The Jersey Valley

Interesting that I travel all the way to Nevada to hang out at a place named Jersey. We loaded the guns and the dogs and headed out for a bit of a drive to hunt wild rabbits. Joe is familiar with the place because there is a geothermal operation out there that he monitors. 90% of the trip was on dirt roads. You definitely need a heavy duty vehicle. The mountains were breathlessly beautiful and I hate that my camera cannot capture what my eyes see. I need a new camera.

Gracie was a pain in the butt all the way out to where we were to stop. Once she has her orange vest on and is in the truck she starts whining because she knows she will soon be out running around in the sage chasing rabbits. The bad part of that is she moves all over the back seat and disturbs Buddy. Sadly I decided this was Buddies last trip out for rabbit hunting (1) because of Gracie (2) because he seems to be getting a bit senile (3) he has trouble jumping up into truck after a long walk. I will walk him around the block daily instead.
Anyway, back to Gracie. She thinks cows are big dogs we think because she acts the same when she sees them. There were plenty to see and we even had to stop to let them get out of the road. She was going crazy back there. The cows are all so beautiful and different. I didn't know that females grew horns and I think we saw two that were pregnant.

Our destination was a very cool hot spring. I have never seen one. The water is milky looking and I would not venture in for anything. But, many do by the number of stray underwear we found around it. More desert art and terrible. There is pipe coming out of the ground and the hot water runs down it into another hole.

Hunting for rabbits for was was no easy task. The ground was very muddy there and if you tried to walk too fast you would just slip and fall. The dogs paws and our boots were coated with mud. Gracie wears an orange vest so we can see her and it was completely coated on the belly part. We saw about 10 rabbits and Joe actually got two shots but no rabbit. I almost had a shot but could not line the sight up in time. Need more practice target shooting. So, we took a ride further down the valley and encountered many more cows and saw some ranches. You couldn't get close because the driveway (dirt road) was so long and private. We were two hours from the closest store or gas station and I could not imagine living like that. Imagine the ride to school every day? A very different life style I am interested in learning about.

The ride back was is just as beautiful because you see the mountain ranges from a different vantage point. We got to see the gold mining on Battle Mountain. It's amazing how much of the mountain has been removed to find gold. It's cool to see but a shame at the same time. I didn't take a picture but you can see it on Google Earth just as good.