Link

Here is a link that might be useful: Toiyabe National Forest

Hey hey. Funny pictures. The vast wide open landscaped are something we don't always see here in Missouri.

I have not been to Nevada in about five years. If you go south get to Red Rock by Vegas (the park), and Death Valley. Both are quite scenic as well. The Joshua trees all burnt up at Red Rock were quite a site.

Further south there is that desert botanical garden in Phoenix. Anyone thinking about planting grass where it doesn't belong in the south west needs to go there and get their eyes opened up like I did to the available plant material.

Go up the mountains to see the trees - first pinyon-juniper (mostly Pinus monophylla and Juniperus osteosperma), then Ponderosa Pine, White Fir and Rocky Mts Douglas-fir, then higher up, Pinus longaeva.

Resin

I'd love to walk among native RM Dougs and Pinus monophylla in arid mountains.

Love the photos--thanks for posting!

The actual location is the boundary of an administrative unit probably near Reno NV?

If you've only been to trees that can be seen from a highway, then you've never trekked a real forest. I get the visual joke you were trying though, it's like the old one about Angeles National Forest, the only forest in America with no trees just a few burnt bushes. You'd think that, if the only view of it you got was driving the Grapevine down to or up from L.A., the reason the joke works is millions of people only see the forest that way, especially tour buses, and they send back photos of the signs similar to your father's... Happy New Year everyone!

ps Even though I know it would be an environmental disaster and illegal and trespass federal land (so what, it's L.A.! ;-), I've often wondered in the many decades that this view of the forest has been a running joke and an embarrassment for the city (and the only view of it 99% of the public ever sees), why a local politician or civic group didn't plant tons of eucalyptus, pines, palms whatever on the sides of the highway. Or at least remove the forest signs with or without permission. The fact they've done neither over all these years of jokes shows an amount of restraint unheard of in Tinsel Town. Maybe by now it's so quirky that they're proud of their forest's treeless reputation! Kinda like the owner of a hairless cat. That would be oh so Hollywood...

View of the Angeles National Forest you can't see from the highway, courtesy of Viktor Savchenko:

In case it's confusing in my first photo with the sign, those aren't trees on the mountains in the background, only bushes similar to the ones in the foreground, the tallest plant life you can see from the highway are agave flower stalks, no trees are visible. If you could see a forest of trees like those in the final pic from the road driving into the city, L.A.'s entire image would improve dramatically imho...interesting thing would be to find out whether conifers don't grow near the road now because they were all harvested years ago or because the area around the highway is too hot and dry to support them, or maybe it has too frequent fires to allow more than agaves or shrubs to develop. Sadly, all most people know about this forest are the signs next to treeless scrub that always cause a chuckle. If only they knew...