Utah, New Friends, and a Rocky Road

Now that we’re a good week into our stretch of Utah, we’re blown away by how different it is from Nevada. While Nevada was beautiful, it definitely felt like we were in the desert. Meanwhile, Utah has sort of looked like the desert in some stretches, but most of the time it’s just green and mountainous (and beautiful as well). At least, that’s been the case for us so far.

So here we were, expecting vast miles of empty desert, and instead we’re hitting towns every 20-40 miles and there are trees, grass, and plenty of farm animals grazing all over the place. It’s different, but in a completely great way.

Anyway, here’s what happened after we left Baker and crossed into Utah. We pretty quickly came up on a fairly small town called Milford, which had a great diner—Penny’s, if you’re ever there—that let us sit around ALL day and use their wi-fi. We felt obligated to order both lunch and dinner there as a result of our wi-fi usage, which worked out well for us anyway because the food was tasty.

As we were getting ready to leave Milford, we got caught in an aggressive downpour of rain, so we just set up at the Lyon’s Club campground in town rather than moving on down the road. The next morning, however, was much clearer, and we began the push toward Minersville, which was only a little farther down the road.

Minersville was also a great town, partially because of Michelle, the friendly post office worker we met while picking up a variety of packages we’d had shipped to Minersville. Michelle was excited for us and our journey, and wanted to help us out. She ended up going WAY out of her way by bringing us fresh baked bread, still-hot corn on the cob, and a load of hand-picked vegetables from her garden. Also, we discovered Barq’s Red Crème Soda while we were in town, and that stuff is FANTASTIC. Needless to say, we liked Minersville, even though we weren’t there long.

We didn’t want to stay in Minersville that night because, at that point, we hadn’t yet walked very far, but we knew there was a campground a few miles farther down the road at the Minersville Reservoir Recreation Area, so that’s what we set out for. We got there early enough in the evening to have some time to ourselves. It was a little eerie/odd because there were 40 campground spaces and we were the ONLY people there, but we had fun nonetheless. Plus, it rained while we were there and Lindsie was able to take some killer photos of the rainbow that came out as a result.

Later that evening, a guy we’d met earlier on the road from Ely to Baker brought us a pizza and had dinner with us. His name is John Gergen, and his life story is amazing. As he filled us in with the details of how he was saved and born again and what he’s done with this life since then, we just felt more and more blessed that God put him in our path. Plus, the pizza he brought was really tasty. We ended up enjoying a really blessed night of conversation and fellowship that ended in some really powerful prayer, so we were thankful for John’s company and his willingness to share such an amazing story with us.

Anyway, John works in Beaver, Utah, during the week, and then drives back to Ely—where he and his wife own Second Chance Ink, a laser tattoo removal shop that removes gang tattoos for free—on weekends. With Beaver only being 10 miles farther along from the reservoir, we told John we’d probably see him later that night and he told us he’d love to take us out for dinner if we wanted to. We were definitely fine with that, and we looked forward to meeting him later that evening.

At least, that was the plan. Then we got thunderstormed on, hard. Even though we’d only gone a couple of miles that day instead of our usual 15-20, we decided to set up the tent and call it a night. We’d tried to wait it out under a couple of tarps, which led to the disastrous result of both me and Lindsie soaked to the bone and surprisingly cold for being out in the desert.

We told John we weren’t going to make it to Beaver that night and we were sorry for faking him out, but he did what any awesome person would do and just drove out to get us (it was, after all, only about 10 miles away by car). We ate a delicious meal with him again, enjoyed more fellowship, and said our goodbyes back at the tent when dinner was over. We told John we’d keep in touch and we’d be talking with him sooner than later, even if it was just to say hello.

We had no idea we’d be calling him again two days later to work a miracle for us.

So here’s what happened. We made it to Beaver the next day, and it’s a lovely place. We set up at Camperland, which is just a really nice campground on the south side of town, and had an entire afternoon to use our computers and internet, plus we were able to reload on supplies AND send food ahead of us to a town that doesn’t have a grocery store as big as the one in Beaver.

We got up the next morning and began to take a road that both Garmin and Google said was a safe, travel-able road. Lindsie had been sure to set the GPS to “avoid unpaved roads.” We started off down South Creek Road and it wasn’t paved, but it was at least a solid enough gravel road. After 9 miles, we were supposed to turn right and continue toward Freemont Road, which we’d hoped was paved, or was at least good, solid gravel.

Instead, the road looked like the picture you see in this blog post. It was made of rocks. Not smooth, cart/bike/drive-onable rocks, but huge chunks of rocks just strewn about on barely visible patches of dirt road. Needless to say, it was a battle. We were hoping it was just a short stretch of difficult road before hitting a smoother road soon after.

It wasn’t. It went on and on and on.

We ended up camping early for the day so we could decide what our plan was. We ultimately decided that, knowing Freemont Road was only 4.5 miles further, we would just try push on and see where we could get, hoping the road would get smoother once we progressed past the rocky section.

It only got worse. After taking apart our carts and carrying them through massive mud puddles and carrying them around other mud puddles, pushing over rocks, and getting poured on not once but twice, we’d made it a grand total of one mile before my cart finally broke. One mile, when we’d been averaging 20 per day on normal roads.

We were stuck, and really not in a good situation. We were 3 miles out on a backroad where we hadn’t seen a single large vehicle (just two guys on their ATV who couldn’t believe we were trying to push on that “road”), we didn’t know how much farther we’d have to go to reach real roads, and our cart was broken, so going back was essentially impossible.

We didn’t know what to do. We called Camperland, and Andy gave us the number for the area’s Search and Rescue department, just in case they’d be willing to help. Unfortunately, no one answered. The ONLY other person we knew in the area was our recently-made friend, John, but he didn’t live in Beaver, so we didn’t know if he’d have any idea on what to do. Plus, it was a Sunday, so he was back in Ely anyway.

Either way, we knew he was our last option, so we gave him a call. He said he might know someone who could help, so he told us he’d call us back after he asked if his friend could help.

We waited nervously, praying God would send someone…anyone…our way who might be able to help us.

Eventually John called back and said his co-worker, Melissa Anderson, and her husband, Ryan, should be coming out to rescue us. We couldn’t believe it.

Sure enough, after a few phone calls and a few sets of directions and re-directions, Melissa and Ryan pulled up in their Jeep Wrangler. We were saved, and overwhelmed with gratitude. The only dilemma was cramming ALL of our stuff into the back of their Jeep. Thankfully, as you should be able to see in the photo, we made it work, piece-by-piece. Then we took off across the mess that had been kicking our butts for 3 miles. We ended up going out the way we were intending to continue on and we’re amazed to see that we would’ve had to go through about 15 more miles of that brutal rock road if we’d continued on our path. Instead, we enjoyed a fun backcountry ride out in a Jeep and were dropped right back off where we’d started at Camperland. And as a bonus, Andy, the owner of Camperland, felt bad about how awful our situation had been and let us stay for free that night. He actually told us to give the $20 for camping to the Andersons for gas, but they refused to take the money, and we ended up with a free rescuing and a free night of camping. We’ll call that a double blessing.

On the one hand, we were disappointed to end up back where we’d started two days before. On the other, more important hand, we were SOOOO thankful that the Lord provided us with a means to escape our seemingly-hopeless situation. Between God putting a great, uplifting Christian like John in our lives three days before we needed his help to Ryan and Melissa going WAY out of their way to come rescue us, we felt blessed beyond measure. If it meant coming back to Beaver and reassessing things from here, we thought it was a very worthwhile trade-off.

Anyway, we’re now figuring out a new plan of attack and will actually be on our way by the time this post goes live, but we look forward to whatever adventures come our way next. We’re hopeful those adventures don’t involve roads made entirely of rocks, though.

We hope you’re still enjoying following along with this journey and we’re thankful for everyone’s support and encouragement. We’re hoping to plow through Utah from here on out so we can hit Colorado running and make it through both of these states before the snow starts to fall. Please pray that we will make good time as we continue on the road.

Also, don’t tell her I told you guys, but it’s Lindsie’s birthday on Saturday, September 1^st (tomorrow), so feel free to comment, call, text, or whatever else you feel like doing to wish her happy birthday. I’m sure she’d love reading happy birthday messages all day, as she’s a pretty big fan of birthdays.

Thanks again to Michelle, John, Melissa, Ryan and Andy for making our first week in Utah a memorable one, and thanks to everyone else for following our updates. We’ll be back with more soon!

-Mike and Lindsie

Halfway Through The Desert

Well, we have plenty to update you guys with after several days (weeks?) with little internet access and even less phone access, so we’ll just get right down to business.

After leaving our good friends the Smiths and Moons in Eureka, Nevada, we began the 77-mile stretch from Eureka to Ely, Nevada. We knew it was sort of our last major stretch of emptiness in Nevada, and we were excited to be on our way (even though we knew we’d miss the Smiths and Moons greatly as a result of having to leave Eureka).

We set out toward Ely and were a few miles down the road when the aforementioned Smiths and Moons showed up to deliver some delicious food, some Gatorade, and play on the giant pile of gravel we were camped out next to. We’d set up our tent to avoid rain and we picked a perfect spot because the gravel provided about 45 minutes of excitement before our friends headed home.

Also on the way to Ely, we met a couple named Ken and Ruth Walter from Napa, California, who turned around their travel van to see what we were doing, because we had “piqued their interest.” They were fellow Christians and were excited to hear about our journey. They also kindly gave us a HUGE handful of Chewy Granola Bars because they weren’t going to eat them all. Getting any food on this journey is a blessing, so we were very appreciative. We were even more appreciative of the conversation we had and the prayer they prayed over us before continuing on their way. All in all, it was an awesome experience meeting them.

We eventually made it to Ely, and set up shop at the Motel 6 for the first night, mostly because we just wanted a comfortable bed, wi-fi, and a clean, private shower to use. It was a great night’s rest, to say the least. The next night we headed only a little further down the road to the Ely KOA, which was equally as splendid (especially for only $25). The reason we stayed an extra night in Ely is because we had a 140+ stretch to Milford, Utah, coming up where we wouldn’t be able to carry enough water in our carts. That meant doing water drops, and, thankfully, Ely had a car rental place in town.

After loading up with 20-ish gallons of water at the grocery store, we got in our rented car, drove out toward Utah and started dropping off water every 10 miles or so. While it ended up costing around $135 when it was all said and done, doing those water drops was worth EVERY penny.

Unfortunately, we noticed that the sky was looking more and more ominous toward the end of our water drops. More unfortunately, it was looking ominous over the general vicinity of our campsite in Ely. As we cruised home, the storm got worse and worse. Sure enough, we arrived at the KOA to see that our tent was SOAKED. You see, we had left our rain fly off the tent in order to let it dry while we were doing our water drops. When we’d left Ely, it was a perfectly clear sky above us. However, that was definitely not the case 4 hours later, when we finally returned. Without the rainfly on, our tent had accumulated puddles deeper than our hand in certain places. And a decent number of our things were inside the tent, so they were pretty (really) wet as well.

That said, we knew everything would eventually dry, and we were thankful to have had an opportunity to do water drops, even if it did mean our stuff had to get a little bit wet. It was still worth it to know we’d have water every ten miles during one of the last major stretches of our journey.

We would’ve left Ely that next morning, but our friends the Smiths decided to come out and see us one more time and spend the afternoon at Cave Lake to do some fishing and grilling. It was a blast to see them again, and we enjoyed the adventure of fishing at the lake, eating the delicious steaks Rich grilled up, and generally just having fun with them one more time. All in all, it was a treat to see them again.

After three nights in Ely, it was time to move on (and finally finish crossing Nevada). As we headed toward Baker, Utah, we stopped at a small lake just outside of Ely. We realized we had made a slight mistake, however. Even though we’d calculated enough water for the water drops on the way to Milford, we’d forgotten to keep two extra gallons with us before setting out from Ely. We prayed God would provide a way for us to find some extra water, because, at this point, we knew He would answer our prayers somehow. As we contemplated pumping out lake water into whatever water containers we could scrounge up, we were blessed with another answered prayer. A few families were fishing at the lake, and we heard one guy yell to some people in a boat that he was going to run out and grab some water to bring back.

We knew it was our chance, so I walked up, explained our situation, and asked the gentleman if he was planning on going into town, and, if so, whether he’d mind grabbing a couple of extra gallons of water for us. He mentioned he had just been planning to go to his campsite nearby for the water, but wouldn’t mind going into town for us anyway. Very thankful for his offer, I gave him $10 and said just two gallons would be great, and if he could snag a few extra Gatorades if there was money left over, we wouldn’t complain. I also remembered to introduce myself and he said his name was Carl.

Carl came back with a load of supplies. He brought us 4 gallons of water, 4 Gatorades, and then handed back our $10 and said he was happy to help. Talk about a blessing (and an answered prayer). We thanked Carl and then went back to wait out the afternoon heat.

As the afternoon came to a close, we noticed that the clouds looked sort of terrifying. We’d learned that it was “monsoon season,” which means that, in this area of the country, storm clouds form quickly in the evenings and rain will suddenly come out of nowhere, sometimes for 10 minutes, sometimes for an hour or more. We decided that, rather than fight the rain again, we’d set up camp and avoid getting soaked.

It was great until about midnight, when a group of (we’re assuming) high schoolers drove out to the lake and started shooting off fireworks like crazy. That was a pretty rude awakening. We eventually fell back asleep, but it was certainly a surprise.

Anyway, other than one other afternoon of rain at a rest area (where we hid in our waterproof bivy sacks until the rain stopped), the rest of our trip to Baker was relatively uneventful. Once we arrived in Baker, we randomly and unexpectedly found wi-fi at the Silver Jack Inn and Lectrolux Cafe, which was an AWESOME place run by very cool, fun, friendly people. Even though we didn’t have cell reception, it was a blessing to be able to email our parents, send some tweets, respond to some emails, and do some other internetty things. If you’re ever in Baker, Nevada, for whatever reason, be sure to hit up the Silver Jack Inn and Lectrolux Cafe. You won’t regret it.

After that, we moved on from Baker and crossed into Utah, which was cause for celebration. We could now say we’d conquered two states, one of them being the menacing desert stretch we had been told would be “just about impossible during the summer.”

Since then, we’ve been plowing through Utah at a pretty good pace. We’ll have more to post soon as far as a location update (once we’re a little further down the road), but we’re excited to have wi-fi again and have the ability to post this.

On a different note, we have had more and more people share prayer requests with us and we are SO thankful people are willing to do that. We really do love praying for people out here and it has helped us grow ourselves in many ways too, so if you have prayer requests, please don’t be afraid to share them, either by contacting us on Facebook, emailing StormingJericho@gmail.com, or by any other way you want to send us a prayer request. We have been so blessed with prayers and encouragement on this trip, and we’re honored to be able to pray for others as well.

Thanks for your support, and for the kind words on our recent posts and updates. We look forward to sharing more news (and possibly posting more frequently now that we should have hopefully internet access a little more consistently) as we continue on across Utah.

Back with more soon. Until then, keep on Stormin’, everyone!

(That’s just a cheesy tagline/closing line option that I’m giving a test run, much to Lindsie’s dismay. We’ll see if it catches on.)

-Mike and Lindsie

As Far As The Eye Can See

As you may have read, we’re crossing the desert right now. It’s warm out here. Really warm. And beautiful though it may be, the desert doesn’t exactly go out of its way to be friendly toward walkers, but we’re making the best of it. To keep the updates rolling along, once we left Fallon, we continued east toward Utah. Even though it may be hot, we’ve had some great experiences.

For starters, we’ve done plenty of stealth camping along Highway 50. Mostly because there aren’t a lot of people to stay with, places to campsite camp, etc. between towns. In fact, there’s not a whole lot of anything between towns, other than emptiness.

That said, it seems emptiness is good for the soul, because Lindsie and I both feel like our heads are clear out here in the desert. Lindsie’s often said that this portion of our journey reminds her of her favorite part of Hosea, in which God says he will take Israel out into the desert and strip her of all her distractions (it’s in Hosea 2 if you’d like to look it up), and I’m pretty sure Lindsie couldn’t be more accurate. With nothing out here to distract us, it’s much easier to focus on the things that really matter. Sometimes we don’t even have cell phone service, which means we can’t pull up Twitter or Facebook to get distracted with. It’s just us, Jaeda, the sun, and God most of the time, with an occasional car driving by every 10-15 minutes.

Anyway, back to filling you in on our recent activities. We left Fallon over a week ago and have continued walking east along Highway 50. After a couple nights of stealth camping, our first stop outside of Fallon was Middlegate Station, which is pretty much a combination of restaurant, bar, motel, and a single gas pump. Just having an opportunity to shower after three days was wonderful, and being able to eat real food and sleep in a real bed made it extra enjoyable. Due to Lindsie having a bit of heat exhaustion, we actually stuck around an extra day in Middlegate, which was nice. Thankfully the motel was cheap enough (only $35 a night) that our bank account wasn’t hit too hard by the extra stay.

From there we moseyed on down to Cold Springs Station, which was a short, 14-mile jaunt down Highway 50. In a wonderfully-blessed bit of God’s handiwork, Lindsie’s mom’s cousin, Nancy, and her daughter Deanna happened to be in our general vicinity. You may remember Nancy and Deanna from this post where they met us in Davis, California, paid for a hotel room that they let us share with them, and bought us dinner. Thankfully, they were equally as wonderful in Cold Springs Station, paying for our campground for the night, buying us a delicious meal, and, most importantly, driving on ahead of us and doing water drops for us on our next stretch of road.

You may be wondering, what’s a water drop?, so here’s the explanation. A gallon of water weighs 8 pounds. It’s been recommended to us that we drink a minimum of 2 gallons per day out here in the desert. Some of these between-town stretches can be anywhere from 50 miles long to 80 miles long. That means anywhere between 2-6 days of walking in the desert with no water fountains, gas stations, or rest areas to fill up with water before the next stop. If you might have 6 days of walking, that’s 12 gallons of water EACH. When you do the math, that ends up being about 96 POUNDS of water each. Our carts max out at a 115-pound weight limit, and they have about 60-70 pounds of stuff in them without the water.

Essentially, we aren’t able to carry enough water with us every time without running the risk of breaking our carts. So, as you can see, water drops are incredibly helpful out here in the desert. Beyond that, having the water dropped off ahead of us means our carts don’t have to weigh a ton when we’re pushing them up the 7,000-foot summits we come across here in the desert.

So with a heart full of gratitude, we said goodbye once again to Nancy and Deanna and prepared to leave Cold Springs Station on a 50-mile stretch to Austin, Nevada. We were excited to head out on a really-rely-on-God-because-this-is-a-longer-than-usual stretch, even if it did mean early morning wake-ups and late night walking.

Although Lindsie and I enjoyed great conversation (and enjoyed listening to audiobooks) during this part of the journey, there’s not exactly a ton to report about it. We were sort of out in the middle of nowhere, we were stealth camping every night, and we didn’t really see anything earth-shattering. We did, however, come across some great road angels during our Cold Springs Station-to-Austin stretch.

For starters, we came across a gentleman named Jeff Martin, who worked at a military facility along that stretch of road. He and his wife had seen us walking for a few days, so he kindly dropped off a cooler full of ice, Gatorade, iced water, PayDay bars, and gum. It was such a blessing because most of our water had heated up from the sun and the difference between ice cold water and lukewarm water when you’re out here in the desert is very noticeable. Plus, we were able to use the cooler for another week, filling it up with ice whenever we could and having cold water more regularly.

Later on during that part of the journey, Mike Green, one of the guys we’d met at Parkside Bible Fellowship in Fallon, saw us on the way out to a weekend trip and dropped off several cold bottles of water for us. Then, coincidentally, we ended up seeing him again after his weekend trip and he gave us the rest of his leftover bottles and ice, which made for a double whammy of cold waters during hot stretches of travel.

We also met a gentleman named Rich DeBraga while we were taking one of our midday breaks and he dropped off some deliciously cold iced waters, some Arizona tea, and a friendly word of encouragement. We ended up seeing him a few days later and he dropped off even more water for us, which was fantastic.

It’s crazy how, even in the middle of nowhere, God puts people in your life to help give you that boost of cold water, love, and support just when you need it. It seems like so many people were willing to help us for no other reason other than “you look like you could use some cold water,” which is such a blessing when you’re out there sweating in 95-degree heat with lukewarm—or just completely warm—water in your cart.

Anyway, after a few days of travel, we reached Austin, NV. Unfortunately, right before we got to Austin, we got caught in a very uncharacteristic downpour. The night before arriving was rough, but thanks to some help from a few more road angels, we got our tent up in the whipping wind and rain. The next day was sort of clear, and we thought we’d get to Austin before it rained again.

Unfortunately, about 4 miles outside of Austin, we got destroyed by rain. We didn’t have time or a place to put up our tent, so we got out tarps, covered the carts, and then tried to cover ourselves. It wasn’t fun. It cooled things off, but it rained for so long (again, uncharacteristic of the rain out here) that we started to get cold. And we were already wet. As soon as the sky cleared up, we powered up the hill into Austin and found some food. We were trying to stay with some people in Austin but weren’t able to connect with anyone, so we made our way down to a motel in town.

Unfortunately, we got yelled at pretty aggressively by the guy who runs the Pony Canyon Motel for “doing video” and “using up 1000 megabytes in an hour” on his internet (to be clear, we hadn’t “done video” for even a second, but that’s ok), so we decided to call it a day and get on out of Austin. We stayed at the Bob Scott Campground a few miles outside of town for a couple of nights to rest and enjoy some time to just hang out with each other in a beautiful, quiet, open area.

The next stretch of road was our biggest without any water or rest stops along the way. From Austin to Eureka is 70 miles, and Lindsie and I were both excited and slightly intimidated by the distance, but we knew if there was a time we’d need to rely on God, it would be now. On the plus side, it’s always gorgeous in the mornings and evenings (as you can see from the photo).

Once again, this post is getting long, but I can say that we DID end up having to rely on God during the Austin-to-Eureka part of the walk, and I’m excited to share exactly what happened in the next post. Not only did we have to rely on God, but he provided more abundantly than we ever could have dreamed.

We’ll be trying to use up the internet here in Eureka as much as we can before setting out, so we’ll try to have another post ready to go before we take off. We also have plenty of other stuff to share/reveal in the next few days, so we’re pumped to finally have internet access again.

Thanks for reading these posts and for leaving encouraging comments here on the blog and on Facebook. We can’t tell you how much we appreciate the love and support we’ve been shown on this journey. It has made every step even more worthwhile than we could’ve ever imagined.

Back with more soon, as usual.

-Mike and Linds