JARBIDGE, NV – Several years ago, on one of our epic ZUKIWORLD adventures, long before the term “overland” was really anything other than the word after “Willys” we were on a journey along the northern edge of Nevada exploring ghost towns and abandoned mines. After days and countless miles of exploration on this rewarding trek we climbed into a far-away wonderland nestled in a majestic yet little-known mountain range. This wonderous place was called Jarbidge. At the time, we knew we wanted to come back to this area to explore but time passed as life, work, and whatever happens and we just never got back there. Well, now is the time. Let’s go.
A small but hardy group of adventurers converged for a week-long adventure. Due to coming from all different areas of Oregon and having different schedules, we showed up at different times and place. Doug H. met us in Twin Falls, ID at a nice motel off of the freeway and we shuffled out to the desert earlier-ish in the morning while Matt had a job in Washington to finish up which had him joining us at camp just outside the town of Jarbidge that evening.
Jarbidge the town is really an anomaly of sorts. It is a very small community with only a handful of people staying year around. In spite of this though, they have a very nice restaurant, RV parks, Gas station and other amenities for the traveler. This place can serve as a jumping off point for many different types of adventures but it’s pretty clear that they support motorized recreation whole heartedly. We respect that!
There are miles and miles of outback style two-track trails in this area and one of the things that struck us was that almost every canyon had a good running and cold creek in it. There is a significant amount of water in the desert area, at least in the hills. Once you get to the flats, the party is over and it is very dry and barren. Doug’s X90 did wonderfully as a stock vehicle on highway tires but I think even he would recommend taking something with just a little more tire and ground clearance if you plan to go to the area. We enjoyed exploring during the day and hanging out in town at night. There was something going on called “Jarbidge Days” which afforded us even more fun things to do. One of which was a historical play about the local characters in the area done on a quaint stage in their ‘city park’. It was very informative and the costumes were amazing. The staff at the local bar were extremely friendly and even more so as they saw us throughout the week. The food and drinks are excellent and well worth NOT packing extra food and campfire cooking every night. (not that there is anything wrong with that, we’re just saying…)
There was even a community garage sale to support the local fire brigade being held at the city hall that was done in a clever way. It was an unmanned event and participants were encouraged to put the amount that ‘seemed appropriate’ for what they were buying in a lock box at the entrance to the hall. There were some very interesting items at this sale. We picked up a few gift items.
We did find some mines and other points of interest like the town of Metropolis. This was a planned community just east of the middle of nowhere that had some interesting building pieces left. The Clampers had left some nice signage to explain but basically, the whole town was developed and sold to easterners which once they got out there had a bit of a tough time making a go of it.
One of the cool things in this area to me was that it’s a step back in time. I don’t mean a step back in history but I do mean a step back to 20 or 30 years ago when people seemed to be more courteous in the outback. What I mean by this is that there are support items left out in the desert to help make your journey safe and fun that have not been vandalized or stolen. We used to see this all over the west last century but as people venture deeper into the wilderness, there seems to be less and less of this. Our best example on this trip was a canoe left at a very nice little pond that had everything with it and was ready for use. Our intrepid explorer Matt, took it for a spin on the lake. This was awesome and gave us good feelings all around.
No trip would be complete without a couple of equipment breakdowns. Fortunately for us, ours were minor. Matt discovered a cache of nuts in his air cleaner that we promptly planted next to a creek and have marked the location so we can go back some time in the future to see if a tree has grown.
I had a couple of ‘weird’ fixes the first was that my new electric fans stopped working on the highway which caused the transmission to boil over and spew. Fortunately, this was close to a gas station so I was able to find the problem (relay) and wash off the underside of the vehicle. The next fun thing for me was the body on the front driver started ripping apart from all of the high speed freeway driving and the hood pins yanking on the inner fender. I installed some glorious speaker wire to hold this down for the remainder of the trip. Genius!
This trip was amazing good fun and we plan to schedule another trip there in 2022. If you’d like to be a part of this, please check out our forum and stay tuned
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