California – TooBusyForWork

Finally – San Diego with some of the grandkids then FMCA Convention

When I last posted, we were on the way to San Diego to visit with my oldest son, his lovely wife, and my three oldest grandkids. We stayed at the Mission Bay RV Resort. It is a pretty nice place for an urban RV park. It is right next to Mission Bay, and there is a public beach that adjoins the park. Of course the sites are narrow, but that goes with being in an expensive area.

The grandkids and their parents (twin girls 14, boy 10) arrived with their parents on Sunday late afternoon. We had a lovely dinner, then the kids went with us to the motorhome. It was the first time we have had five sleeping in the motorhome, but it worked well. The girls slept on the air mattress in the sofa, and the boy slept on an air mattress on the floor. They were up late to their bodies (central time zone to Pacific time zone) so everyone slept late the next morning. We met their parents for lunch, then we went on a whale watching tour. We actually saw a lot of various whales plus two types of dolphins. I, of course, got zero pictures! I get a bit seasick, so I stayed outside on the deck and ate my candied ginger. I got by, but I didn’t feel well enough to run around the boat for pictures. Turns out my grandson also gets seasick! Poor kid.

We said goodbye to my son and DIL, and we went back to the motorhome. The next few days were just and the grandkids. We went to the San Diego Zoo of course. I had so much fun looking at the kids I didn’t get too many pictures again, but I did get some. There was the obligatory koala picture of course.

As on our first trip a few years ago, I was as impressed with the plants as I was with the animals!

here are the three famous kids at the entrance. Sorry about the dust reflections,

We spent time wondering around the piers. The kids were quite impressed with the Disney cruise ship in for a turnaround. We also bought souvenirs there.

There was a lot of time spent at the beach watching the surfers and playing “sandpiper” – waiting until the wave came in then running away like the sandpipers do. They had a lot of energy! There was also time spent building in the sand and collecting seashells. There was a pool at the campground too, and they also spent time there. Even though the girls are 14, they still had fun on a “12 and under” playground. There were a lot of them around. We met the adults on Friday before they flew out. I hope they had enough fun to go with us again.

After San Diego we went to the FMCA convention in Tucson at the Pima County Fairgrounds. It is always a fun time. We came in a bit earlier than most because Kevin was volunteering with the security team. Here is what the Fairgrounds looks like empty. Then think of it full of over 1000 motorhomes and trailers! The blue spot is where we were parked.

I felt a bit bad for the speakers at the opening ceremonies because the sky gave them some heavy competition! What a glorious Arizona sunset.

I taught a class at the convention – sewing oven mitts. What a great group of students! Two were using borrowed machines, one person had never used her brand new machine, and three were experienced sewists. Luckily I had a few helpers who hadn’t brought their machines but wanted to see what the class was. They helped the folks who were having trouble with their machines. At the end everybody finished at least one mitt and was almost finished with the second. The experienced folks finished both. See the mitts they finished, and looked at those fabulous smiles! That was the best part of the whole thing!

After all the excitement of San Diego and the Convention, Minnie was not alone in wanting to rest a bit. I will write about the other locations we have visited tomorrow.

Wind and more wind everywhere we go! Death Valley and Anza-Borrego

We left Quartzsite and headed to Needles for an overnight stop at the Elks Club there. We dropped off the RZR at a storage unit we rented there plus some other assorted things we won’t need in the next few weeks. We then headed to Death Valley National Park, one of my absolute favorite locations. However the wind kept blowing. Ourr first day was only light breezes, and we got pictures of the famous and ephemeral Lake Manley left over from Hurricane Hillary.

There was too much wind to get a reflection on the lake, but it was quite impressive. It went on for miles.

Lake Manley with Telescope Peak behind it

But then came the really big winds! Our little weather station clocked 46 mph, and it is always lower than actual. We brought all our slides in and just turtled up. The wind was incredible. No tents were left standing without broken poles, though I didn’t see any RV awnings broken this time. The wind was so strong it actually blew Lake Manley downwind! The lake moved away from the parking lot at Badwater Basin and also farther to the north. It changed color from blueish to a murky brown from all the dust blown in. You can compare it with these pictures.

We had come to Death Valley for the Dark Sky Festival, and the storm resulted in all the big outdoor activities being cancelled on Friday and Saturday, though indoor activities continued. Sunday was just breezy though, and there were a few outdoor activities that went on. The festival was FABULOUS! If you like science at all, put it on your list. The seminars and presentations cover everything from how a Mars Rover operates to how Black Holes are formed to how geologists study Badwater Basin to find biological signatures they can search for on Mars or the Moon.

We did find time to go to Artists Palette where we were sheltered from the winds. As usual the colors were spectacular. One of the big changes we saw at Death Valley was there were more colors in the rocks/mountains than before. The rains had washed off years and years blown dust and exposed a lot of rock that had been hidden.

We then headed to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, a place we had never visited. We have been missing out! The park is famous for their spring wildflowers and their gigantic metal sculptures. Both were totally worth the reputation.

I am not going to post the 100+ pictures I took yesterday and today, but these should give you a taste of the area. Oh, and there was wind, a lot of it!

There are many acres of wildflowers scattered across the area. The desert here has had >5” of rain, and everything is green.

Hardly any of my close up pictures came out due to the wind, but I do have a few.

We also took the tour of the metal sculptures. A local large landowner envisioned the sculptures spreading across his land with three types of sculptures – some from the fossil record of the area, some of animals still alive (not necessarily living locally), and some of mystical and fantasy.

The Indian Head is an example. Sorry for the shadows. But the close up shows some of the detail.

Close up showing construction and the earrings

The most famous sculpture is the dragon. It extends on both sides of the state highway, but the head is the most spectacular.

My favorites were the scorpion and grasshopper facing off. Look at the grasshopper winds and the little appendages on his legs – amazing!

Today we took a scenic drive plus decided to look for desert piles, not nearly as plentiful as the other flowers and found in different locations. We took a side 4WD trip to Font’s Point with a fabulous view of the Borrego Badlands.

And we found the lilies! Each blossom lasts just a day.

There were other white flowers in the area too. This is the best picture I got with the wind. I did say the wind continues to roar, didn’t I?

And of course there were cacti. I saw numerous Beavertail cacti loaded with blooms, but only one already blooming. It was along the Coyote Canyon 4WD dirt road. They are such a glorious color.

Also along the same road we finally found an ocotillo just starting to bloom. In another week this plant will be lovely with red blossoms sprouting from the tips of the limbs.

We also took the nature walk at the Visit Center. I discovered a new-to-me cholla cactus. This picture shows is in conjunction with the flowering plants growing between its prickly thorns. Almost all the cactus had this type of relationship with flowering plants. I think the spines protect the flowering plants from being eaten.

Tomorrow we drive to El Cajon for the night then on to San Diego on Saturday to meet my three oldest grandchildren and their parents. Everybody is set to go on a whale watching tour Monday, then the parents take off for their mini-vacation while the kids stay with us until we all meet up again on Friday afternoon at the airport. Wish us luck!

Death Valley and the Amargosa Valley

We left Hi Jolly Tuesday morning. It was still windy, but we were hoping we could make it the relatively short distance to Death Valley without being blown off the roads. We got just outside of Needles, and the highway signs were telling us “High Profile Vehicles Not Recommended.” We ended up stopping at the Needles KOA after a short trip of just under 100 miles. It is actually a nice place, and we have stayed there a number of times before. Luckily the wind died down some that night, and we made it to Death Valley and Sunset campground comfortably. We did have to cross some mountain passes on the way, and they were snowy. Luckily the snow had stopped, the roads plowed, and brine had been applied to them, so it was easy traveling. I don’t like brine on the motorhome though! We couldn’t find any place to wash the rig, so we just had to leave it on until we left.

We have stayed at Death Valley so often that I don’t take nearly as many pictures as I should. We got our favorite site – right on the eastern edge of the campground with no one between us and the mountains! It was windy and cloudy much of the time, so pictures weren’t that great anyway. I did get a couple of lovely sunrise pictures, taken from the steps of the motorhome.

We spent most of our time at the Dark Sky Festival. As usual they had great speakers from NASA, Goddard Space Center, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, James Webb Space Telescope, and others. There were photography sessions and astronomy sessions too. We did get one trip into Pahrump for supplies, and it allowed us to eat at Chat Thai, a great little place we try to get to every time we are in town. Kevin tried to get some pictures at night, but clouds came in all nights but one. Sigh.

We took one long trip to the Ubehebe Crater, a steam crater resulting from ground water being instantly vaporized by a magma pipe only 2000 years ago. If you look really carefully you can see four tiny dots of people who walked down to the bottom. It gives an impressive sense of scale.

After the fun of the Festival, we headed to the Longstreet Casino in Amargosa Valley, just 7 miles from Death Valley Junction, so we could relax with power, dump tanks, and do laundry. What a nice place! We spent Wednesday and Thursday nights here, and we will never stay in Pahrump again! The sites were all gravel, but they were roomy and they had planted a native tree between campsites. There is even a swimming pool and petting zoo! We had dinner (so-so) and breakfast (better) at the restaurant. While we were at Longstreet we took a side trip to Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge. It is always a surprise to find so many springs in the middle of the desert! It is truly a tiny hidden oasis of springs, ponds, and a small reservoir.

A cabin marked simply “Archeology project.”

Jack Longstreet was the person the casino was named after. He was one of the classic western folks – part outlaw, part miner, part rancher. He hid out in a cabin he partially dug out of the soft rock in the refuge. It was well hidden.

The springs and ponds are the real story though.

The pupfish are very small but very blue. Look carefully to see them.

Some of the famous pupfish (though not the Devil’s Hole pupfish.)

The land was developed as a ranch, and they bulldozed sand dunes and pumped water causing significant habitat degradation. The ranch was sold to Las Vegas property developers who wanted to build a few thousand homes here! Luckily the Nature Conservancy was able to purchase the land and transfer title to the National Fish and Wildlife Service. The reservoir below is one of the remnants of the ranch. The dam is in poor shape though, and the reservoir is kept pretty low. The tiny black dot bottom left is a duck.

We left the Casino and are now spending two nights at a Boondockers Welcome location in the Moapa Valley northeast a bit from Las Vegas. Nice guy, but the winds have been so bad! My allergies are flaring up miserably, I am coughing my lungs out, and I am mostly hiding in the motorhome with the HEPA filter running. If it doesn’t clear up in a couple of days, I will have to resort to the steroids I have stashed.

We had lunch today in Overton, NV at the Inside Scoop, a combination sandwich shop and ice cream store. Look at my sandwich! Actually this is the half I took home. The sandwich was massive and tasted delicious for both lunch and dinner!

We are still trying to figure out how to get to Page. The short way is through southern Utah, but it is looking cold and snowy along part of it. The other way is dropping south towards Kingman and Seligman, but it is a lot farther, and there is some bad weather there too. We will decide tomorrow.

End of 49ers Encampment and heading home

Warning – another picture heavy post!

We finally got all the work done on the Jeep, and it was expensive. Just part of the joy of MH ownership, and we have been pretty lucky until now. There has been so much travel to Las Vegas that we really didn’t want to do a lot more travel. That is the excuse I am going to give for not hitting the big tourist spots in Death Valley this time. We didn’t even do any of the 4WD trips! We did get to some of the historical presentations, all the music acts, and some other presentations.

We also took time to buy a Blackstone grill while in Las Vegas. Kevin has been looking at them, and the Camping World there had one at last year’s price, a significant savings. So far we are enjoying it. Kevin has made hamburgers, fajitas, and grilled potatoes. It is a bit of a pain to clean, but that should get better as the seasoning improves. Kevin installed a propane tap to the MH so it is easy to attach an external device to the MH’s propane tank instead of having to use a separate propane bottle – handy.

We headed into Beatty, NV one day to go to their famous candy store. And of course we bought a bunch of nuts and candy. They have some things hard to find anywhere else. Right at the edge of Beatty we found two of the famous donkeys. They are a standard sight here, and very popular with tourists. They are truly a dreadful thing in the wild though, displacing the native big horn sleep.

Heading back to the campground, I took some pictures of Death Valley at sunset.

Near the bottom of Sunrise Pass looking south

There really is no way of showing the vastness of the park. The picture above shows probably 30 miles.

From the Texas Springs Road showing the salt pan to the north

Looking from Texas Springs Road above Sunset Campground, NPS Visitor Center foreground right.

The huge alluvial fans coming from the mountains are amazing, this one shown above is probably 5-7 miles wide. They are a very distinctive feature of the park, and they show up everywhere.

With all the beauty around us, you don’t generally stay at the campground to “camp”. It is more a place to rejuvenate, eat, and sleep. That’s good because the campground is basically a big gravel parking lot. It is cheap though – $7.00 a night with our senior pass. There are flush toilets (no showers) plus a dump station with fresh water. This year there weren’t nearly as many people attending. They didn’t even open the first overflow camp area until Thursday, and normally they have all three overflows open and occupied by Monday or Tuesday.

Another thing about the Furnace Creek area is the legendary fuel prices, generally the most expensive in the country.

Also in the park (but regulated by NPS contract), the price for regular gasoline is $4.86 at Stovepipe Wells. Outside the park in Nevada at the casino, the price was $3.88. It is well worth the time to drive the 35 miles to Nevada! The Furnace Creek prices are the best advertisement I know of against unbridled capitalist greed. Stovepipe Wells is just as far from distribution sources, and they charge more than $2 per gallon less.

One thing nice about Nevada and California is they allow both medical and recreational sale of cannabis. I was able to refill the gummies I use to manage the residual pain in my shoulder for a much better price than I can going to Illinois at home. Using them I have been able to stop the ibuprofen that I have been on since surgery, giving my belly a much wanted relief. I take 10 mg each night, and I also take CBD gummies to reduce inflammation. The combination has really helped. I have to use the gummies because there is absolutely no way I am smoking anything!

Getting back to the Encampment, the biggest event is always when the wagon train comes in. This year they had 14 wagons travel the 100 miles from the far southern edge of the park to Furnace Creek. I will just post the pictures without captions because they are pretty self-explanatory. They are lead in by the Marine mounted color guard from 29 Palms. Each of the color guards trains their own horse, chosen from mustangs sold by the BLM. Impressive!

We left Death Valley on Sunday. We spent Sunday night at the Seligman, AZ KOA. Monday we stayed at Lavaland RV Park in Grants (nice brewery associated with it), Tuesday and Wednesday we were at the Tucumcari KOA waiting out a wind storm, and tonight we are at Mustang Run RV Park on the west side of Oklahoma City. We will spend Friday night at a Boondockers Welcome site near Kansas City, then home!

Finally made it to Death Valley

We left North Platte on Friday,29 October. We stayed at the KOA in Rawlins, a nice spot, then got to the Salt Lake City KOA late morning on Saturday. We were able to meet up with friends, ate well, but only had the two little kids camped next to us a Trick or Treaters. I gave an entire bag of candy to one of my friends to take into work! We stayed until Tuesday morning, the headed on our way. We spent the night at the Eureka Casino in Mesquite, NV. Very quiet, but we sure had to pull out the leveling blocks!

After we left Mesquite, we started getting check engine lights on the motorhome. The error was low manifold pressure, so we called to Freightliner in Las Vegas to check it out. Turns out a hose had developed a crack and needed replaced. Since it was a formed hose, it had to be ordered from the warehouse in Phoenix. They let us stay overnight next to their lot, and then replaced the hose the next morning. $45 hose, $40 shipping, and the rest of the $600+ bill was labor. Sigh. This is the first non-routine issue we have had in 3 1/2 years and almost 40,000 miles, so I won’t complain too much. Still, it was too bad this didn’t happen at home with $95/hour labor rates instead of the $175/hour in Vegas.

We finally got set up at Death Valley, and we lucked into our favorite site! It is on the east side of the lot with nothing between us and the mountains except a small road. My camera was dead, so I hope you can stand these iPhone photos.

Timbisha Shoshone settlement and headquarters on the left and part of the staff housing for Furnace Creek on the right.

Rather flat light, but the color contrast is still interesting

The mountains at sunset looking a bit south

I can look at those mountains all day! We haven’t had a lot of chance though because Kevin discovered the base plate on the Jeep was loose. This is what attached to the tow bars to tow the Jeep, so loose is a danger! The closest place was Vegas again, this time Indoor RV Center. They came recommended, and so far is seems valid. They saw us on Friday to evaluate and quote the repairs, then on Monday Kevin drove back to get the repair completed. It would have been completed then, but we have discovered the idiots who originally installed it didn’t follow the directions or use the right parts! I am livid. We had to have a complete new baseplate installed plus extra labor to drill out or cut off a bunch of bolts put in wrong. It was so much work that we had to come back today too! Since northern Vegas is a bit over 2 hours from Death Valley, that is an awful lot of driving. We don’t know the final bill, but it will be north of $1500. The shop rate here is even worse than the Freightliner dealer – $189. They do seem to know what they are doing though, and a base plate is a critical piece of safety equipment. We just can’t stand to have an issue with it, and better here than Canada or Alaska next summer!

We have yet to attend a single 49ers activity, but we will start this evening if we get back in time. And we have the funds to pay the bills since we knew this day would come. Hopefully my next post will be much more positive.

Death Valley catchup (plus Iowa things)

Warning – this has a lot of time and variety in it!

To catch up on Death Valley and surroundings, we stayed at Sunset until the morning of 20 February. Since the cellular data service ixps extremely limited there, we were pleased to make full use of the monthly WiFi pass at the resort. $60 gives you 30 days of high speed Internet on up to two devices! I tried to get some pictures from Kevin’s fancy camera of the Funeral Mountains to the east of us, but I wasn’t terribly successful. The mountains are made up of rocks so old and confused they are called “Funeral Chaos”. Twisted, faulted, squeezed, faulted again – they show amazing patterns. I just couldn’t get a good picture though, so I guess I will try again next time.

Searching for phone service and a place to hunker down to care for Lily, we ended up at the Needles KOA. We have stayed there a few times before. The sites are big enough, and there is a resident group of quail that I find adorable. I tried to get a picture of the 20 or so who ran across the road as we were checking in, but they were too fast for me. You can hear them clicking away in the mornings if no one has taken their dogs out yet.

As I said in the previous post, we headed back to Iowa as soon as we knew about Lily’s condition. We stayed at Lavaland RV Park in Grants, NM the first night after we left Needles KOA, Tuesday 23 February. They had a nice brewery that concentrated on porters and stouts, my favorites. Sadly their kitchen was closed, but we did order some pizza delivered to the brewery. Nice to eat pizza and beer inside an almost empty place. Our next stop was Big Texan RV Park in Amarillo. It is a mile or so away from the famously advertised restaurant, but it was an easy in and out spot. We made it to the Wellington KOA on Thursday, much nicer than the dreadful place we stayed heading to Arizona in December. We then headed to the Lakeside Casino RV Park in Osceola, IA for our last night. It isn’t very suitable for big rigs since the turns are tight and the sites pretty short, but we found a spot we could fit into. It wasn’t the one the check in folks had us in initially, but with only 5-6 other rigs we had our choice. It is close enough to home to make it a good spot to winterize the rig, and thanks what we did on Saturday morning before heading out. We are pretty good at it these days, and it too, less than an hour. The ice maker is always the hardest!

We had gotten COVID vaccination appointments on Sunday, 28 February, and we had our follow up vaccination yesterday (Pfizer). I am anxiously awaiting my 2 week time for feeling comfortable again! We are having two of the kids and their families over for Easter (another son heads to his cabin every Easter), and I am soooooo wanting to hug them all!

Kevin’s big job this time was installing new LiFePO4 batteries. He chose three 200 amp hour LifeBlue batteries with their integrated heater. Lithium’s don’t charge below 35 degrees or so, and we stay in those temps too often to not get the more expensive heater version. He needed a new solar controller, and luckily this one has Bluetooth so it is much easier to see what is happening. They see to work fine, and I am anxious to try them out on a real trip, not just sitting outside the storage unit. Our solar system will be able to punch more power into the batteries because it won’t be throttled by the lead acid charging curve.

We have been doing work on the house too. We bought a pergola to go on our very hot west side deck. It has a nice adjustable shade cover that will help with keeping the house cooler too. We even bought a propane fire pit to put under it!

i also finished the three quilt tops I sewed while we were out. I got them quilted pretty quickly, but I procrastinated on the binding because it is the task I like least. I got them into the wash yesterday though.

The first two were made from a layer cake I bought on sale. I love the water lilies and dragonfly theme.

Bound and backed with a green Grunge fabric

Bound and backed with a light turquoise fabric with yellow dots

This one was way outside my comfort zone! I just don’t “do” scrappy well. It will make a fun ”I Spy” quilt for some child though.

Enough for now. More going on at home, but I will leave that for later.

I do love Death Valley!

After a long convalescence from my horrific attack of sinusitis, I am almost well again. It took prednisone and lots of OTC meds plus lots of sleep, a humidifier, and personal steamer, but I am probably as well as I ever will be in this climate. I love the desert, but the dust is a major irritant to me, so something bad happens most years we are out here. I put up,with it because I love this place so much. We spend at least a week in DV every year, and most years 2-3 weeks, so we have visited pretty much all the standard tourist spots. It is hard to come up with pictures I haven’t posted before, but I think I have a couple of unique ones this time!

Need to keep your distance from a Storm Trooper!

Yup, Kevin found a father and son doing cosplay in Golden Canyon, site of some memorable scenes from the Star Wars movies. Isn’t the little Jawa adorable? He was more than willing to put on his mask for a picture of his fierce side.

It just isn’t DV without Artists Palette, is it?

And then there are just more layers, this time close to our campsite.

It is really hard to grasp just how vast the landscapes are out here unless I throw a few people in the pictures for scale.

There is a guided horseback ride from the Furnace Creek stables every morning. They are headed down from Texas Spring here

Badwater Salt Flats are awesome and huge

We are camped at the far eastern edge of Sunset campground. You can’t beat $7/night (senior pass rate) looking east. The sun warms us early, and the bulk of the motorhome shields out “porch” on the hot afternoons. We also have a nice view of the Oasis at Furnace Creek Inn, a very upscale resort. I keep saying I will get lunch here some day (dinner requires dressier clothes than I prefer), but I haven’t done it yet. The winter sun and temperatures in the 70s in the day make just hanging around an awful nice idea.

Recovering from sinusitis and heading into Death Valley

We left Quartzsite on Sunday to drive the short way to Needles, KOA. It is a nice enough park, and a good spot to use for laundry and tank cleaning. However we didn’t do either! I was feeling truly horrid with massive sinusitis, something I am sadly too familiar with. Fever, chills, massive drainage, cough – uggh. In these times, we looked to find a drive-through COVID test site, just because, and we found a rapid test one in Las Vegas. So off to Las a Vegas we went! It is not really out of the way to Death Valley, and we go through it quite a bit. I got the test sample submitted, and we headed to Pahrump, NV, our traditional rinse waste tanks, fill fresh tank, check up on propane and fuel spot. We reserved 3 nights at Preferred RV Resort which is, not surprisingly, not a resort at all but filled with working folks and long term snowbirds. Not bad for the price, but not as nice as Lakeside. But we are just hanging here quarantining until I got my test results Tuesday (negative, as expected). My lovely ENT back home sent me a prescription for a prednisone 6 day dose pack, and I am feeling much better (but not well) here on the morning of day 4.

The drive to Vegas and then to Pahrump was awfully pretty with snow on the mountains. Sadly the pictures I asked Kevin to take out the window of the motorhome didn’t work for some reason. Highway 160 from Vegas is an interesting road crossing the mountains on a deceptively steep and very long grade. Luckily the 9% doesn’t last very long, but there are miles of 5-6%. This is where I end up appreciating the diesel, its exhaust brake, and the Allison transmission that does a lot of the hard work for me.

Kevin and I may not like the RV park over much, but Lily thought it was wonderful! There are pine trees on either side of us with doves in residence cooing. She has been enthralled.

There is a bird on the other side of the window.

We leave this morning for Sunset Campground in Death Valley. I know there won’t be enough cell data service to post, but I will buy WiFi access at the resort occasionally. The weather for forecast to be spectacular (highs in the upper 60s to upper 70s), and the weather at home is abysmal (lows well into negative numbers for 10 days) so we aren’t in any hurry to leave.

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 south shows the snow touched Panamints

Artists Drive and the Artists Pallette

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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