I finally made it to Death Valley. I lived in California for over 30 years and never once set foot in Death Valley National Park. I was close many times. I visited all kinds of places around the park. But I was always in the area in summer. Death Valley in summer would not be my first choice, or my second for that matter. The closest I came was a brief visit to Death Valley Junction, many, many years ago. (A place, which, according to my Garmin GPS doesn’t actually exist. I’m dumping it in favor of a Magellan unit similar to the one I accidentally destroyed…but that’s another story.)
I headed into the park from the Junction, which, as luck would have it, turned out to be one of the few roads that was actually open. A while back there was a lot of rain in a place where there isn’t supposed to be much rain. The storm buried many of the roads in the park. So many of the roads in fact, that I’m going to have to make a second trip to the park at a later date. Most of the areas I wanted to explore were out of reach, as the roads to them were out of commission. I had no idea. If I had, I would have chosen a different place to visit this time around. But it is what it is (or was what it was, whatever.)
Death Valley is beautiful, in a bleak sort of way. There is very little vegetation. Any color there comes primarily from the rocks—when you happen to be in an area where they aren’t just brown and black. In the higher elevations there are some stunted tree-like things, but those are few and far between. Death Valley is a very apt name for the place.
hills, detail
Hills near the entrance
I met a few people there who are so in love with it that they come back every year to spend time in its starkness. I admit that it is peaceful and exudes a certain charm, but I am fond of green and growing things and there aren’t many of those things in Death Valley. I guess I’m not really the desert type.
Death Valley “moonscape”
My first stop (aside from a couple of photo ops) was at the visitors center at Furnace Creek. Which is where I found out that most of the roads were out of commission. I had originally planned to camp there, but the campgrounds were already getting crowded and I wanted a little peace and quiet. There is, apparently, a group called the 49ers who, I was told, were instrumental in getting Death Valley made a national park. They meet there at the same time every year. And it was almost time, many had already arrived. So I moved on to Stovepipe Wells. Didn’t see any wells, but I did find a campground that was 90 percent empty. Perfect.
another old car
vintage cars on D.V. trek
After settling in I took a little stroll, then relaxed until about a half hour before sunset. That’s when I headed out to the sand dunes that were a little over a mile back up the road. The light is most striking at sunrise and sunset, so I took advantage of that fact to take a few pictures. It would have been nice to hike out into the dunes, but I was still limping from my collision with the side of the RV in Ash Meadows, so I gave hiking a rest.
single dune
sunset shadows
I wasn’t at all disappointed with the scenery at the dunes. As the sun set the lighting became quite dramatic. It also disappeared quickly. Death Valley, being a valley, is ringed by high mountains. The sun sets behind them very quickly. And once it sets, particularly this late in the year, it gets very cool even quicker. So back to the RV for me.
distant dunes
distant “dune” people
mountains beyond dunes
The next day I hopped on my scooter hoping to ride up to Emigrant Canyon. No such luck. It was one of the many roads still closed. So I continued on to Panamint Springs. To reach the Springs from where I was camped you go from below sea level to almost 5000 feet, over a mountain pass then back down a couple thousand feet. Any misgivings I might have had about my new scooter were vanquished on this trip. It may be only 125cc’s, but it handled the climb like a mountain goat. The 9% grade on the other side was interesting….to say the least. I was a mite concerned about the trip back as it was much steeper than the side I had come up. But that would be a problem for later.
view from near pass
rest area before pass
As I got down into the valley where Panamint is located the first thing I found was that the road I had planned to use when leaving the park was also closed. No way out there. Then I saw a coyote standing by the side of the road watching me just like I was watching him. I figured that if he was going to pose, I might as well get a picture. Naturally, as soon as the camera came out he vanished into the scrub. Sigh.
There wasn’t much to see at Panamint Springs. A gas station (gas, $6.50 per gallon), convenience store (very little inside), restaurant and campground. I went a little way beyond Panamint to a road that claimed to go out to a waterfall (dry? Oasis?), but the road was so poor and hard on my little scooter that I gave up after less than a mile, had lunch and headed for home.
desert “flower”
I needn’t have worried about how my trusty steed would handle the steep grade on the way back. It had no trouble with it at all. Yamaha did a good job with this little beast. The biggest problem was how cold it was at the top. Since I hadn’t planned on driving over the pass, I hadn’t dressed for how cold it got up there. My entire face was numb long before reaching the top. I was really happy to get back to camp and into my nice warm RV.
That evening I talked to the campground host about my options for leaving the park the next day, since plan “A” was a wash. I had thought about leaving through Panamint Springs. The drive over the pass was a little hairy, but nothing I couldn’t handle. Then he told me what it was like not far past the road I had turned on the day before. Seems that the road on the other side is full of tight hairpin turns and rather narrow. Anything over 25 feet in length is a problem. Meaning that the delivery trucks that come over that road are often found taking their half out of the middle. And meeting one on a turn in a large RV can be more than interesting for both parties. He told me that a friend of his came in that way the year before and arrived white-knuckled and shaking. OK, new plan, go out the way I came in.
banded hills
Since I was backtracking, I stopped at a place on the way out that I had by-passed on the way in. It had once been a borax-refining operation. There are still parts of two adobe buildings standing, along with a portion of the refinery. The reason for doing the refining in the middle of Death Valley was a question of distance to the railway. The railroad was so far away that every pound needed to be worth the haul. Thus the borax was refined before the trip out of the valley, reducing its weight by more than half. Of course, refining could only be done during the cooler months. The summers being so hot that no one could survive being near the boilers long enough to do the job.
borax cars
sign
old boiler
After leaving there, I found myself outside the park and heading into the Junction in much less time than I had thought it would take. I stopped at the Amargossa hotel meaning to have lunch in the little diner there, but it was not to be. As soon as I got out of the RV I met another couple who had had the same idea, but for some reason the diner was closed for the day. Bummer. So much for supporting a small business. I ate a carton of yogurt instead.
After that it was back roads to Baker, CA. Beautiful back roads, and interesting driving. I saw a couple of places I wouldn’t have minded spending the night, like one area I saw with beautiful dunes, but I wanted to be at my sister’s in Corona, CA the next day and I was too far away to stop for the night. I continued on past the Antelope Valley area then started looking for a likely spot to spend the night, preferably not too close to the freeway.
I checked out a couple of off-ramps. The first road led nowhere. Just a few feet from the freeway it stopped in an area that was obviously used as an illegal dump. Not even sure why there was an off-ramp there. The second spot just didn’t feel right, so I got back on the freeway. The third time was the charm. The road led straight to an off-road vehicle area on BLM land where you can camp anywhere you want. I picked a spot about a mile away from the freeway, which might as well have been a hundred miles from anywhere. It was peaceful, perfectly vacant and so lacking in light pollution that it almost seemed impossible that I was so close to the L.A. sprawl. The stars there were almost as bright as they had been in Death Valley.
As an aside, that second place I had checked on, the one I rejected as “not feeling right”? I saw on the news a few nights later that the bodies of a family that had gone missing a few years before were unearthed there less than a week after I had been there. Creepy. And sad. I hope they find whoever did it, but at this late date I suppose that isn’t likely. Too bad. Whoever did it needs to be caught, but I’m really glad I chose to stop for the night elsewhere…
slipstreamserendipity 