(Click to see EELS in action)
Monday we decided to drive the West Side Road, a dirt/gravel road west of the main salt basin. There are some fabulous views of snow-covered Telegraph Peak from the road. Telegraph Peak is 11,000’+ high, and is usually snow covered in the winter. It is such an amazing contrast to the warm desert below. Here are the views as we drove the road.
There are lots of historic sites along the road. Tule Spring, Shorty’s Well, and others come from the buried Amargosa River flowing underground. There are also human related sites like where the original Death Valley 49ers were stranded for over a month until their rescuers arrived. There is also an interesting gravesite for some early prospectors. Shorty Harris was famous for being involved in many of the gold mines in the area, but specified his grave should say “Here lies Shorty Harris, a single blanket jackass prospector.”
Last year we couldn’t drive the West Side Road because it had large areas of washout from the historic rains that gave us back Lake Stanley for a while. I posted pictures of the fabulous sight last year. The salt is fresh here, and since the road sees orders of magnitude less traffic than the famous Badwater Basin area, you can see the way the salt pan looks before it has been walked on by tens of thousands of people. The salt begins as a polygon shape.
In Some areas the crystals build upon each other. These formations are 2-3” tall.
Eventually the crystals stop forming and get partially covered by the never-ending Death Valley Dust. This is an older crystalline area that developed before last year’s rains.
As you continue on the road you will eventually get to the back side of the famous Badwater Basin salt pan. It is truly amazing.
Those tiny dots are people. The water is from springs that are almost always present.
I have also been doing quite a bit of sewing, though I don’t have much to show for it yet. I am putting together block after block for both of the quilts I am working on, and I am making good progress. I also cut out a new bag for the folding chairs we use on the RZR. The existing bags are nylon, and the sun has really destroyed them. My finger went right through one bag when I pulled it out for measurements! Kevin has been playing with his 3D printer and the telescope.
We also did a bunch of housekeeping tasks. We dumped our tanks and got water yesterday, so we did some laundry. It has been getting into the mid 90s in the afternoon, and I like my AC with those temps! We have been running the generator from 2-5 to cool off the last two days, doing the laundry at the same time. I think we have decided to leave on Saturday and head somewhere back into Arizona, though we haven’t decided where. We will almost surely go to a private campground to have electricity for the AC.