The Valley of Death

Since I had only two weekends left here I wanted to go see Death Valley on one of them. I'd heard that the wildflowers may be in bloom in the early spring. I'd hoped that Sandi and I could have made the trip while she was here, but it’s really too long of a trip for one day. It’s farther than I had thought it was. It’s about a 4-½ hour trip from Loma Linda and about 8-½ hours from Sacramento.

I called Andrew about some things I should see there and what to do since he‘s been there before. The first thing he said was to get a campsite ahead of time. As this was Saturday morning and I was leaving in about 20 minutes there really wasn’t much time left. I got on the Death Valley National Park web site and tried to reserve a spot. No luck. As soon as I arrived there I went to the first campground I saw at Furnace Creek with trees and asked about any tent sites even though the reader board said the campground was full. (“Does Full really mean full?“) The temp was about 70* and the wind was pretty gusty to put it mildly. Standing in front of a sandblaster would be a more apt description. There weren’t any tent sites only one regular campsite with a picnic table. As I was soon to find out, there was a reason it was vacant.

The wind was blowing…hard. I was hoping that as the evening came on the winds would diminish. I decided to go to the Visitor Center to get a map showing the sites nearby. I then drove north along the lake and stopped to walk down to see how salty it really was. I parked the car along the road and walked toward the lake. The closer I got the farther away the lake moved. On the way down I saw that the shore was covered with this crystalline snow-like substance. The ‘lake’ turned out to be salt and borax crystals. It was neat, eerie, and awe-inspiring. Just about every creek, mountain, road, or trail’s name is related to two things, death or heat; Fire Mountain, Sweltering Road, No Water Creek, Skeleton Bend, Inferno Trail. You get the impression that a lot of people have died here.

I continued driving north and stopped at as many monuments and informational turnoffs as I could. There was one called Salt Creek just off the road. There is an actual creek that flows into the valley with a boardwalk along the creek where you can view some small desert pupfish fish that live in the creek. The water is so salty that these are the only types of organisms that can inhabit it. In fact, it is 5 times as salty as the ocean. I didn’t test that, I just believed what the brochure said. It’s kind of amazing as Death Valley is a closed system in that there are not any water outlets that flow to the ocean. They geologists believe that at one point after the Ice Age it was a lake that had an outflow into what we call today the Colorado River. The lake was called Manley Lake. The water that is lost is lost through evaporation and seepage.

One of the places that I wanted to see was the ‘Racetrack.’ That’s where there are rock tracks in the dry lake floor that appear to be from the rocks having been pushed, but no one has ever seen it. Anyway, it looks neat, but it meant driving on a gravel road for 26 miles. The road guidelines recommend that RVs and cars should not take the road. This has made me rethink about what kind of RV to get. I think we should get a van or a pickup capable of carrying a camper. I think that this trip will have to wait for when Sandi is here as I do think it warrants another visit.

Instead, I stopped at Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes. The wind at the dunes was calm, and I hoped that the wind was diminishing back at the campground. I walked out on the dunes and took a bunch of pictures. When I got back to the campground the wind seemed to have picked up. It was on toward dusk so I decided to try to set the tent up. I would wait until the wind died down a little then I would do one step of the process. About the time I got the tent spread out ready to put the poles in the wind came up again. I sat down on the tent and felt like I was on a bucking bronco with the tent flapping around me. When the wind died down again I hurriedly threaded the poles in and managed to get one side up. About that time the wind gusted up again and I felt like a piece of laundry on the clothesline for about 5 minutes until it calmed back down. When it calmed back down I looked like a piece of dirty laundry. I finally got the tent set up and threw everything from the car into the tent in hopes that it wouldn’t blow away and end up in Las Vegas. I would have tied the tent to the car, but I wouldn’t have wanted to wake up in the night after finding out the car had been pulled over on me.

After I had everything in the tent I broke out the camp stove and boiled some water to make some macaroni and cheese. The water had just about reached a boil when a big gust of wind blew it off the stove onto the ground. I finally got some water heated up after rigging up a wind block from the only box I hadn’t put into the tent. It was a long night with the poles of the tent making ditches in the ground from being swept around all night. I managed to wedge myself in between all the boxes, bags, and crates that I had thrown in there. From the outside I’m sure the tent looked like a flattened lumpy tarp with just the shape of my nose outlined all night like a rudder cutting the wind. Now I know how Dorothy from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ must have felt. I even think I saw a dog that looked something like Toto go sailing by.

Sunday morning finally came and the wind was still blowing. I wrapped the tent up and threw it into the back of the car and drove over to the store to buy some coffee. I drove north again stopping at some places I had missed the afternoon before. I ended up at a place called Mosaic Canyon. It is a colorful marble canyon cut by water, dirt, and gravels that have washed down from the peaks above. It’s neat because it is smoothly polished from the action of the rock. There is a place to stop ¼ mile in and then there’s a place to stop 1-½ miles in. I walked up all the way and it was worth every drop of sweat doing it. By the way, I thought of a good money maker or at least a way to pay for traveling. Walk to the end of a trail like this with a case of cold beer. Sell beer for $5 apiece and be everyone’s hero. Win win for everyone!

Anyway, it was a good trip, and I’m glad that I did it. I did manage to collect a few neat rocks. The car probably looked like a dog scratching his bum as I drove down the freeway with the headlights seemingly on permanent high beam.

Did I mention that the wind blows that the wind blows 24/7 at Death Valley?

A link to the pictures. Click on the pic.

4-11-10 Death Valley