids were fascinated by the animals, and in the words of Desert Boy, "how cool all the old things were."

2017 Astronomy Programs at Great Basin National Park

 Last night Desert Girl and I went up to the Astronomy program at Great Basin National Park. For the months of April and May, they are held at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday nights. They will be held three nights a week after Memorial Day weekend (I believe--check with the park at 775-234-7331 to be entirely sure) through Labor Day weekend.

One of the things we learned at the program was what a.m. and p.m. mean. I guess I hadn't really thought about it much. Ante meridian is Latin for before midday and post meridian is after midday. We also learned about Pope Gregory wiping out a week in October back about 852 and then the institution of the leap day so that wouldn't have to happen again. Except leap day isn't celebrated every 100 years, so it didn't happen in February 1900. But it did happen in February 2000 because every thousand years they need to put it back in. And sometimes there's a leap second, like in June 2015. Or something like that. But don't worry, the atomic clock is accurate to 1 second in 30 million years, based on the cesium atom. I think that's right. I wasn't exactly taking notes, but it was interesting.

Then it was time to line up at the telescopes and look at the night skies. There was a good turnout, as it was a clear night, and somewhat warm (above freezing, anyway). Probably about 40 people were there. It was cold enough that Desert Girl and I had on winter coats and winter boots and had two blankets and were still a bit chilled, but we were better prepared than most.

Desert Girl was a good sport while I took some photos of telescopes. One person had his own positioned near the Lehman Caves Visitor Center, which was lit up in red to preserve our night vision.  The blue line is the glow-in-the dark paint along the curb.

We could find the Big Dipper easily, with the handle arcing to the bright star Arcturus, which Ranger Steve was pointing out. Through the telescope our first object was even easier to find--the moon. With a crescent, it made for some really great shadows.

Then we lined up again to take a look at Jupiter and four moons. I was also able to see these through our binoculars (binoculars, lawn chairs, and blankets are great things to bring to an astronomy program, as well as red flashlights).

Then it was on to the M3 globular cluster. It looked like a big fuzzy spot, even though it's made up of 500,000 stars. Why fuzzy? Well, it's over 30,000 light years away! There's nothing like looking up into the heavens to help put life into perspective.

Desert Girl had seen enough at this point, so we left, but other folks stayed on, looking at more amazing things. We hope to go to more astronomy programs this year, the kids really enjoy them, and it's always great to spend more time looking up at the stars and learning more about them.

Birds, Scenic Views, and More

 March has been a month of variable weather, like usual. The snow is melting, the reservoirs filling, and the wind blowing. We can always count on the wind! We lost part of the roof on one of our outbuildings this month. Some other roofs blew off around town this spring, along with other structural damage. I guess it's been windier than usual. The clouds can be amazing, though.

I really like the dramatic clouds and snow-covered peaks!


We've gotten some snow, which always makes me admire the early flowers that can handle the snow and freezing. These are blossoms on one of our currant bushes.

The robins are numerous now, and they get extra puffy when it's cold.

The American Avocets are back. They are such pretty birds.

The turkey vultures are migrating through. We'll see occasional ones throughout the summer, but spring and fall is when we see the most.

It's fun to watch them soar.

These chickens don't seem to mind the snow. Our last chickens wouldn't even leave the coop if there was snow, so it's neat to see these be a little more adventurous.

We often spot a red-tailed hawk in our trees or the neighbors'.

Desert Girl sometimes joins me on little rambles in the golden light, looking for good photos. She wants to win a big ribbon at the county fair this year.

We got a nice view of a Western Meadowlark that evening.

 

One evening, Desert Girl joined me on a short-eared owl survey. We didn't see any short-eared owls, but we had some beautiful views. Here's Crystal Peak off in the distance.

And U.S. Highway 50, which seems to go on nearly forever.


We also saw this impressive load. We counted 50 tires. It must weigh a lot!

It's fun seeing all the changes spring brings. Of course, if you don't like the wind or snow, it's possible to go hide in the kids' new fort--a buried 55-gallon drum.