Blowing Dust on playa in Railroad Valley - Route 6, Nevada
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I got the feeling the desert was in a transitional phrase in the Great Basin. On one hand, the vegetation was amazingly green compared to the dessicated brown I'm used to seeing other parts of the year. There were ponds (or very large puddles) all along Route 6 that are never there in the months I've visited (summer and winter). Yet, high wind made the places that were dry quite conspicuous. Here, we see the wind stirring up sand in a distant playa. At some point earlier in the year, the playa was probably a shallow pond. The playa itself is much less apparent in the drier months, when the low grasses between the sagebrush die back to expose the pale desert earth. Until this trip, I was not aware that the desert could change so much in appearance in the Great Basin. It is yet another reason why I'd love to live there, some day.
This is file 6 of 31 in Archive: June 2005 - Amok in the Southwest
