Month: February 2020

Sunset campground in Death Valley

Part 2 of our Death Valley trip.

We moved to Sunset campground in the Furnace Creek area. I was astonished to get what I consider the best site in the entire place – F1. It faces East so you get the morning sun but you have protection from the hot afternoon sun. It is also at the end of a row with nothing but a driveway between you and the mountains. We stayed for 7 nights, and we considered staying longer.

We did the must-see drive to Badwater Basin after a rain. Note the reflections.

Looking to the north at the boardwalk
Looking to the south shows the snow touched Panamints

Artists Drive and the Artists Pallette

So many colors

Kevin took a trip to the Keane Wonder Mine again. I stayed at the coach and quilted.

We took what is probably my favorite backcountry 4WD road, Greenwater Road to the old mining communities of Furnace, Kunze, and Greenwater. Furnace had nothing left except a few sun bleached pieces of wood since it had been a tent city. Kunze was the small town, but had some great stone remnants.

Still with part of its roof timbers at Kunze
Someone has carefully selected some artifacts for the inside
There were other ruins in not as good of shape

The town of Greenwater was full of artifacts. This was the biggest of the communities, and it obviously spread out over a large area.

This is the “monument” to Greenwater at what was the towns main intersection
This type of debris was all over the square mile or so of the town

The Greenwater road had more animals than we had previously seen  with numerous lizards running across the road and quite a few antelope squirrels. The squirrels look like small but very round ground squirrels except their very short tail (creamy white on the underside) held curled above their backs. They were very fast, and I never was able to get a picture. They were new to me this trip. The road was also a real 4WD road with big rigs that needed a high clearance vehicle and good climbing ability. The Grand Cherokee Trailhawk handled it like a pro. I am feeling more and more confidence in the vehicle’s abilities.

The weekend we were there was the Dark Sky Festival. There were scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Goddard Space Center, and more plus two local astronomy groups. The talks ranged from deep scientific topics to a kid’s activity of building their own Mars Rover model (quite popular I might add) to guided hikes to Star Wars filming sites (Golden Canyon). Death Valley has been used to test extraterrestrial vehicles for many years, and there were lots of stories about them. Most of the astronomy and astrophotography activities got rained out (DVNP got almost 1/4” of rain on Saturday), but we did go to one ranger program on Sunday night. Kevin has been playing around with astrophotography, and I love looking at his shots. Sadly I can’t show them to you in full glory due to size.

At the Mesquite Sand Dunes
The adobe ruins at Harmony Borax Works

The Dark Sky Festival was very interesting, and I think we will plan on going again next year.

We left on a Monday and headed to Needles, CA as I noted in the previous post. We stayed for two nights at the KOA, and caught up on laundry, shopping, and the internet! I hadn’t had unfettered access for weeks which is the reason for the delay in posts. We are now at the Kofa Wildlife Refuge in a boondock site on King’s Road, about halfway between Quartzsite and Yuma. We don’t know how long we will stay, but it is glorious here.

Looking out the front door

Staying at Stovepipe Wells campground in Death Valley (and pictures from Yuma)

Warning: picture heavy. This is the first of two posts about our sojourn in Death Valley.

We are now in Needles, CA at the KOA. We got some shopping done, and we are just finishing the sixth load of laundry! Before I talk about recent things, I will post some pictures from Yuma and the promised Howling at the Moon concert.

Lots of people attended
Band stage. There was a US flag too, just not in the picture. Lots of Canadians winter in Yuma.

Now back to Death Valley. We spent 5 nights at Stovepipe Wells, arriving on Wednesday, 12 February. This is a much smaller campground than Sunset, but it has real tent sites and was very popular. There is a 10 site full hookup campground operated by the concessionaire, but we stayed in the NPS no-hookup campground. Nice wide and long sites were available along one side of the campground for big rigs like ours. Many of the sites would have been a bit short for us, so I was glad the camp host worked so hard to keep the longest sites for us big guys.

The concessionaire also operates a motel, restaurant, saloon, and souvenir shop. The saloon has good drinks and enjoyable bartenders, but the food (burgers only) was so so. The restaurant was better. The store sells snacks and prepackaged sandwiches, no real food. If you come to DVNP, you better be prepared! Normally there is a bit of WiFi at Stovepipe near the registration desk, but they had none this time, not even for the guests. I understand a power problem earlier in the year had damaged some equipment.

When we arrived at about 3:00 pm we had no trouble finding a site. During the holiday weekend it was just about full every night though. We didn’t do as much driving as we originally planned (just being lazy with magnificent weather), but we did see “wild” burros in the town of Beatty. After all, everyone needs to visit the Death Valley Candy Store. They have a huge selection of prepackaged candy, nuts, and dried fruit. We ended up with some divinity and some licorice.

Just wild enough to walk away as we drove by

We drove up to Wildrose, an old CCC camp still used by the park service. The road to Wildrose is paved, and it goes past a number of old mining sites. I took pictures in November so I won’t repeat them. They are worth a stop though. The road is paved all the way to Wildrose.

Old buildings still in use.

interestingly enough there was a burro here too. Note the open door of the corral. The hay may have been to attract other burros so they could be relocated.

He is kind of cute though

We then drove the few miles to the charcoal kilns on a good gravel road. There was still some snow in sheltered spots, but the weather at this elevation was a balmy 55 or so.

The kilns has lots of vent holes. These were stopped up during a burn.
The masonry work itself was interesting
They were in great shape, better than any other charcoal kilns I have seen.
You can see these were big. The charcoal was used in nearby mining sites

You can see into the Sierra Madres quite well. Mount Whitney is there somewhere.

The Panamints in the foreground, then the Inyos and at last the Sierra Madres.

On Sunday we went to the Racetrack. The road was much better this time than on our previous visit a 2-3 years ago. It is required that you get a picture of the moving rocks.

For scale
And they are off …

“The Grandstand” sits at the start of the Racetrack. You just see the top of a large mountain that is mostly buried in ancient sediment. We didn’t get pictures of Ubehebe Crater since it was so crowded.

People show the scale

On Monday, 17 February we made our way to Sunset campground. I will put that week in its own post.

Resort living

No pictures because we have very limited internet here at Craggy Wash BLM campground north of Lake Havasu.

We stayed at the Fortuna de Oro RV Resort in Yuma for a week. This is the first time we have stayed at a real upscale resort. My, but they can keep you busy! There are clubs for every interest, live music most afternoons/early evenings, planned Happy Hours, pickleball leagues and tournaments, softball, a golf course (but we don’t golf), etc. Quite impressive. We took the opportunity to listen to music a few evenings, I visited the quilt group twice (they have their own room at the resort), and we road our bikes around and around. This place is huge with about 1200 sites. Many are year around places, either park models or RVs, but there are a number of people here for a few days or a few months. We actually liked it so much we are pretty sure we will plan for two months there next year, February and March. Too early to make any final decisions though because the reservations aren’t refundable!

While in Yuma we also wandered around the town some. Decent restaurants, more shopping than I remembered from some day trips we made before. We did get the motorhome washed and waxed. Papi’s RV Wash gave very good results, but they were hours late! They were able to get rid of  the brush marks on the side from close encounters tears with bushes and trees. The coach looks wonderful! We also went to a local community theater presentation fo Godspell, fun though pretty amateurish, and last night we went to an outdoor concert known as “Howling at the Moon”. Yup, 3000 people in lawn chairs listening to music, talking with friends, and, when the full moon came up over the mountain, howling at the moon. They do it once a month. We got to see some of our friends from Quartzsite so it was extra fun.

We were on the road from Yuma to Quartzsite by 10:00. Our black tank has not been draining well, so we set up an appointment to have the black and the gray tanks power flushed by “The RV Procologist” (love the name). It turns out the problem was that Lily had managed to put a sock in the toilet and we must have flushed it down in the dark! We can’t figure out any other way it could have gotten there. We have found a few of her stuffed mice in the toilet bowl in the past, but obviously this one must have been done at night. Oh, and they offered us the sock back, but I declined LOL!

We then drove on to a BLM dispersed camping site know as Craggy Wash. It is so lovely I wish I could put up pictures. Only a mile off Hwy 95 right at the north edge of the Lake Havasu airport, it is very quiet even though there are a number of rigs ranging from vans to a teardrop to trailers, fifth wheels, and motorhomes. Only a couple of generators going, and I hope they stop soon. Tomorrow morning early we are heading to Death Valley, hoping to spend a few days at Stovepipe Wells followed by another few days at Furnace Creek. We have seen a few flowers in the southern area beginning to bloom, and I am hoping to see some good blooms in DVNP.

I will post some more pictures if I get service at Stovepipe, but it is iffy.

Leaving Quartzsite tomorrow

We have been here for almost 3 weeks, and we are leaving tomorrow for a full-hookup resort-style snowbird park. It will be quite a change from the lovely quiet desert, but both types of places have their advantages and disadvantages. I am looking forward to doing my laundry in my own washer and dryer!

I ended up removing the stitches in my hand myself. However there is a tiny piece that didn’t come out! I am going to have to dig it out soon. It has impacted my ability to ride my bike, so today was the first time I really took it out. Kevin and I rode to Bad Boy’s restaurant in Quartzsite and had one of their nice breakfasts. The weather today was actually so warm I couldn’t sit comfortably outside in the direct sun (83 by one account). However the weather is changing. We have a strong wind, and a cold front is on the way. Tomorrow’s high is supposed to be 50, so quite a change.

The weather has been a challenge for Kevin to take some good night photos. We did get a few clear nights though.

Milky Way and saguaros
Pretty impressive view of the Milky Way from just outside our motorhome. Note the aircraft lights that were captured.
Blow it up to see the mountains, moon, and Venus

I will also provide a bit of info about the rally. We had at least 35 people show up in over 20 rigs. Some were here for a few days, others for weeks. We are a loosely organized group. There was one 4 WD trip that we didn’t take, a daily 2 mile walk in the morning, and Happy Hour around the campfire each night of the Big Tent RV show. Smaller groups visited the favorite restaurants (Bad Boy’s for breakfast and Silly Al’s for pizza or lasagna), visited the show, drove to the wildlife refuge, or visited Castle Dome. I must admit the quiet this week, the week after the show, has been lovely!

Oh, and I almost completed a baby quilt out of scraps. I still have to apply the binding, but that is all thanks left. I will post it when it is all done.

To Yuma!