Zabriskie Point and Dante's View

Sunday, Jan. 22 - Day 5

Today we planned a short agenda and hoped to have a short day -- these don't necessarily always work out that way.  We had a beautiful sunrise, but then the sun disappeared for most of the day, and it stayed cold.

Salt Creek

Our first stop was at Salt Creek, a side road that we had driven by several times.  This stream of salty water is the only home to a rare pupfish, but we did not see any.  Dave and Mazie thought they might have seen one.  This creek flows intermittently from the Devil's Cornfield area into Badwater Basin, mostly across mud flats and sandy plains.

All of us walked the whole half-mile length of the boardwalk, but it was really cold and Dave hustled back to the car before I caught him on film.

Zabriskie Point

Our next stop was Zabriskie Point, another one of the major highlights of this trip.  Quoting from the park literature, and living up to every word, "surrounded by a maze of wildly eroded and vibrantly colored badlands, this spectacular view is one of the park's most famous."  This was totally different from everything else we've seen here, but equally beautiful. 

A busload of foreign visitors, Chinese I think, arrived just as we were leaving, so we headed out of here.  But there was a side road that took us right through these badlands, which was really cool.

Back on the highway, we headed to our final destination for the day, Dante's View, an overlook above Badwater Basin.  This is at an elevation of 5000 ft. above the floor of Death Valley and is supposedly the most breathtaking viewpoint in the park, although I think there were other things we saw here at Death Valley that were more spectacular.  I think I read this is the most photographed spot in the park.  It was certainly a good view of the saltwater basin, and we could actually see people walking out on the salt at Badwater Basin almost directly beneath us.

This concluded today's tour, so happily we headed back to camp.  Joe and I went up to the saloon to watch the football games, and Dave and Mazie cleaned their RV.  So who had the most fun!  And both our teams won, so Day 5, as all the other days here, was a good day!

 

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.

Mosiac Canyon and the Charcoal Kilns - Part 2

Friday, Jan. 20 - Day 3 P.M.

Wildrose Charcoal Kilns

After our snack break, we headed on to the end of this road to the charcoal kilns.  These are 10 beehive-shaped structures built in 1876 by Chinese laborers to provide fuel to process silver/lead ore.  These are among the west's best preserved kilns and the whole process to make the charcoal took about 2 weeks.

 

 

 

 

Eureka Mine
Our next stop was the Eureka Mine.  The one still had some structures around, and there was a cashier mill around the corner where they processed the material that was brought out of the mines.  We did a little hiking here, and Joe made good use of his walking stick.

There were several mines in this hill/mountain, and we tromped around here for a while.  There was a lot of structure left to the cashier mill.

Here's Hiker Wilma and Hiker Mazie.  Mazie's walking stick is at home in Sierra Vista, but we did take turns when the going got rough.

Aguereberry Point

Our next, and final stop, today was Aguereberry Point, elevation 6,000+, which provided an overview of Death Valley from the West.  It was really cold up here, but we climbed around on the rocks -- felt like we were on top of the world.  We hiked on the backside of these rocks to the cliff and we could pick out the Furnace Creek area from up here.

 

On our hike we went past some rocks with what looked like petroglyphs on them, so I got a close-up, but it turned out to just be moss.  We also saw a lot of marble rocks up here.

From here, we headed back to camp, which was about 1 1/2 hours away.  We were tired, Dave was frozen (temperature up here was low 40s, and it was windy), and we had absorbed about all we could take in for one day.  There was another drive on another dirt road, Marble Canyon, right out of the campground, but we were all too tired for that, so that ended Day 3.