We arrived in Death Valley on Monday, 17 February. We got lucky again and got an end site looking east to the mountains. My favorite spot! We are here for the Black Sky Festival in the park this weekend plus this is one of our favorite places! We didn’t do much but settle in and look at the glorious views on Monday. Tuesday we also just relaxed. A friend, Ron, came on Tuesday, so we chatted a bit and sat around the propane fire pit (no charcoal producing fires in the campground). Another motorhome came in near us towing an F-150, same model we have. The man came and asked Kevin to help him get it out of tow mode; it was brand new and he was having problems. We invited them over to the same fire, and they had all kinds of questions about the park. They were only going to stay two days, but I notice they are going to the Racetrack today. Glad I convinced them to stay longer.
Wednesday we went to the Racetrack ourselves. Ron has a 1 ton 4X4 pickup to tow his fifth wheel and we had our F-150 4X4 so we were all ready to do it! We stopped at Uebehebe Crater first. Pretty impressive as usual. We didn’t hike down it or anything, but I enjoyed the view. It had been a few years since we have been there. First the road was washed out, and the next time we just didn’t get around to it.
Then we started down the high clearance 4X4 road to the Racetrack and the moving stones. Ron said this was almost the #1 item on his DV bucket list, and we hadn’t been for years. The road was definitely rough. Due to how good the image stabilization is on the GoPro, it is hard to tell. Look toward the end of this video to get an idea though.
Here are Ron and Kevin walking to the Grandstand, a black chunk of rock in the middle of the Racetrack. Without some humans for scale, the size of the rocks and mountains is impossible to show. And sorry for the truck antenna in the way.
Battleship
I took more pictures come back than I did going down because the light was better. Here is one showing the layers of rock in the area.
Layers
To get to the Racetrack, you have to go by Tea Kettle junction. Why is it there? Lots of stories, and no one knows the truth. Occasionally the NPS has to pull off some when they get too heavy.
Why would it be named “Tea Kettle Junction?”
Another interesting spot is an entire forest of Mohave yuccas. They look a lot like Joshua Trees from a distance, but they are obviously different close up. Like Joshua Trees, they are found at a very specific elevation.
Forest of multi-headed yucca
The campground we are in got its name from the fabulous sunsets. They look different each direction you look.
Looking one directionLooking the other direction
On Thursday we had to go to Pahrump to pick up Kevin’s meds, and we again ate at the fabulous Chai Thai restaurant. We also had dinner at the Furnace Creek Inn, quite upscale. You have to make reservations for dinner, and we never got around to it before. The meal was scrumptious as were the cocktails before hand. Expensive though. $40 for cocktails and another $100 for dinner before tip. Occasionally a splurge is worth it. The only problem was my right side was so beat up from the drive to Racetrack that I was in real pain. I ended up taking 10mg of Flexeril, and I slept like a log. Still a bit sore this morning, but not in agony like yesterday.
The Dark Sky Festival begins today, and we have tickets for the main speakers tonight and tomorrow. More on that later.
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.
View from our campsite in daylight
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.
Looking into the crater
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.”Crystal Springs
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.
Boardwalk to Longstreet CabinLongstreet cabinThe cabin was dug into the soft rock
The springs and ponds are the real story though.
Lovely color to the waterObviously very clear too
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.)Green exists even in a drought.
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.
The old ranch reservoir. See the 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!
Club Sandwich from Inside Scoop
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.
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.
Found on the west side of Beatty, NV
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.
Daylight view from CA 190From the Texas Springs Road showing the salt pan to the northLooking 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.
Sunset Campground during the Encampment
Another thing about the Furnace Creek area is the legendary fuel prices, generally the most expensive in the country.
Yup, those are the real prices
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!
Marine color guard
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!
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 interestingThe mountains at sunset looking a bit southMountains at sunset looking a bit north
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.
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!
Plenty of room for twoIgnore the straps scattered around
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 fabricBound 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.
Mostly mask left overs – very scrappy!
Enough for now. More going on at home, but I will leave that for later.
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!
A fearsome Jawa in Golden CanyonNeed 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?
ColorsAnd layers
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 hereBadwater 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.
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 boardwalkLooking 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 KunzeSomeone has carefully selected some artifacts for the insideThere 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 intersectionThis 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 DunesThe 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.
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 attendedBand 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 interestingThey 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 scaleAnd 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.
Folks, you just thought I had a lot of pictures in previous posts! Get ready for even more.
The most amazing thing we saw at this year’s Encampment was a 20 mule team pulling newly built borax wagons. The wagons are 2 years old, and carefully created by a wagon builder in Montana to the original specifications. They are huge! The Death Valley Conservancy paid for them, and they helped fund the mule team too. The mules are from Bobby Tanner, an outfitter and packer in the Sierras, and he is one of only a handful of people able to manage such a team.
See the FedEx truck? Yeah, so did everyone else! The road was closed, but he thought he could get past the NPS, CHP, and the Sheriffs. Didn’t work out too well for him.
This is Kevin’s picture, taken from a high hill so you can see the bigger picture. The wagon train consisted of two huge wagons for borax, a water tank, 18 mules, and 2 horses. Yes, the term “20 mule team” is a bit inaccurate, but that’s the way it was done historically. And the team isn’t driven from the wagon but through a “jerk line” wielded by Bobby Tanner in the blue shirt and hat on the horse in front.
And I got the most amazing video I have ever made! Click on the link to see it, and turn up the volume to hear the mule bells. Watch towards the back of the team to see a mule “jumping the chain” to change the wagon direction. The wagons had solid axles, and they had to be turned by brute force.
We didn’t hit many of the standard places for Death Valley pictures because we have done them so often. We did make an exception for Titus Canyon and Artist’s Palette. Titus Canyon requires a high clearance vehicle and some confidence, but it is a lovely drive. It is one way on a very rough gravel/rock road with tight turns and steep climbs, but the views are well worth it.
Layers and colorsA small windowYou eventually drive down a wash with narrow wallsWater means everything here.It is all about the layersThe town of Leadfield boomed for about 6 months and died. It was a hoax.Someone didn’t believe the road needed high clearance. This resulted in a dead car and two days of the canyon shut down until they could tow the car out.I did say something about layersOn the road into the canyon from Beatty.From the top of the passA lovely isolated groupingLook at the layers curling more than vertical! That is an example of the stress the land has undergone
The Artist’s Palette is another famous section of one way road. The formations has different minerals that provide a wide range of colors. And no, the green isn’t copper.
It is pretty, isn’t it? I hope you now believe Death Valley is more than sand dunes and dull brown rocks.
We left this morning for the 1200 mile trip back to Iowa. We made it to Kingman, AZ at Fort Beale RV Park. Quite a change from the spacious spot we had at DVNP, but such is life. We did get rewarded by a fantastic sunset tonight though. Too bad it is the result of smoke from the fires in California.
On Monday we took a 4WD trip with ten other 49er vehicles to Emigrant Canyon and Skidoo. We had a good time, saw cool stuff, and gave the Jeep a good workout! We started up Emigrant Canyon to the mines and mill remnants near Emigrant Spring. It was a fine gravel road.
Mine remnantsMill remnantsNot much left, but this cabin is in reasonable shapeNot all mine shafts are closed. This is one near Emigrant SpringHead frame left in Emigrant Canyon
We continued to the townsite of Skidoo, an important gold mining area in the mountains just southwest of Stovepipe Wells. There isn’t much left of the town, just some old roads and metal fragments.
Not much left of the mine either, and we had too many vehicles to get thereThe mill is in great shape. Notice the fifteen stamps still in the frameLots of mining remnants all overMany of the mines were covered with bay friendly coversIt was over a 20% grade. Jeep made it just fine.Looking toward Mesquite Dunes by Stovepipe Wells
We spent the next few days just hanging around and doing Encampment stuff. I participated in the amateur night known as Coyote Howl doing the Robert Service poem “The Shooting of Dan McGrew”. It went quite well. The professional music has been good too. We spent time watching the blacksmith and chow wagon crews too.
The Dutch Oven demos provided cobbler samples. Yum!Portable blacksmith shop was making things. They let visitors help too.
One of the highlights is the historical character re-enactment by Steve Hale. This year he portrayed Snowshoe Johnson who used some of the first skis in the US. AS A Norwegian, he had grown up with them, and used them to run the first mail route over the Sierras in winter.
Steve Hale portrayed Snowshoe Thompson
Oh, and we had dinner with friends from the RV Forum.
I will save the posts about the 20 mule team, the borax wagons, and the wagon train until after we leave tomorrow. I should have cell service in Kingman where we hope to stay.
