Brad and I went camping for the first time this summer. We went to Great Basin National Park which is in the Southeast lower corner of NV, right over the Utah boarder. We had plans on Friday night, so we didn't get leave until Saturday morning. When we got to the park it was 70 and sunny. The first thing I was shocked by was how green the park was. Keep in mind we just drove across Utah country side, and now in the desert in NV and all Brad and I saw for the last 3 hours were brown desert. Great Basin was a very pretty green National Park.
One thing Brad and I wanted to do at Great Basin was to go through the Lehman Caves. We got tickets do a tour through the cave. We were both so excited and really didn't know what to expect. We both have been in caves before on family trips growing up, but that was a while ago. We were blown away by the cave, it was huge, and very neat. The formations were so cool looking, and our tour guide was very good and taught us a lot. At one point they turned off the lights in the cave...boy was it dark. It was kind of scary. We spent about an hour and half in the cave walking around and see the different formations. (check out our pictures)
While driving from the cave to our campsite within the park we saw two huge jack rabbits, some deer crossing the road, and three huge turkeys. Our campsite was really nice. It was back away from everybody else, and had some shade (very rare in Utah campgrounds Brad and I have learned). While we were sitting by the fire reading we had a deer walk into our campsite. We just sat there at watched it.
We then drove around the park to the outlook of Wheeler Peak. It had some great views. We were kind of disappointed that we couldn't drive up to the peak and do a hike we were interested in doing, because the road was still closed for the season due to snow. Oh well.
On Sunday we got up and drove through the desert to the trailhead for Lexington Arch. It is a six story arch made out of limestone. The hike was along side a green mountain, which had a meadow on it. It was one of the prettier hikes I have been on. We were both inpressed on how big the Lexington Arch was and thought it was neat how it was on the side of this other mountain.