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