Rainbow Canyon, Kershaw-Ryan and Elgin School House

 I got and extra day off (teacher prep day) for the President's Day weekend.  Paul and I enjoyed going down to Caliente, Nevada and then on to drive the Rainbow Canyon road and to see the Elgin Schoolhouse historic site and Kershaw Ryan State Park.  The Rainbow Canyon drive showcases a wonderful variety of geologic features to enjoy.  It's very colorful, as the name suggests, and surprisingly wet.  One place we had to forge the stream running across the road. There was so many boggy and wet areas all along the drive in general.  It seemed strange to see so much water in the middle of what is otherwise the dry desert terrain of this area of Nevada.  Caliente is a cute little town and I'd like to go back to visit the Boxcar Museum some time.  At the end of the Rainbow Canyon drive is the Elgin Schoolhouse historic site.  It's an old one-room school house that served the ranch families of Rainbow Canyon from 1921 until the last student graduated in 1967. It has been restored and you can set up tours, but unfortunately it wasn't open and was fenced so you couldn't even get a close look.  That's another thing I'd like to go back for sometime.  Then we drove back up the canyon and went to the Kershaw-Ryan State Park where we did a couple of little hikes and ate our lunch among the crazy big grapevines.  Then it was time to head for home again.  This day was a great finish to our holiday weekend!  

Along the way we finished a great book - A Walk in the Park.  It's a rollicking and poignant account of an epic 750-mile odyssey, on foot, through the heart of America’s most magnificent national park and the grandest wilderness on earth.  Two friends, zero preparation, one dream. A few years after quitting his job to follow an ill-advised dream of becoming a guide on the Colorado River, Kevin Fedarko was approached by his best friend, National Geographic photographer Pete McBride, with a vision as bold as it was harebrained. Together, they would embark on an end-to-end traverse of the Grand Canyon, a journey that, McBride promised, would be “a walk in the park.” Against his better judgment, Fedarko agreed, unaware that the small cluster of experts who had completed the crossing billed it as “the toughest hike in the world.”  

We loved the two rim to rim hikes we've done in the Grand Canyon, so this book was very enjoyable to us.