Trip out West - Death Valley, CA

Day 12; Tuesday, July 10th
Traveling to Death Valley and setting up camp for the first night

Rick was rather neutral on the whole “which way do we go?” question, so I made the decision: we went north.  We chose to take Rt. 395 through the Mojave Desert – some of the most desolate country you will ever see.  Ironically there were plenty of Joshua trees along the way, so we didn’t feel we were missing our botanically – I do still want to get to the Park at some point though – I do hear it’s fabulous!

Just outside of Death Valley is a Naval Air base and the jets were out doing maneuveres as we were driving through the area.  At one point we saw one draw level with the road ahead of us and I knew what he was doing.  I grinned as the jet raced down the arrow straight road right towards us, buzzing the car as it flew over us.  It was great!

We arrived at Death Valley via the south-west entrance.  Apparently not too many people come in this way as there’s no booth or anything to monitor one going into the park (we hadn’t seen any other cars for a couple hours) – just a sign telling you that you were now in Death Valley.

We drove right in.  The roads left much to be desired.  In the north-east, an unmaintained road falls into horrible disrepair in just a couple of years due to heavy spring rains, snow and frost-heave.  Out in the desert where the only eroding factor is the wind, it’s hard to imagine how long these roads have been there without any upkeep!

Strangely, this part of Death Valley was not just a continuation of the desolate desert we had just left behind.  We drove past breath-taking rock formations and even came upon a delightful picnic area that was draped in pink desert roses.  It was quite a lovely sight!

We stopped at an abandoned ranger station that had the various camp grounds posted – all the ones in our area were free to camp at; sounded good to us.  We stopped at the first one.  Its amenities included water spigots at every camp site. 

There was one other couple at this site and though we were fine with sharing, Rick and I were interested in moving on to one further down the road to see what there was to be seen. 

What came next amazed us.  We were driving along (on increasingly horrible dirt roads), when suddenly we came upon these massive brick dome structures.  Turns out these were charcoal kilns built about 100 years ago when there was active mining at Death Valley.  Local wood was gathered (there are trees) and burned for about two weeks in these domes.  The resulting charcoal was then carted by mule train to the mining areas and used to smelt ore.  The kilns now stand empty. 

What really intrigued me though was that they were just about the same size and shape of Spider Kius homes.  I was in seventh heaven, taking in a real life example of something I before could only just imagine.  It was really fun!

After I’d had my fill of the kilns and Rick had taken all the pictures he could, we continued on to our chosen campground and found it completely devoid of people.  This was great!  We had our pick of sites.  As we were setting up the tent we decided to leave the rain hood off in the hopes of seeing stars through the ceiling mesh.  We were in Death Valley afterall – not exactly known for its rainy weather.

In the morning we packed and made our way back over the roads that aren’t meant for a Saturn Ion, up to the main Ranger Station.  We paid our admission fee and chatted with the Rangers some.  We found out that entry receipts to National Parks could be used towards the $80.00 annual Parks Pass that gives you free admission to all Nation Parks and Monuments for a whole year.  We did some quick math and discovered we’d already come pretty close to spending that much and we still had a couple more parks to hit – that was exciting news indeed! :)

I’ll make a quick comment here that Death Valley in July really is no walk in the park.  By 9:00 the temperature in the shade was 110 degrees and when we filled our water jugs at one of the ubiquitous spouts, the water was hot enough to nearly scorch you!

Still, we were having fun and were eager to get down to Badwater – the lowest spot in the USA: an impressive 282 feet BELOW sea level.  Badwater is situated in the middle of a barren salt flat that ironically, really does have small pools of water; it’s just very saline (hence the name).

After snagging some quick pics, we hightailed it back to the car and out of Death Valley.  There were a couple tense moments as the car made the climb out of the valley – we were watching, with growing worry, the temperature gage slowly creep up towards the red zone.  Right when I was about to suggest to Rick that maybe we should pull over and let the engine cool, we crested the hill and the temp went back to normal in a matter of minutes.

“I see why they call it Death Valley!” was a frequent joke among us.

With desolate Death Valley behind us we were pleasantly shocked to find the beauty and splendor of the Sierra Nevadas in front of us.  Never before had I seen such incredibly stunning mountains – stark, sere granite spires rising up and up to the deep blue sky.  Truly a site to behold! 

With these amazing mountains as a backdrop, we stopped off at a set of hot springs we’d read about from a book on hot pools and springs of the Southwest that Rani had loaned us.  It was rather fun taking a dip in warm water that was there of its own accord.