The area around Highway 190 is another example of "North American large open spaces with not many people in them". You can see where the road goes for miles. And you can see there isn't anyone else driving on it.
My feelings on this are difficult to describe. On the one hand, coming from a small European island (Britain), I suffer from a certain disquiet at this huge empty countryside. It's not natural, it's not. But on another level, it's strangely liberating. What goes on in the rest of the country doesn't affect you - it's totally irrelevant, it doesn't even touch you. You can see why break-away militia groups turn up in the wilds of Montana.
It's dry on this side of the mountains. Nothing but short stubby sagebrush for miles. Further north you can spot the California/Nevada Stateline by where the trees stop. California seems to have had very strong ideas on what it wanted and what it didn't. The only reason I can see for the Stateline running where it does down here is water, or should I say, was water.
Nice idea, unless of course, you happened to live in Owens Valley.
Someone told me yesterday that this is called "progress".
After crossing the flatlands for nearly 50 miles, we got
a taste of things to come, by coming across Panamint Valley. We started
to drop down some steep switchbacks alongside a deep, volcanic-looking ravine
and then pulled off the main road and bumped down a gravel track to
the end of the point (which was named after some monk, but we can't
remember what his name was).
From there was a spectacular view out over the valley 500 feet below, complete with authentic salt flat and heat haze.
While on the point, Patrick gave me birthday present #2 - a zoom lens - which then had to be tried out. So we ran back up the hill to get the car in the foreground, only to discover when we got to the top that the camera had run out of film. Sigh.
Before leaving for Death Valley, we'd discovered that it was possible to camp up on the back of the mountains on the west side of the Valley, and because of the elevation we would avoid much of the heat.
The struggle was mostly trying to find out if the road to the campsite was suitable for non-4x4 vehicles. Maps in this country seem to be a little vague in this respect - wherever you go, if you're going off the beaten track, it's often a toss up as to whether or not the road will suddenly degenerate into gravel, or continue as normal tarmac.
So after crossing Panamint Valley and climbing yet again into the hills, we eventually turned off the main road, which had been more or less deserted, onto Wildrose Road, which was completely deserted.
I used to have problems judging distances when driving in cities, and this was the same problem reversed. We drove seemingly for miles across sagebrush covered hills without encountering anyone or anything. Eventually we turned towards the back of the mountains and drove alongside wildflowers until the road turned to chunky gravel.
One of the main attractions up here is a bunch of charcoal kilns set neatly in a row next to the road. Most people [read: Americans, who know better] visit Death Valley during the winter months to avoid the heat, and at 8000+ feet Mahogany Flat isn't accessible because of the snow, so few people get to see the kilns.
A few miles up the road there were a couple of frazzled looking motorcyclists (I wouldn't have driven up that road on a bike) who'd parked by the side of the road to walk up to the kilns. They still had several miles to go, all of them uphill.
We passed the kilns and continued up the road to the Thorndike campsite which was deserted. After setting up the tent, we decided to cycle down the hill to get a closer look at the kilns. This was Patrick's bright idea. It was sort of fun, bouncing downhill on the bikes, until I realised that we were going to have to cycle back up again.
The kilns were built here to make charcoal used for smelting some
metal (can't remember which, and my leaflet has vanished off the
face of the living room) in a valley a few miles from here.
Bearing in mind the area isn't exactly heavily wooded,
this was the only place for miles around with any
trees to burn. I think they used to then pack the charcoal across
country to the smelters. They were tough in those days.
Each kiln had small a opening at the front and you could go and stand inside them and hoot. The reason for hooting was that the acoustics were really odd when you moved around. Not exactly an echo, but making the sound very round and full.
There were also hundreds of lizards here. Big fat ones. We never did find out what sort they were because, when we consulted the ranger in the visitor centre the next day, we decided he was faking it when he started burbling.
After scrambling around on the hillside behind the kilns for a while, and practising hooting in each one of them, we set off back up the hill. It had only taken us a few minutes to come down, but within about 100 m of starting to pedal, I was flopping about like a pathetic fish out of water. Patrick did his manly impersonation and cycled (albeit very slowly [I can't cycle that slowly - I fall over]) all the way back up. I walked. Very slowly. Very puffily. Come on, we were at 7000 ft.
It grew cold when the sun set, and instead of sitting around in a warm balmy evening, as we'd envisaged (being in the hottest area in the entire world)(OK, so we chose Mahogany Flat because it would be cooler - but this was too cool) we climbed into our tent and snuggled up warm (not before we'd barbied some steaks, however).
The following morning, we set off on the "big adventure" into
the valley. As always, we didn't travel particularly quickly - we
have to keep stopping and poking things. The first thing we came
across were the sand dunes just east of Stovepipe Wells. These are
your classic "desert sand dunes" made of sand, with mesquite bushes
on top of them. Coo, just like a real desert, almost.
It was just like being at the beach. Except without any water. The sand was hot - too hot to stand on in bare feet, but if you could find a shady patch, it felt nice in between your toes.
I had been told that there is a small population of desert tortoises in Death Valley. Should one be lucky enough to come across one (fat chance), never to pick it up - they have weak bladders, and swift emptying of them will result in their dying of dehydration.
Apparently, they live in burrows (not petshops, then?). Under instruction,
I took along a small mirror to shine into these burrows to see if the
tortoise was at home.
So, there I was scritched down under a mesquite bush, burning my knees, face squashed close to the ground, peering into a hole with my mirror, when two 18" long desert iguanas shot out of the bushes and ran past me about two foot away. I don't think they were expecting me, anymore than I was expecting them. I squeeked. One of them stopped dead, while the other shot back into the bush. The first rushed and hid in a clump of twigs [read: stood in them, looking like a large black and white checkered desert iguana standing in some twigs], so I took photies of him.
Never did see any tortoises... the park ranger told us they didn't dig burrows in the sand, because it got into their nostrils, but this sounded a bit weak. This was the same ranger who told us that the lizard we were describing (black, with a bright green throat) was a "western fence lizard". Then he showed us a picture of a western fence lizard (reddish-brown) and explained that the colour difference was due to the elevation. No, we suggested, perhaps the reddish-brown lizards (at the same elevation as the "black, with bright green throat") we'd seen were western fence lizards, but he didn't seem to get the point.
About this time, my camera decided that enough was enough... did we expect it to take photos all the time? and it seized up solid, which is typical, considering we'd just got to the really good bit. Later, it turned out that when we'd attached the tripod to it the previous day, we'd screwed it in too far and the end of the hole had snapped off and jammed the mechanism inside. Sigh. So much for my brand new zoom lens. Luckily we'd taken along Patrick's camera as well. His camera is almost as old as me, but works better. It may not look like much, but it does the job without whinging, or throwing small temper tantrums.
We continued south down the valley, past the "Devil's Corn Field" (a weird area of islands of tufty grass, stuck out in the middle of the sand, on towards the big metropolis of Furnace Creek.
One of the things Death Valley is famous for is "Borax production". Every American seems to know about the 20 Mule teams that used to drag huge quantities of this stuff across the desert. They used to sell it in boxes of "20 Mule Team Borax". It's a bit like knowing about the Robertson's Marmelade Golliwog... except in American (luckily, Americans don't know what that is, so they can't be offended by the political incorrectness of such a childhood icon). Unfortunately, I'm still not entirely clear what Borax is exactly. It seems to be:
Furnace Creek is Death Valley's answer to the big city. It has bubbling spring water (hot, bubbling spring water... wonder where it got its name...?) and palm trees. Up at one end is a plush looking resort (no doubt where all the rich people stay) and at the other end there were a plethora of campsites. We chose a nice one, with shadey bushes and trees and put the tent up in amongst the middle of a clump of bushes in a vague attemp to make things cooler. One the far side of the road there was a huge car park area, and it gradually dawned on me that perhaps, sometimes, that huge car park (which seemed to double as a campsite) could actually be full. This was an exceedingly scarey thought. "Come to somewhere weird in the middle of no-where and join thousands of others".
Anyway, we got up our tent and went a cyclin' in search of ice. Ice is a good thing to have.
Once we'd settled a bit, and scoffed some food, we sat about for a while. I mistakenly drank a beer. Bad idea. It was 108°F (42°C) in the shade and I very rapidly began to feel a bit peculiar.
So we scurried across to the Visitor Centre (air conditioned) and sat quietly for a period of time. A long period of time. We looked at everything in the Visitor Centre. Several times. They have a really nice three dimensional model of the valley. And "artifacts" (you know, things, like what you find in Visitor Centres). They also had a computer that was tracking the temperature at other points in the valley. We discovered it was 115°F (46°C) at Badwater - the lowest point in the valley... which happened to be our next stop.
The main road runs along the east side of Death Valley,
winding its way in and out of the striped rocks. There
are permanent saltflats that run across
to the west side where the mountains rise sharply from the Valley
floor. There are lots of places where you can pull over and take
a hike in one of the multicoloured canyons - assuming you're not
dying of heat stroke.
The ranger told us about people who every year decide what a good idea it would be to hike across the valley floor and end up dying of heat stroke because they neglect to take water with them. People are not as bright as they could be at times.
A few miles south of Furnace Creek,
you go past the "Devil's Golf Course". This is an area where for
some reason the salt heaps up in bizarre lumps, with air bubbles
underneath. It has sparkly salt crystals on the top, with funny
little caves underneath (hence the name).
The good thing about Badwater is that it has a proper "trophy sign"
which enables you to take photos of yourself to commemorate the event.
So here's a picture of me, being both very low and very old at the
same time. Happy 30th!
Badwater is aptly named. All that is there is a sort of puddle
filled with green slime, which butts up to a saltflat.
If you're really conscientious (or anal, I'm not sure which), you
can trek across a quarter mile or so of saltflat, and get to the
real "Lowest Point"... but there's only a couple of feet in
it, and when it's 115°F such details become irrelevant.
Up on the golden cliff side, there's a small sign showing you
where sea-level is [see arrow on photo, right]. Mmm. Which makes
that cliff about 900 ft high.
It is an odd thing.
On our return back towards Furnace Creek, we took the "Artists' Drive" loop road, which bobs up and down and goes through some really spectacular coloured rock - green and pink. It's interesting to look at the washes, too, where, presumably, when it pours with rain there (every fifty years or so), the soil comes gushing down the mountainsides.
We also took a detour to Golden Canyon, which has a walking trail winding through a very narrow tall canyon. At that time of the day (getting close to sunset), there was no-one around and we could wander quietly to ourselves, feeling the heat absorbed by the rocks.
That night, lying in the tent, it was still over 90° degrees F (32°C) and impossible to sleep. I never appreciated the delta breeze we get in Sacramento quite as much until then. Eventually, we resorted to wetting a flannel and continually bathing our skin until exhaustion set in and we slept.
Around 3am, a pack of coyotes ran through the camp, calling to each other from both sides of us. That was very eery.
We didn't do badly on the way home. For one thing, we managed to make
the whole trip in one day. Not without detours, of course.
First detour was back to inspect those sand dunes. They really were
good. And early in the morning, much less hot to stand on.
Returning through Panamint Valley, an F-16 buzzed us, flying low over the valley, before swooping back up over the mountains. China Lake Naval Weapons Center is just the other side of the ridge, and Edwards Air Force Base (where they land the Shuttle when the weather's bad in Florida) is only another 80 miles away (which is about 3 minutes in one of those planes, isn't it?), so quite a lot of that goes on.
We also nearly ran over a scrawny-looking coyote practically standing in the middle of the road. He looked at us hopefully when we stopped, presumably hoping we'd throw a chicken out of the window, or something.
We had a look at another hot spring out the back of Bridgeport. This one took some driving about on rutted dirt roads and was not nearly as pleasant as Keough, although deserted. Some of the pools were man-made, and the water rose up out of a ridge travertine [stolen from someone else's page: "travertine is a form of limestone. It is deposited at hot springs when the water emerging there has traveled through limestone, dissolving the mineral".] [It looks sort of like brown marble/the stuff that stalagtites are made of]. The water was much too hot, and quite sulphurous smelling. Plus there was another "voyeur" type guy lurking around (he was coming down the road as we were going up, but turned around and came back up. Sad way to get your kicks, watching people undress, so we didn't bother giving him the satisfaction. He should get a life. Oh well.)
There is yet one more hot spring in the area I want to visit, but it's a long way down a dirt road, so we'll have to wait for a more opportune moment to visit that one (always in the back of my mind when trip planning).
I love these hot springs. They're so exotic (to me, anyway...). There's something quite magical about the idea of hot water bubbling out of the ground.
Visit - 17-20 May 1996