Since Soldier Meadow Road was one of our “destinations” for the trip, it deserved its own post! The road started out pretty mellow. Just your generic gravel road… and then just slowly disintegrated into a narrow, winding, steep trail with largeish rocks. I suppose we have a Jeep for a reason, but this turned out to be the worst “road” of the whole trip. (This doesn’t include trail offshoots! More to come on that later…) Unfortunately, I was just sitting in the Jeep holding on tightly and looking at the scenery so I didn’t get many photos of it, especially of the hardest parts. Needless to say, you will not be able to drive this road in your Prius…but if you have a 4wd, it’s worth it!
Soldier Meadow Road was quite the experience. I hope it was everything that Jason wanted it to be. (I personally, would murder someone for a latte and a shower right now…) We were headed roughly south to the town of Gerlach, NV by way of the Black Rock Desert dry lakebed, AKA “The Playa”. However Jason was telling me about “petrified canyon” that is apparently a nice hike up into a canyon (obviously) that’s full of petrified wood. Well my rockhound radar was going at full blast, so I located this magnificent place on the map and we headed out towards it to make camp for the night and go for a little adventure…. an adventure that we definitely found! At least for our trusty little Cherokee… We used all the horsepower and ground clearance available. 😉
So yeah… that was a bit sketchy! Jeep handled it beautifully and the trailer didn’t seem to really impact it in any way, so that was helpful as well. The trailer has about a foot more ground clearance than the Jeep… it’s pretty ridiculous. We were worried that the rest of the trail would be more of this powdery mess, but in comparison it was fairly easy and we made it to the top with no issues.
Not a bad view, huh? However, we unknowingly stumbled upon the most epic campsite I’ve ever been to. An oasis in the middle of the high desert with trees, springs, a grill, cut wood, and rocks everywhere. Turns out we didn’t actually make it to petrified canyon as we would find out tomorrow, but we’re coming here from now on! This place is so special that, it too, gets its own post. Sometimes I’m grateful for my shitty navigational skills. 😉