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Highway 395 continues from Burns north to and through Washington. It doesn’t have a lot of traffic excepting locals, hunters and logging. It is very scenic, especially Devine Canyon just north of Burns. We stayed at the Starr skimobile lot as the campground was crowded and felt closed in.

We headed north on 140, 292 and 202 to Oregon stopping at Fields for fuel. Wow! $7.25 a gallon so we just topped off until Burns. In this area near Malheur NWR, we always camp at the Page Springs Campground. There are clean vault toilets and spacious sites. Plus, our dog’s namesake river runs...

One of the ranches at the small ranching communities nearby. There is a lithium mine proposed in the nearby mountains which will be using lots of water which is already overallocated. There is a coalition between environmentalists and the ranchers plus several tribes to fight this.

Just a few agates or more accurately, chalcedony, from our first day including a carnelian, the reddish one. I found our biggest here a few days later, 4”x3”. We stayed here 3 days and the weather did clear up after the beautiful thunder clouds.

Home at last, our favorite agate area. We are always alone here except for some rancher traffic. It is so quiet here and the skies so dark. The Milky Way streaks overhead and the Big Dipper feels like you could reach out and touch it. And, we never leave without bags of agates. Beware of...

Just another Nevada gravel road in ranch country. This one was a bit colorful than others. We travelled from Beowawe exit to Winnemucca spending the night high above the freeway on BLM land. There aren’t too many campgrounds so the public land was welcome. It was near a canyon we wanted to...

This is our muddy truck after driving Nevada’s gravel backroads. We were just past the Cortez Mine and saw heavy big truck traffic.

We had planned to head for a reputed agate area west of Austin but the rain and predicted snow helped us to decide to head north to I80 (Beowawe) and return to our favorite agate area in NW Nevada. These were mainly gravel roads passing by some lovely scenery and one huge gold mining operation...

We arrived in Eureka on Highway 50 to get fuel. The only place to camp was a cheek by jowl RV park but we found a rest area just east of town and a neighbor to the RV park. We were joined by others and spent a quiet night.

We took a series of graded gravel roads south to Eureka passing by Alkali Flat in the Diamond Valley. There were the usual abandoned farms and some mining activity, typical for Nevada’s gravel roads.

We drive the Harrison Pass Road out of Ruby Valley to the Elko Hamilton Stage Road. This was a very decent gravel scenic road with large rock formations and Star Mine, an abandoned mining camp at the beginning.

Ruby Lake NWR. The birds have pretty much migrated so only residents were ducks and songbirds but we did see vultures congregating. Staff was very knowledgeable. We camped at the South Ruby campground.

Old red barn along Ruby Valley Road north of Ruby Lake NWR.

We drove along Clover Valley Road, a scenic alternative to 93, to Ruby Lake National Wildlife Refuge. The East Humboldt Range loomed ahead. Lots of farms and ranches in this valley.

We camped the next night at Angel Creek Campground southwest of Wells, NV. Beautiful campground with views of Chimney Rock. Aspens had color.

Naf, Idaho near the Utah border. We were on our way to NE Utah to explore the Transcontinental RR that once passed through there. We took a few gravel and paved roads and drove on an abandoned railroad bed. It was getting dark so we found a spot away from the dump trucks carrying gravel to ...

Campsite #62 at the far end of City of Rocks in Idaho. We had the place to ourselves. Lots of house and car sized boulders plus across the road was a great view of the valley below. It was very quiet with dark skies. There were some emigrant inscriptions on some of the boulders as this is a...

We wanted to explore Centennial Valley but the Red Rock Pass Road was sloppy mud according to a camper who barely made it out. Also, the host said that their winter weather was a month early. We returned to Arco, fueled up, then headed south on the Arco to Minidoka Road. It started out...

We fueled up in Arco then headed northeasterly to camp at Stoddard Creek Campground for the night. It was really foggy and kinda scary with a semi riding our tail and nowhere to pull over. He finally honked then passed as we slowed waaay down. We discovered this cool mini canyon made by Beaver...

We encountered lots of rain then snow was predicted so headed south to camp at Joe T Fallini campground at the McKay Reservoir. We don’t usually camp at paved campgrounds but didn’t want to get caught on gravel roads in the snow. Not as adventurous as we used to be. We did go a few backroads and...

Along Lime Creek Road in search of agates and jaspers. We had planned to drive the Custer Motorway to visit the ghost town of Custer but the road turned to that clay gravel stuff so we turned around to head south to look for agates around Challis. No one came by and traffic was sparse on 93.

Morgan Creek Canyon can get sloppy sliding after and during rain. Thankfully, the rocks didn’t come tumbling down. We are in our way to Challis to fuel up and get groceries.

Morgan Creek campground now along Morgan Creek Road after the 7578’ Morgan Creek Summit. Again, no one there but more traffic, mainly area ranchers. Free. Very beautiful area.

Panther Creek along the Panther Creek Road heading south to Challis. We had the road to ourselves so just so drove slowly looking for photo ops and animals.

Along the Salmon River. There was a petroglyph panel and semi ghost town of Shoup which we stopped to view. But this was pretty much the scenery along the river.