(upbeat music) - [Male narrator] Support for Wild Nevada memories is provided by the William Pennington foundation.

- [Woman Narrator] Millie Hopper and Millard Reed.

- [Male Narrator] Gail and John Sande.

- [Woman Narrator] Margaret and Charles Burback.

- [Male Narrator] And by individual members.

- [Dave Santina] It's been 20 years since wild Nevada first appeared on public television.

Over the years many people have asked, what's it like to travel around and make the show?

So let's celebrate the 20th anniversary by reliving one of our favorite adventures and sharing some wild Nevada memories.

- Hi, welcome to Wild Nevada.

We're starting this show right at the geographic center of the state.

I'm Chris Orr.

- And I'm Dave Santina, and we're joined this time by Rich Moreno of Nevada magazine.

Thanks for coming along to lead us again, Rich.

Now we only found the center of the state because Rich brought his GPS and the geographic center has no monument, no indicator whatsoever.

- though on the ground, I took a picture of it to show how they marked the geographic center of the state.

- Now, this center of the state is in the Northern part of the Monitor Valley and Rich, where are we going to be going on this trip?

- Well we're gonna head north of here and look at some petroglyphs.

And then we're gonna go south uh, to take a couple of hikes.

- This show, Gail Sande came with us.

Gail was a long time supporter and board member.

I was so nervous watching Gail.

We're out in the middle of the geographic center of the state.

She's got, y'know, jewelry, hair, big diamond ring.

And all I could think of is what happens if that falls off, or you lose it, and you're in the middle of nowhere, I'm terrified for her!

She's fine, I'm freaking out, she's totally fine.

- [Chris Orr] Another way to illustrate it is that if you trace Nevada's boundaries on a piece of cardboard, cut it out, and then balanced it on a sharp pencil the balance point would be the center of the state.

- Well, you know, I actually tried that little suggestion where you take the cardboard and you cut it out into the state of Nevada and put it underneath a pencil.

And either my pencil was too sharp or my cardboard was too... weak because I never got it to balance.

And so you need to take our word for it that we were actually in the middle of the state.

- It's a pretty place the center of the state (laughs) I mean, there may not be anything there, but it's a pretty place.

We meet Rob Perrin, an outdoor recreation and wilderness specialist with the Bureau of Land Management.

- Beautiful day to be out here.

- Very beautiful day.

- So what direction you want to take us?

- Oh, we're going to go right up here and look at some petroglyphs.

- Sounds great.

- Lead on!

- Rob.

I've come by this sign on the highway a few times, but never stopped here before.

What's the story of this site?

- Well this was established as a BLM campground and picnic site back in 1967 and has been in use since.

It's a very popular site.

- Rob we're on a real well-established trail what's the highlight of this trail, and the purpose?

- Well, this trail comes and shows folks all these petroglyphs that are along these rock faces here.

If you look at this one flat surface here you can see a bunch of vertical, and what appears to be scratchings in the rock.

- [Dave Santina] Yeah they look like tally marks, like somebody was counting up some numbers of something.

What did they think it is?

- We have no idea really who did it, when it was done, or what the purpose of the markings were.

So it's all up to the visitor to speculate as to what it might be, it's kind of.. - That is the answer we get every single time because it's the truth.

But one day I would love to discover the Rosetta Stone of petroglyphs and unlock them because it starts to get difficult to keep, continue to see them when we always know we're gonna find interesting looking imagery, but it won't have any definitive meaning because we'll never be sure.

- I think petroglyphs are such cool, amazing things to look at.

I don't think you can ever do too many petroglyph trips.

- I've seen a lot of petroglyphs and I'm not sure that I can distinguish between them anymore.

- There's some speculation that that's from the James Simpson party, exploration party that came through here.

- So this was part of one of the trails going westward?

- Yes.

Yes, this site has had a lot of transcontinental history associated with it.

And first John C Fremont came through in 1845 and James Simpson in 1859.

- We really rely on the cameras to capture different angles and closeups and just ways to show off these petroglyphs long enough for us to talk about them, because you can only look at one image of a petroglyph on a screen for so long before you kind of get ready to see something else, so, it's a- it's a challenge as a camera person you've got to find multiple angles of sometimes the same thing.

Just to spice it up a little bit.

- [Chris Orr] How many trails are up here?

- Uh, there's just the one interpretive loop trail that we're on.

- Uh-huh - It's about a half a mile in length, and there's more petroglyphs right up on this face here.

- [Dave Santina] Yeah, okay.

- This is the last uh site, petroglyph site along the tour.

- Wow, kind of the best for last, this is great.

- [Rich Moreno] They're all over the boulder, and these are quite different in style from the other ones that are on the other panels.

- There are a couple down at the bottom that are, a little, sort of sort of animal like.

- Yeah!

- I'm trying, I'm trying to find something because, sometimes they're just shapes or squigglies, but when they, when they kind of resemble an animal, I get excited cause I can say something about it.

- [Rob Perrin] So it's kind of unique compared to the other ones.

- I'm glad we stopped.

- Yeah.

- It's so cool how petroglyphs are so different from location to location.

It's such a generic term and yet, they can vary so much.

- [Dave Santina] Back on highway 50 we head east to state route 376, which is the road through big smokey valley to Tonopah.

About a hundred yards later, we make another left onto a dirt road marked by an historical marker for Toquima Cave.

- The cameras in the backseat shooting us driving, trying to hold it steady, it's hard to do.

Spencer's Hot Springs can be either a welcome sight for a tired traveler or a big disappointment.

It all depends on your perspective.

For the tired traveler, the Hot Springs provides a great place to relax, and soak the stress out of your travel, but if you're expecting something lavish you'll be disappointed.

- You know, I remember as we pulled into the Hot Springs and we're parking and getting out of the car, there was a couple that was there and they quickly scrambled away from where we were and I think maybe they were enjoying the Hot Springs all natural and having a camera crew around really wasn't the best way to go.

- [Dave Santina] One of Nevada's best kept secrets Rich says, is the abundance of geothermal resources, hot or warm spring that can be found throughout the state.

- There's so much Hot Spring's etiquette.

If a persons there and maybe clothing's optional to them that's their Hot Springs.

That's not for you to decide.

(laughs) - [Dave Santina] Hot mineral water travels to the surface as a spring when a crack in the earth, or fault, is present.

This fault acts like a pipeline for the hot water, which has a natural tendency to rise.

- Dave and I take a moment to try it out.

- I'm taking pictures of our feet, with my little camera.

- [Chris Orr] Unfortunately, we can't linger here too long because we still have a good distance to go before our day ends.

- Leaving the hot Springs, we turn left and head up into the Toquima Range.

It's a short but beautiful drive to Pete summit and the turnoff to the Toquima Cave rock art site.

- [Dave Santina] From the parking lot we follow the sign pointing to the cave.

A well-traveled trail takes us up to the cave entrance.

The site is protected by a large chain link fence which keeps visitors from disturbing these ancient artifacts.

- This is pretty impressive.

- It's a tall fence.

- Yeah.

- You know that large chain link fence that you see as we approached, the thing to keep people out, well uhh pay attention because the next couple of shots we're on one side, and the other of that chain link fence.

And, but we were very careful, we were very careful not to disrupt any of the protected heritage that was there.

- Normally you're not supposed to go in there and we, we had, we had help.

Rich was able to acquire the keys just for us to go in and get some good footage, but we didn't want to show that because obviously that's not what you're supposed to be able to do when you go visit and we don't want to encourage anybody to do anything illegal or destructive.

- We've seen them, you know, Hickison Summit, other petroglyphs sites.

- So the vertical notch marks, which - Right.

- Could be circles.

- Circles.

- Right, yeah, it's too bad that nobody knows what they mean.

- [Chris Orr] Yeah, you can speculate endlessly.

- [Rich Moreno] A mystery.

- [Dave Santina] I like it that we don't know, because if we did know it might be really disappointing.

- [Rich Moreno] You mean it's like a shopping list?

- Yeah, what if it was just like "bring home bread."

- Yeah.

So I wonder if it had some kind of religious significance or it's related to the hunt or you know, maybe they camped in this cave?

- [Dave Santina] Yeah, maybe passing time, the calendar.

- [Rich Moreno] Yeah.

Because of all the little, little tally marks as you call them.

- [Dave Santina] Yeah, see how much better it is that we just decide for ourselves.

- Okay, all right, good thing we don't know what they mean.

- (laughs) Yeah, I don't know what I'm talking about I just say things sometimes.

Rich has to put up with us, Rich now lives up in Washington State, works at Central Washington University.

Rich, if you're seeing this we miss you!

Come back and take us on a trip somewhere.

- [Chris Orr] The valley gets its name from a large rock that resembles the Monitor warship from the civil war.

- [Dave Santina] Our destination is an area on the east side of the monitor range called the Miniature Grand Canyon.

Sounds intriguing, doesn't it?

Well, unfortunately we have conflicting stories about how interesting this area really is but with a name like that, we can't pass it up.

- The drive across this valley was just unbelievably beautiful.

And as you approached and passed by, you had the deserted farmhouse and the barn and to me, it just sort of capsulated and capsulated Nevada where you had this isolation and yet beauty at the same time and whoever owned that and that live there really had a spectacular view.

- [Chris Orr] At the top of Dobbin Summit, which sits at 8,600 feet elevation, we are treated to more fantastic sights.

If you watch us drive on some of these trips we look like we're playing leapfrog, because the first vehicle would drive ahead and they'd set up the shot and we'd drive through and then we'll drive a little more and then we'll do it again.

Then we'll drive, and then they'll catch up.

Just when we think we've been misled we arrive at the Miniature Grand Canyon.

Even if it doesn't live up to its name, the drive alone is worth the trip.

- Well welcome to the Miniature Grand Canyon.

- It doesn't look too small to me.

- [Chris Orr] Yeah it's dynamic.

- [Rich Moreno] I know it's, it's kind of a misnomer.

- [Dave Santina] This intriguing area was formed by erosion.

We can see a trace of the water that still runs through it and we speculate that a strong spring runoff would explain how the erosion happened.

(upbeat guitar music) - How much of a chance this will become as large as the other Grand Canyon, the really Grand Canyon?

- Now you talked about hiking it, can we get down there?

- Y'know there is a way, and actually there's a more spectacular view of the canyon at the other end.

- Really.

- If you want to drive down there, we can take a look at it.

- That'd be great.

- All right Rich, way to, way to suggest driving around rather than walking down.

That's my guy right there.

- The decision to kind of enjoy it from that view and then hike an easier access point was a really good decision we were all pretty tired at this point, it had been a long day.

After doing a little look about, we decided to approach the canyon from the back.

So we hiked down a steep slope and make our way to the canyons end.

- Okay.

We're going to climb over these rocks and then we'll drop down to a dry creek bed on the other side.

- It doesn't even look like uh, there's any, any creek bed on that near here- - I know from this side of it you can't really see the canyon at all.

- [Rich Moreno] Not at all.

- [Chris Orr] Can we get all the way up into the canyon?

- [Rich Moreno] Uh no, there's a waterfall that's in the way but we can get a great view.

- [Chris Orr] Oh, okay, that sounds great.

- Okay, So pay attention here as as I walked with the hosts, Ethan, he's the other videographer he either scrambled up to the top of this um, mountain or hill, or scrambled down I forget which way it went but look at that cool, that's a really cool high-angle shot that he captured of us walking towards the waterfall.

- Water's flowing when - Oh yeah!

- Can you imagine, we'd be walking in the creek!

- [Rich Moreno] Yeah.

- Those guys had to do so much more than we did.

I used to always tell people who would say, oh that must be so fun to be a camera guy on that show.

And I always think, no those guys do everything that we're doing, only they're doing it backwards, you know.

We're coming at them and they're going backwards and they have one eye covered with the cameras so they're looking through the lens and they're able to see what's going on.

That's tough.

That's a tough job, it's physically exhausting.

- And then, as you can see, voila!

- Oh wow!

- Isn't this amazing.

- It's great.

- Oh wow, look at that!

- It's spectacular.

- Whoa.

- It's like a little Garden of Eden.

- I've never seen anything like this.

- That's amazing.

- Yeah.

Isn't so scary as a waterfall.

- And, there is a waterfall!

- [Dave Santina] Yeah, then there's three waterfalls.

- We always say that you have to have a visual payoff and it's not usually hard to find the payoff.

This state has so much beauty and so many cool destinations.

- [Dave Santina] This would be a fun place to climb but without ropes all we can do is enjoy this great canyon area.

(upbeat instrumental music) - I went a little crazy taking pictures in here and I'm glad I did because that-- that doesn't look very attractive necessarily, on video.

So I took a bunch of pictures, and I can show those, and I think that helps to bring out the color and the detail a little bit more.

- This is amazing.

- [Rich Moreno] Yeah.

Cool, isn't it?

- [Chris Orr] Makes the shale hike worth it.

- [Dave Santina] Haha, true.

- [Rich Moreno] This is the Miniature Colorado river.

(all laugh) - In the miniature Grand Canyon, you're right!

- [Chris Orr] While this is not really a miniature version of the Grand Canyon, this area is a fun place to visit and we'd like to spend more time here, but we have another stop to go on our trip through Monitor Valley.

- Retracing our route, we head back to Monitor Valley.

- Wow, looks like we're speeding!

No speed limit on the dirt road.

- We visit the beautiful sights along the way - [Chris Orr] To the east is Diana's Punchbowl, which is sometimes also called Devil's Punchbowl.

There are a number of legends associated with it.

One of them is that a young native couple came here searching for bird eggs when they saw a nest down in the crater.

The maiden held her braves feet as he reached for them, and then an Eagle landed close by.

The maiden reached for the Eagle and lost her grip on the brave, sending them into the scalding water from which it was never seen again.

- [Dave Santina] Now there are many variations of that story, sometimes the brave is a wayward husband, whose wife takes her revenge, for example.

But at any rate, the Punchbowl is an impressive sight.

(folk instrumental music) It's a straight shot down state route 425 to Belmont, maybe about 25 miles.

Along the way, we pass some interesting areas.

Dry Lake, which is very wet this year.

Northumberland Canyon, Waterfall Canyon and Barley Creek.

All places for future exploration.

- As you travel, you know, so often we have great experiences.

And some of the places we've stayed really stand out in my mind.

- We spent the night in Belmont in this sort of Bed and Breakfast that had bedrooms inside the building, normal bedrooms.

And then it had a bunk house that had some bunk beds and this sort of a barn feeling to it.

We had Gail and we had Chris, so they were definitely gonna get the nicer rooms because, they're nicer people.

I got the bunk house.

- [Chris Orr] The Belmont boom created wealth and status for many of its residents.

The town became the county seat for Nye County.

It boasted a palatial music hall, a stunning courthouse three newspapers, and more than a hundred businesses.

But in 1878 science began to appear that Belmont's fortunes were fading.

In the early 1880s, mining equipment was shifted to newer, more profitable locations.

And by the late 1880s many of the businesses and most of the people moved on.

- There's no cell service really in Belmont but there is one little spot that they told us about, they, they painted a square on a spot on the ground on the way out of town and they painted it with the words "phone booth" because if you stood inside that box that was the spot where you could sometimes get a little bit of cell phone reception.

- Even in its faded status with remnants of buildings still visible, Belmont is the queen of Nye County ghost towns.

- [Chris Orr] After a night's rest at the Belmont Inn we had south on the Belmont road for about six miles.

We then turn left at the Hunt's Canyon turnoff onto a well graded dirt road.

- [Dave Santina] This turns out to be a much more scenic drive than we expected.

As we head east, we pass the historic Camino Ranch.

Short while later, we pick up state route 162.

- [Chris Orr] We head into the mountains.

From the summit we have a brief glimpse of the white spires we're aiming for today.

The drive down from the summit is a very careful one since this is a very steep grade.

- [Dave Santina] Following our driving instructions closely we find our turn and headed to the overgrown area.

The remnants of a four wheel track can be discerned but in a short time we're forced to stop.

- If I remember correctly, Alvin McLean is the one who told us about the hoodoos and said, you got to go there, it's a beautiful place.

And the precise directions Dave talked about really weren't that precise because we we missed that turn to the left, initially.

- We're off of McCann Canyon - Uh-huh - Uh, and these are some formations I've been told about but I've actually never been here.

- So then it's about time we go see them.

- Yeah, let's go check them out.

- So how far do you think it is up to the end?

- Well, it looks to me at least a half mile, maybe bit more, but uh - That's not bad.

- I hope, I think it will be worth it when we get there.

- Yeah.

- Big, nice little hike.

- Yeah.

- It looks like we've exited the road portion and we are really walking just, in a wash right now.

- Oh yeah.

It looks like we wouldn't have wanted to drive too much farther.

- Yeah, so.

- Now, you'll notice as we're walking through here, we've moved into what I think is classified as a pinyon juniper forest.

And so a lot of pinyon trees, sage brush, and one of the real unusual things I saw back there was that, there's cactus here that's growing out of the sage brush.

You just don't see that very often, or I've never seen it.

- I wouldn't think that it could survive out here.

- Yeah.

So.

- Wow, hold on, look at this.

- Oh, wow!

- That's pretty amazing.

- That is spectacular.

- That's cool.

- Now we know why we're hiking.

- Yeah.

- And then you'll see over here, a little rougher looking rock, but they're pretty interesting too, some spires.

- That almost looks like it was like, an old chimney that was made out of stone and it had worn away.

- Yeah, it does, it does resemble that.

- Now what would form the shapes?

- Well this is basically, I think, the result of erosion you'll have the softer rock gradually worn away and the harder rocks remain behind.

And so that's what, why you're left with these they're these kind of harder rock.

I don't know what rock material they actually are, because I'm not a geologist but you know, I think it, it it leaves the real fascinating shapes.

- So this is, that's the toughest of what was here millions of years ago and we're walking on what washed away.

- Right.

- And then maybe why it's sometimes they call it tough.

- It is tough.

- The last tour guides to pick a hike and, and and take us to something they think is amazing or scenic but we won't really know what the visual is until we get there so, so often when you hear us do that "oh, wow.

Look at that."

Or "that's cool!"

It is honestly the first time we even have an idea of where we're hiking to.

- If you look at these behind here, aren't these just great?

- Oh yeah, we've got, we're surrounded by them.

- Yeah we're now we're kind of at the the head of the canyon I guess, and the horseshoe and you'll see formations on all sides of us.

- Viewers have told us sometimes how much they love our choice of music for the show and I'm sitting here listening to it and I'm really liking it too.

It blends so beautifully with this landscape.

- Look at that, look at us going up that hill.

I'm having a physical memory right now of me while I'm watching myself huff and puff I'm like, oh yeah, yeah that was tough.

I did not like walking around up there.

- [Chris Orr] These are huge when you're up close to one.

- Yeah.

This was a spectacular place to hike.

Simply spectacular, it was very other earthly.

And you can hear us all as we're huffing and puffing up that hill, it was a challenge but it was a great time.

- Oh, look at that.

- What a view.

- Yeah.

- Oh, that's gorgeous.

- Incredible.

- Yeah, when you look over here on the right, You can really see these gray rocks and the, and the little spires, the tire of the points.

- [Dave Santina] Yeah!

- [Rich Moreno] I mean, the more you look at it the more you see things there.

- Oh yeah.

- [Dave Santina] it's all made up of other, smaller rocks.

- [Rich Moreno] Yeah, it almost looks like concrete.

- [Dave Santina] It really does look like concrete.

- [Rich Moreno] Yeah.

- [Dave Santina] And you've got this entire shelf, of white, from the mouth of this little box canyon all the way up and then it, kind of stops.

- [Rich Moreno] Yeah, it abruptly ends.

- But I bet it's still there underneath all that.

- So if we come back in a million years, do you think we'll see more of it?

- Yeah, I bet we would.

It would be exposed all the way over here, because this looks like the same stuff.

- [Chris Orr] And these are absolutely gorgeous, this white.

and the shapes, they look so smooth from down below but you can see all the other rocks - [Rich Moreno] Yeah, they're pitted.

- [Dave Santina] I can actually see striations, horizontal lines through it as it's been packed over the years.

- So the big question is, do we go down one steep side that steep side, or that slightly less steep side?

- Let's look for, let's look for the best way.

- There might be, uh, one where we don't kill ourselves.

- [Dave Santina] Yeah, there might be an easy way down.

- What a great place to hike.

- Yeah.

- Oh yeah.

This is, isn't this a wonderful place?

- It is.

- Bizarre and really fun now that it looks like we've found the exit.

I want to say thank you to Rich Moreno, from Nevada Magazine for taking us - Oh, my pleasure.

on this great trip, I saw things I'd never even heard of.

- It's been wonderful - No idea they were there.

- Well, I think this was a great trip.

We saw petroglyphs, we were able to enjoy some wonderful waterfalls, and these great hoodoos behind me!

- That was a fun one.

And Gail was a trooper she ended up carrying gear, doing the hike, climbing the hills.

- She was there to work, not there just to hang out.

- Long days, and she stuck it out with us, A real trooper.

- All the years with the white van we never had a flat tire.

This red vehicle?

Flat tire.

So, I blamed Gail.

- [Dave Santina] So Gail, this is your fault.

We've never had a flat, until you came along.

- I know, I know!

I was sittin on that side of the car!

- [Dave Santina] Right!

- And that's why- - Hmm, coincidence?

(they laugh) (upbeat music) - [Male Narrator] Support for Wild Nevada Memories is provided by the William Pennington foundation.

- [Woman narrator] Millie Hopper and Millard Reed.

- [Male Narrator] Gail and John Sande.

- [Woman narrator] Margaret and Charles Burback - [Male Narrator] and by individual members.