Day: February 26, 2020

Sunset campground in Death Valley

Part 2 of our Death Valley trip.

We moved to Sunset campground in the Furnace Creek area. I was astonished to get what I consider the best site in the entire place – F1. It faces East so you get the morning sun but you have protection from the hot afternoon sun. It is also at the end of a row with nothing but a driveway between you and the mountains. We stayed for 7 nights, and we considered staying longer.

We did the must-see drive to Badwater Basin after a rain. Note the reflections.

Looking to the north at the boardwalk
Looking to the south shows the snow touched Panamints

Artists Drive and the Artists Pallette

So many colors

Kevin took a trip to the Keane Wonder Mine again. I stayed at the coach and quilted.

We took what is probably my favorite backcountry 4WD road, Greenwater Road to the old mining communities of Furnace, Kunze, and Greenwater. Furnace had nothing left except a few sun bleached pieces of wood since it had been a tent city. Kunze was the small town, but had some great stone remnants.

Still with part of its roof timbers at Kunze
Someone has carefully selected some artifacts for the inside
There were other ruins in not as good of shape

The town of Greenwater was full of artifacts. This was the biggest of the communities, and it obviously spread out over a large area.

This is the “monument” to Greenwater at what was the towns main intersection
This type of debris was all over the square mile or so of the town

The Greenwater road had more animals than we had previously seen  with numerous lizards running across the road and quite a few antelope squirrels. The squirrels look like small but very round ground squirrels except their very short tail (creamy white on the underside) held curled above their backs. They were very fast, and I never was able to get a picture. They were new to me this trip. The road was also a real 4WD road with big rigs that needed a high clearance vehicle and good climbing ability. The Grand Cherokee Trailhawk handled it like a pro. I am feeling more and more confidence in the vehicle’s abilities.

The weekend we were there was the Dark Sky Festival. There were scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Goddard Space Center, and more plus two local astronomy groups. The talks ranged from deep scientific topics to a kid’s activity of building their own Mars Rover model (quite popular I might add) to guided hikes to Star Wars filming sites (Golden Canyon). Death Valley has been used to test extraterrestrial vehicles for many years, and there were lots of stories about them. Most of the astronomy and astrophotography activities got rained out (DVNP got almost 1/4” of rain on Saturday), but we did go to one ranger program on Sunday night. Kevin has been playing around with astrophotography, and I love looking at his shots. Sadly I can’t show them to you in full glory due to size.

At the Mesquite Sand Dunes
The adobe ruins at Harmony Borax Works

The Dark Sky Festival was very interesting, and I think we will plan on going again next year.

We left on a Monday and headed to Needles, CA as I noted in the previous post. We stayed for two nights at the KOA, and caught up on laundry, shopping, and the internet! I hadn’t had unfettered access for weeks which is the reason for the delay in posts. We are now at the Kofa Wildlife Refuge in a boondock site on King’s Road, about halfway between Quartzsite and Yuma. We don’t know how long we will stay, but it is glorious here.

Looking out the front door

Staying at Stovepipe Wells campground in Death Valley (and pictures from Yuma)

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.

Lots of people attended
Band stage. There was a US flag too, just not in the picture. Lots of Canadians winter in Yuma.

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.

Just wild enough to walk away as we drove by

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.

Old buildings still in use.

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.

He is kind of cute though

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.

The kilns has lots of vent holes. These were stopped up during a burn.
The masonry work itself was interesting
They were in great shape, better than any other charcoal kilns I have seen.
You can see these were big. The charcoal was used in nearby mining sites

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

The Panamints in the foreground, then the Inyos and at last the Sierra Madres.

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.

For scale
And they are off …

“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.

People show the scale

On Monday, 17 February we made our way to Sunset campground. I will put that week in its own post.