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This page last updated on 04/28/2017
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10/03/2012 Trip Notes: Along US-95S, on the way towards Searchlight, we couldn't help but notice that the normally dry desert lake bed just south of Boulder City still contained standing water (Fig. 01) from the two heavy rainstorms we had back in September. After reaching Searchlight and turning west onto NV-164 (Nipton Rd.) we traveled about 6 miles before turning south onto the graded, yet quite bumpy, Walking Box Ranch Road (Fig. 02). We drove past the site of the Walking Box Ranch (Fig. 03), and continued for approximately 7.5 miles before stopping at one of at least three aging holding corrals (Figs. 04 thru 07) that we passed along the way. Though this road seems almost flat, further out it does rise slowly with a few little humps along the way. As far back as the 1890's, this section of desert was home to a 400,000 acre working cattle ranch. Besides the ranch site itself, many of these old corrals, water troughs, and other ranch features still remain scattered throughout this desert area. From here, we had views west of the Castle Peaks and the New York Mountain range (Fig. 08) and the Hart Peak to the south (Figs. 09 & 10).
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We hiked this location for nearly two hours and, in addition to some beautiful desert views, we had some interesting finds. Several of us picked a wash (Fig. 11) to hike that headed west out into the desert toward the New York Mountains. Probably one of our more unique finds along the way was a good sized tarantula spider (Fig. 12) that was spotted by Buster shortly after the start of our hike. It was just slowly meandering along the edge of the wash trail. At one point he even “reared up” in an attack mode (Figs. 13 & 14). There were also hundreds of colorful butterflies flying back and forth across our path (Figs. 15 thru 17) sucking nectar from the many plants that lined the wash. After coming down off a ridge that was adorned with dozens of red barrel cactus and yucca plants (Fig. 18), my hiking partner Mike spotted what appeared to be a “reddish” snake. Unfortunately, it slithered away quite quickly into a hole within a bushy area, preventing me from getting a picture. I added the last picture on this page (Fig. 19) to my Black & White series - check it out here ... Black & White Series.
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| (Fig. 19) Title - The Corral |
