Nevada trip. Day 4

This is being posted from the town of Owyhee Nevada.

I have been smelling fuel in the van for a little while now. Most of the time that isn’t unusual with these old vans so at first i wasn’t to concerned about it. I first noticed that there was something wrong when we got to to where we stopped for me to fill up with gas east of Reno/Sparks. The van had used too much fuel for as far as we had come I still didn’t put it together.

We continued on to our first camp at the highway 95 exit.

The next day as we were driving on I-80 Bob determined that he might not have enough gas to make it to Winnemucca so we stopped at a gas station. Bob pulled in at the pumps and I pulled Pigpen off to the side.
When I turned the engine off I noticed that the smell of raw gasoline was extra strong. I opened the engine compartment and there it was! Gas was leaking out of the fuel in let fitting. I got out the wrenches that I needed to tightened the fitting knowing that these fittings are very easy to strip; if it wasn’t stripped already.
The fitting the fitting seamed to tighten just fine so I figured that would solve the problem.

When we arrived at the camp on Willow Creek I noticed that the fuel odor was back but with al the other fixing I didn’t get to checking the carburetor until this (Monday) morning. Sure enough when I started the engine fuel started dripping from that same fitting.
Bob took a kayak ride while I tore into the carb.

It turned out the threads were almost gone in the carburetor where the fuel fitting screws in.
I thought I might have some Teflon tape in my tool box. It turned out I had some thing even better than tape. There was a tube of Rector seal the best pipe thread sealer ever. I put some of the sealer on the threads and carefully screwed the fitting into the carburetor. The fitting never tightened completely so the threads were definbatrely stripped. 
By that time bob was back and we sat around discussing our options if this fix didn’t work. After about a half hour I started the van.
No leaks! so far.

I put away all my tools and we packed the rigs and set off on another days adventure.
We stopped at the top of the dam where there is a viewing area.

You can see the area where we camped in this picture taken from the overlook.

I checked my sell Phone and had a lock so I called Patti. She was surprised and I think at first she thought I was calling because we had some king of serious trouble.

After talking to Patti I checked the Verizon wireless hotspot and found that we could get on line so Bob and I posted our blogs to date.

After posting we headed north east on the road that goes by willow creek and followed it to state rout 226 where we turned north to the turnoff to Bull run Reservoir.

Across the road from the turnoff is this old mail box. The box on the pole above has painted on it “AIR MAIL”.

We turned onto the Bull Run road and continued past Bull Run reservoir.
As we drove higher into the mountains we can see the green groves of Aspen in the distance. In a few days, if we are lucky those trees will turn to there fall colors and paint the hillsides with gold.

There are a few patches that are starting to turn already.

 

We drove until we crossed Columbia Creek. Here we came to a small dirt road on our Left we turned onto this and followed it along the creek northeast toward the hills. We drove past a sheep herders camp, through some mud puddles, across the creek and turned off of this road on to a smaller one. We past an old building. About 50 yards further we pulled into a small gap in the Aspens and made camp.

After a short break,

we took a walk.
We stopped to check out this old brick building.

We decided that it was an old cold storage building, as it had very thick walls and only one window and one door. There were also places for hanging meet in side. This is all part of an old ranch that was established some time in the 1850’s.

We walked over to the creek and followed it up steam checking out the beaver dams.

The beaver have really moved into this area in the last several years and a lot of the creeks have dams on them.

As we were walking through the tall grass we noticed this spherical object partially hidden in the weeds.

On closer inspection it turned out to be a Hornet nest.

Bob had been here before and knew about the nest so he was looking for it. I would hate to stumble on this thing and accidently dick it.

We continued our walk and came to the road near the Building that we passed driving in here.
This May have been the old ranch house.

 

After we got back to camp bob made another of his world class chicken noodle dishes. This camp spot isn’t too good for having a fire and It wasn’t that cold so we sat around until about 8:30 and decided to go in for the night and work on our individual blog’s.

The end of Day 4. Another good day exploring Nevada.