Race Track

Monday, Jan. 23 - Day 6

Originally, we had planned to leave today, but we have seen so many wonderful sights here, and there was one major point of interest we hadn't got to yet, so we extended our time here by one day so we could go to the Racetrack.  This was the coldest morning yet, and I checked the national weather, and it said Death Valley was going to be 31 degrees with light snow.  There was fresh snow up on the mountains right behind the campground.  Now Death Valley has a wide, wide range of elevation, so I assumed that must be somewhere up on the mountain top, and wouldn't affect us.  Wrong.  We were in the 31 degree temperature, following tracks in the snow.

Racetrack

This was a pretty long drive, probably 40 miles of pavement, then 30 miles of dirt road each way.  As we were driving long, Dave looked out his window and said, "Look, there's a herd of rocks!" 

We got lucky and caught up with 2 road graders so our dirt road improved as we drove along.   The first, and maybe only, fork in the road was called "Teakettle Junction."  Who knew that we should have brought our own teapot today!

We continued on, keeping the car heater running.  Joe was able to drive a little faster once we hit the freshly-graded road, but it still took us about 2 hours to get to the Racetrack.

The Racetrack in in a dry lake bed, and this big rock formation was called the "Grandstand."  We had to drive to the end of the lake bed to get to the area where the rocks fall down from the mountains behind and land out here.

It was very cold and windy here when we walked across this "lake."  Dave opted to stay in the car, so it was the 3 of us braving the elements to see what there was to see.  The surrounding mountains had snow and fog.

We met some other people out here and they told us most of the tracks were at the far end, so we walked some more.  Joe brought his walking stick, but I thought it might make its own tracks, a no-no here, so I didn't bring mine.  Joe was right and I was wrong.  This ground was so hard-packed we didn't even make a dent.  We finally got over to the area where there were more rocks, and sure enough, there were tracks by many of them.  The rocks mysteriously slide across the dry lakebed.  This is really a strange phenomenon and the scientists aren't even sure what happens.  (I think they need web cams out here to see when they move.)  One theory is that when it rains, the lake bottom gets really slippery, and the winds blow the rocks around.

Joe did a little experiment, poured some water on the ground and ran his finger around in it to show us how slick it was.

These two rocks looked like they had been racing.
 

Fortunately, the sun came out before we started our walk back, and it must have gotten at least 10 degrees warmer.  I was taking my gloves off by the time we got back to the car.

Notice how pretty these mountains are in the sunlight.  We didn't have much sun all week, and I'm sure a lot of our mountain views would have been even more spectacular with the sun on them.

We headed out of here, and all of a sudden it was snowing, little patches already accumulated along the side of the road, and in one spot, enough on the road to see.

The fog was back as well, and it wasn't so much right on the road, but visibility in the distance was reduced to almost zero.  I know we get a little more excited about snow that some of our Midwestern friends and family, but that's just the way it is.

 We don't know much about the vegetation here, but with all the elevation changes we go through every day, we have seen a lot of interesting plants.  On this particular drive, along with Joshua trees, we saw several cacti, one of which looked like some kind of barrel cactus, but it had beautiful red blooms on it.  So here's my "cactus in the snow" picture.

The dirt road back was a little smoother than coming out, and eventually we caught up with the road graders, just when we reached the pavement.  So we headed on back to camp to begin the process of de-camping.  Tomorrow we will leave this beautiful park.