New Years Eve in Death Valley…

The lovely Tina was up early… not quite with the sun… but early… and voluntarily… 

We checked out, stopped for some $5.11 per gallon gas (a few gallons to make sure we had gas on arrival at Beatty…), stopped at the visitor’s center for an orange window tag (so they know you paid your entrance fee… we have a magic card… aka a National Parks Annual Pass, so no fee was required for the orange tag) then headed north toward to Ubehebe Crater, and Scotty’s Castle… Immediately we pause to visit Harmony Borax works… and its 20 mule team wagon set…  Back on the road, as we drive north the Lovely Tina was admiring with awe the scenery… the starkness… the vastness… the strangeness… 

We drive out to the crater first.  While volcanic, it’s not like other volcanic features we are used to…  Some brave souls are hiking to the bottom…  We don’t… (while Tina’s knee might allow a descent into the crater, getting out would have involved additional equipment up to and including a rescue team… we thing better of the idea and pass)

Back to the main road and a mile or two further we reach the castle… A tour would be starting in 2 minutes… I buy tickets and stash Tina’s purse in the Jeep (no purses or bags allowed on the tour) and we make it to the front door as the ranger starts to gather guests.  The tour is interesting… The guide good… the building and its stories fantastic…    We check the gift shop, then start to leave, but pause when we see Marvin the Coyote (it turns out Park Rangers name their coyotes too) in the picnic area waiting for a handout…  We take pictures but leave no gifts… Then back on the road now headed east towards Nevada and Hwy 95…  Past Bonnie Clare and its dry lake… to the Jct with 95… then south towards Beatty…

In Beatty we picked up gas ($3.39 a gallon) and had lunch at the Happy Burro, then headed to Rhyolite… stopping first at the Goldwell outdoor museum, then up into town to see the bottle house, railroad station and a quick look at the ruins… Then on to Titus Canyon…

Titus Canyon is a dirt road, which leaves the road from Beatty to Death Valley just west of Rhyolite… It is one way, from east to west… 26 miles or so… first up an alluvial fan, then climbing the ridge among low hills, then switch backs up and down to Leadfield, a short lived mining town, now ghost town… then down through Titus Canyon narrows emerging in Death Valley.  Signs say 4 wheel drive high clearance only… but if you tried you could do the road in a regular car… it wasn’t that bad…  It was that spectacular…  particularly at the narrows at the end…

Once back on paved roads we watch the sun drop below the surrounding peaks as we arrived at the dunes near Stovepipe Wells… we walked out a bit, but on this evening the dunes were crowded, and the spectacular feeling of solitude was lost… There was still the sense of space… but no solitude…

From the dunes it was a short drive to Stovepipe Wells where we were spending the night…  We were in room No 1, in the oldest part of the complex… small but nice and clean… the restaurant had a New Years Eve special dinner… we got reservations for 6:30 (the earliest available) then walked about and shared something bubbly in our room before dinner… Stovepipe Wells has free internet, but it was very slow… so slow that most sites error out before loading…  such are the ways of remote places…   

Now New Years Morning, January 1^st 2014…  we got up late…  We will hit the road just after 9:00… with luck and a following wind we will reach home about 6:00 and I will post this thing….

Now home… The trip home, 499 miles, took a bit over 8 hours… first west though the Panamint Valley (Carl the coyote was not to be seen...) and on to the Owens Valley, heading south on 395 at Olancha…  We tried to find somewhere to eat in Mojave, but between New Years and restaurants going out of business, ended up heading to Tehachapi, where New Years limited choices and we settled for Denny’s… 

Back on the road… there was a train on the loop but we didn’t stop.  We cut across Bakersfield on Stockdale Hwy…  then north on I-5…  The drive home was an anti climax… music a bit louder… and talk about the next trips… and planning needed… We already had a trip to Glacier planned for July, but now we are thinking about a long weekend in Sequoia…  Travel leading to travel…  Such is the way of the road.