This month my family is going on a little trip to The Great Basin National Park for a weekend field trip and star party.  Steve has a nice sized telescope and we’ve been to star parties before, but never at one of the darkest places in the country.  So this should be amazing!  We’re also going to be going to Lehman Caves and to see the Upper Pictograph Cave.  There is really a lot to see and do up there and the National forest website even has some curriculum to go over before the trip.  And the boys thought they were off for the summer!  HA!

We’ll be taking the long drive up to Baker on Friday evening after we close.  It’ll probably take us about 4 or 5 hours to drive up there, but we’ll have the Van and will be comfortable.  We’ll be getting a little cabin for the weekend that won’t be too far from everything that we plan to do.

What’s really great about the National Park system is that they have some great curriculum downloads for teachers and homeschoolers to use for their trip to the parks. For all the different activities to do and places to visit in the area, there are worksheets, study guides, and lesson plans to use.  I’ve downloaded all of them, not knowing exactly what we’ll be doing, I want to make sure we cover everything on the way up there.  These will be perfect for the long drive up!

One of the first things we’re planning on doing Saturday is go creek fishing.  Although Steve and I have taken the boys fishing (well it wasn’t real fishing, more like putting a line in a pond where the fish were practically jumping out where you could catch them with your hands!), it was a long time ago, so this will be mostly new for the boys.  Of course there are some state fishing regulations that we’ll have to abide by, and licenses that we’ll need to get, but it’ll be fun to go fishing out in the mountains like this!

Saturday we’ll also be going hiking through some of the trails to see some historical places, like the mining district and the Upper Pictograph Cave. This should be very interesting to see for sure.  There are a lot of very interesting and historical findings in the area, and these pictographs are just some of them.

From the National Park Website

The pictographs at Upper Pictograph Cave are believed to have been painted by the Fremont Indians, a farming and hunting group that lived in the Snake Valley from about 1000 to 1300 A.D. The Fremont built several villages, including one near present-day Baker, Nevada, called Baker Village. What little is known about this culture has been deduced from artifacts and rock art found in their villages and throughout the region.

Then we’ll visit the Osceola Ghost Town.  Which is on the other side of Wheeler peak.  This is an old placer mining site that was running until 1900 when the company shut down.  Most of the buildings are completely destroyed by 2 seperate fires.  However the biggest attraction is the cemetary, which holds gravestones that bare the stories of those buried beneath them.  This might be a good place to bring some paper and charcoal to do some gravestone rubbings.

Saturday night is when the star party is going to take place.  A star party is a gathering of mostly amatuer astronomists to a dark place where they can view the night sky together.  We’ve been to a couple here in Las Vegas, and several in Southern California and they’ve been a lot of fun and gorgeous!  My two favorite things to do are to watch for sattelites to pass through the sky and to just stare at Saturn for as long as I can.  What’s unique about this star party is that the Great Basin is one of the darkest places on the earth.  So we will for sure be able to see the Milky way and lots of beautiful star clusters and other sky objects.  I can’t wait!

The next day we’ll be going on a tour of the Lehman Caves.   There are over 40 known caves in these mountains and we’re going to be taking a tour through one of them.  It’s a 60 minute tour of the caves which will be .4 miles long (I can’t do too much walking because of my back, so this one is the most I can do).  I haven’t been through any caves since I was a kid, and the boys have never done this, so it’ll be great for everyone!

Our trip back home will take place after the tour of the caves, and on the way home we’ll be GeoCaching to our hearts content.  We should get back home just after dark, so we won’t be too late.  After all, Steve and I will have to get up early to work the next day.  I’ll post pictures from our trip when we get back.  I’m also thinking about having the boys write a post about what they thought, did and learned from the whole trip.  Should be interesting!

This is our trip for the summer, at least so far.  What are You doing this summer?