Part 1: Las Vegas to Granite Mountain

I arrived in Las Vegas in the late evening of Sunday, March 11th. It was already dark outside by the time we were starting to land, so I was unable to see the mountain ranges until the next day. I had not seen too many mountains before this trip (being from Florida), and spent my first night in the hotel room in Las Vegas without any idea of just how stunning they were here in the American Southwest. It was the next morning that I first saw them, as we were on our way to Death Valley National Park across the California border. I was truly impressed by the sheer size of them, and fascinated by the differing layers of rock and their colorations. Another thing that stood out to me was the density of the shrubs and other vegetation that were growing in the vast washes on the side of the road and between the mountains. Before I started this course, I must admit that I had a pretty flawed notion of the biodiversity of deserts, and was surprised to see so much life thriving in such arid conditions. This was something that continued to impress me throughout the duration of the trip, as I was really not expecting life to be so capable of adapting to such unforgiving environments.
We drove around Death Valley on March 12th, stopping at several points along the way. I saw a variety of lizards and invertebrates, and of course plenty of different kinds of plants. I was a part of the invertebrate group for our class' collective iNaturalist project, so I was able to record several observations of different bugs such as the California Harvester Ant, the Creosote Gall Midge, and an Ophyrastes weevil. We drove a large loop in Death Valley called Artists' Palette, and it was here that we saw some magnificently colored rocks in shades of purple and blue. We also managed to see a large chuckwalla lizard. After a long day of exploring the park, we were able to walk out into a huge valley in which the ground was covered with salt. It was here that we found a windscorpion, as well as some Hirudinea leeches. We watched the sunset and then returned to our vans and drove back into Nevada, where we stayed in a hotel in Pahrump.
The next morning, we drove back into California, where we stayed for a few days. We stopped on the side of the road and explored for a while, and I was able to observe a cricket on iNaturalist. Once we arrived in Granite Mountain and got settled into the Biological Research Station that we were staying in, we went on a hike and got to explore the mountain range. I saw plenty of cool moths, beetles, and spiders, as well as some very interesting species of opuntia and cholla cactus. We spent the following day hiking around other parts of Granite Mountain, and saw some cave paintings that had been left by native Americans several hundred years ago, as well as some artifacts that had been left behind on one of our hikes. We then climbed the Kelso Dunes, which were about 600 ft. tall. The view from the top was incredible, and definitely worth the sand that I had in my hiking shoes for the rest of the trip.

Posted on March 25, 2018 01:26 AM by cullencsmith