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