Titus Canyon

Saturday, Jan. 21 - Day 4

It rained some during the night, and there was snow on the nearby mountaintops.  While we were outside this morning checking out our view, there was a slight rainbow.  The sky was clear overhead, but suddenly raindrops were hitting us on the head.  We never did figure out where those raindrops fell from.

Devil's Cornfield


We have passed the Devil's Cornfield on almost every drive in and out of our campground, so today Joe stopped so we could get pictures.  The plants are Arrowweed, a salt-tolerating plant.  We assume these weeds resemble the corn thatches the Indians used to make.  There are sand dunes on this road too, which we can see from the campground, and there are always people climbing them, but we never went back to them.  I guess we are too old for that nonsense!

We have a pretty busy agenda today.  We are going into Beatty for fuel in our car, since it doesn't get 30 mph like Dave's car does, stopping off at the ghost town of Rhyolite, then coming back through Titus Canyon. 

Rhyolite

So we made our fuel stop.  Gas at the general store at our campground is $4.33/gallon, and it was over $5.00 down at Furnace Creek, so Beatty's price of $3.45 didn't seem as awful as it really is.  We then drove back to Rhyolite, with was only about 3 miles, and explored this old ghost town.  This was another stop Joe and I made on our previous trip through Death Valley.

This next house is completely made out of bottles, and is, amazingly, called "The Bottle House."  I'm sure there's a story here, but we didn't check into that.

Of course, we had to drive out to the cemetery and check that out.  Apparently, it is still an active cemetery, there were recent dates on the gravestones, and flowers on some of the graves.

Titus Canyon

We left the cemetery and drove a few miles to the turnoff to Titus Canyon.  This is a one-way road for most of the way, with just the last 2 miles two-way.  The road was washboardy, like yesterday, and Joe only drove about 18 mph for most of the way, so it took us a while to cover this 26-mile road.  But it was another pretty drive, different from every other drive we had taken here.

All was well with our world.  Mazie was in her favorite position, with Ar'gent on her lap.  Dave was co-piloting in the front seat with the seat-warmer on.

The mountains here were very pretty too, with lots of color.  We have never seen such colorful mountains anywhere else we have traveled.

And there were some petroglyphs along this road.

 As we entered Titus Canyon, the road narrowed between cliff walls.  There was even an overhang as we came back out into the sunlight.

And here's our happy drivers.

As we got back on our highway, we came upon the area where wagon wheel tracks from long, long ago can still be seen.  We weren't sure that we ever saw the real tracks because there were lots of small washes and water runs here as well.  These tracks are decades old -- it takes a long time for the landscape here to heal.

  That was our last stop for the today, and we were happy to get back to our campers and get ready for tomorrow's adventure.