AirstreamTour: Death Valley and Beyond

Leaving Albuquerque, we pointed the rig northwest and landed in Las Vegas for a night. While there we met up with friends from Heinz’s enlisted days for pizza and beer. After three hours of MUCH laughter, and lots of “hey, remember when…, and “whatever happened to…, we left the restaurant vowing to get together again soon.

The next day we moved on to Death Valley to meet Keith and Jesse, friends from our Edwards AFB days, for a weekend of camping and motorcycling. We stayed at the Texas Springs Campground (outside of Furnace Creek), and yes, there was in fact a natural spring in the oh-so-dry valley.

Looking out across the campground toward the Grapevine Mountains.

What a great place! Death Valley is known for being an area of extremes. Temperatures normally reach or exceed 100 degrees from mid-May to early October. On July 10, 1913 a temperature of 134 degrees was recorded which stands as the hottest air temperature ever recorded on a properly sited and maintained thermometer anywhere in the world. The highest ground temperature recorded was 201 degrees at Furnace Creek on July 15, 1972. The maximum air temperature for that day was 128 degrees.

Late October and it’s still above 90!

On Saturday and Sunday morning Heinz, Keith, and Jessie pulled out their motorcycle gear and took off to enjoy some male bonding time.

They started out heading to Badwater, the most visited area in the Valley. This is the lowest point in the western hemisphere - 283 feet below sea level. In addition, there are year-round pools of water in one of the driest places on Earth. The area got the name Badwater because the pools, while spring-fed, are in a saltpan so the pools contain saltwater and are not fit for drinking.

The boys at Badwater.

Badwater pools.

The area surrounding the pools is called Badwater Basin and is covered with saltpan polygons. Evaporation has fashioned these saline tiles into a surface that stretches as far as the eye can see.

Salt pan polygons at Badwater Basin.

Salt crystals in the polygons (notice the fine crystalline hairs of salt).

Fissures in the salt pan.

From Badwater they rode over to Artist’s Drive - considered one of the most scenic routes in Death Valley. The road is a 9-mile narrow, one-lane, one-way, paved road. It winds through hills with multiple colors… red, pink, yellow, green and purple – one can really make out the colors on a section called Artists Palette. The reds, pinks, and yellows are formed by iron salts in the rock. Green comes from mica while manganese causes the purple shades.

Road leaving Badwater.

Multi-colored rock formations at Artists Palette.

Heinz checking out the colors.

Leaving Artist’s Drive it was off to Zabriske Point. Surrounded by a maze of wildly eroded and colorful badlands, this view is one of Death Valley’s most famous. There is a 2.5 mile hiking trail that goes to the top outlet of Golden Canyon, a portion of the yellow foothills of the Panamint Mountains.

Eroded rock formations along the Panamint foothills.

Volcanic rocks top many of the formations.

From Zabriske Point it was off to Dante’s View. This mountain top overlook is more than 5,000 feet above the floor of Death Valley. The view towers directly over Badwater and the sweeping view of the valley and surrounding mountain ranges is breathtaking.

Dante's View.

Harmony Borax Works was the central feature in the opening of Death Valley and the subsequent popularity of the Furnace Creek area. After borax was found near Furnace Creek Ranch in 1881, William T. Coleman built the Harmony plant and began to process ore in late 1883. When in full operation the Borax Works employed 40 men who produced three tons of borax daily. During the summer months, the weather was often so hot the processing water would not cool enough to permit the suspended borax to crystallize.

Getting the finished product to market from the heart of Death Valley was a difficult task, and an efficient method had to be devised. The Harmony operation became famous through the use of large mule teams and double wagons which hauled borax the long overland route to Mojave, CA. The romantic image of the 20-mule team persists to this day and has become the symbol of the borax industry in America.

The Harmony plant went out of operation in 1888, after only five years of production, when Coleman's financial empire collapsed. On December 31, 1974, the site was place on the National Register of Historic Places. There are however still other borax mining operations in and around Death Valley to this day.

Well preserved wagon used to haul Borax to Mojave.

A 20-mule team borax wagon. (photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

On to Titus Canyon – a 27-mile, high-clearance vehicle, dirt/gravel road through the Grapevine Mountains. Along the way, there are rugged rock formations, a ghost town, petroglyphs, wildlife, rare plants and a canyon narrowing down to a one-lane pathway – a pretty spectacular ride! Of course to see all that, a motorcycle rider would have to divert one’s hyper-focused gaze up from the approaching rocks, gulleys, and patches of sand about to go under ones tires (and potentially causing said motorcycle rider to drop his bike) – something Heinz was apparently too nervous to risk (that's according to him, not me, ha!).

The early (and easiest) stretch of Titus Canyon.

Oh crap! You mean I got to ride this lousy road up, over, and through those mountains?

Yes, sometimes you ride somewhat “through” the mountain.

With Heinz surviving Titus Canyon (Keith and Jesse are WAY more adept riding in dirt/gravel), the boys rode over to have lunch at Scotty’s castle.

Scotty’s Castle is a two-story Mission Revival and Spanish Colonial style villa located in the northern part of Death Valley. Built in 1922, at a cost somewhere between $1.5-$2.5 million, the villa has a very colorful history. Prospector, performer, and con man Walter Scott, convinced Chicago millionaire Albert Mussey Johnson to invest in his Death Valley gold mine. Initially angered when the gold mine turned out to be fraudulent, Johnson was fascinated with Scott, and the two men struck up an unlikely, and lifelong friendship. The villa was built as a winter home for Johnson and his wife, but was mainly occupied by Scott – who apparently always needed more money from Johnson to keep building the house.

Scotty's Castle. (photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

After lunch, it was on to Ubehebe Crater, a large volcanic crater possibly formed as recently as 300 years ago. At over 600 feet deep and half a mile across, it is the largest of the volcanic craters in the park. When hot magma rising up from the depths reached groundwater, the resultant steam and gas explosions threw cinders over incredible distance. On the rim of the crater, the layer of cinders is as much as 150 deep.

Ubehebe Crater. (photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

One might think that this is not really a lot of ground to cover on a motorcycle in two days, but Death Valley is rather large and spread out, with vast distances between locations – so the boys did a pretty good job getting as many sites (and miles) in as they did.

Our evenings were spent with the four of us gathered around the picnic tables eating some pretty good food, sipping margaritas, telling tall tales and discussing the state of the world and how we would improve it. With no city lights to interfere with our view, watching the sun go down and the stars come out, was simply spectacular!

Monday morning the four of us piled into Jessie’s pickup to explore Echo Canyon. The 10-mile dirt/gravel road starts with deep, bumpy gravel and ends as a rough dirt road suitable for a 4-wheel drive vehicle only. It travels down Echo Canyon to several abandoned mine sites and some truly rough, yet dramatic rock formations.

Mid-section of Echo Canyon Road.

The boys checking out the vistas…

…and an abandoned mine shaft. L to R: Keith, Heinz, and Jessie.

Rusting bed springs at an abandoned home site close to the mine shaft, deep in Echo Canyon.

Streaks of oxidizing iron in the canyon walls.

The sides of Echo Canyon.

Monday afternoon Jessie and Keith headed home and back to work. Sorry guys, but Heinz and I relaxed, read, took a nap, had a couple more margaritas, and generally took life easy.

Tuesday saw the two of us on the BMW with Heinz showing me many of the sights he’d seen over the previous two days.

Come on, come on, we've got lots to see yet!

In the morning, we rode over to Badwater Basin, Devils Golf Course, Artists Way, Zabriske Point, and had lunch on Dante’s View. In the afternoon, we headed north to Rhyolite, a ghost town and once Death Valley’s largest community. From 1905 to 1911 Rhyolite had a population of 5,000 to 10,000 people and supported 50 saloons, 18 stores, 19 lodging houses, a school, a stock exchange, and an opera house.

Derelict railcar.

Rusty bolts.

Signs of human habitation slowly returning to nature.

Former school.

Hotel front steps.

On the way to Rhyolite we stopped by the Goldwell Open Air Museum. This is an eccentric collection of seven outdoor sculptures crafted by a group of Belgian artists. The museum’s purpose is “to preserve and support artistic exploration in and of the “Amargosa Desert”, an area along the eastern edge of Death Valley National Park. There is no explanation for any of the sculptures, so the viewer is left to make their own interpretation of the meaning. I'll leave to your own interpretation.

"da Vinci's Last Supper".

"Woman", carved woman high on top of a wooden pillar.

"Figure with Bicycle"

"Pink Woman", made of cinderblocks painted pink and yellow.

We loved Death Valley, and since there is so much more to see and do, we have already put it on our “someday we gotta go back” list. But based on temperatures we encountered in October, we’ll probably not be going in the middle of summer.

We’ve spent the past two weeks hanging out in northern California as Heinz and I have had some medical/dental appointments, as well as other chores to attend to. But along the way, we made time to get together with some friends for dinner, an outing to a local winery, and a trip to Pacifica to try our luck at crabbing (none - luck and crabs!).

Fall colors at the winery.

Cathy and Bert.

Crabbing off the pier in Pacifica.

Morning fog off the Pacifica pier.

Along the way Heinz has also been doing some maintenance on the rig. It’s the end of the year, and our home is due some preventative maintenance (oil and fuel filter changes, lube, major service of the generator, etc.), as well as the rather big job of changing out a cracked exhaust manifold. He also did a major tune-up on the motorcycle (oil change, valve adjustments, brake bleeding, fork seals, etc.), as well as other odds/ends around the “house”. Yes, even without a traditional house to tend to – you still can’t escape the dreaded… chores!

Time for an end-of-day clean up!!

For a while now, we have been talking about spending a Christmas in Germany. I love Christmas time (Germany has some incredible Christmas markets), and Heinz wants to show me where he grew up. Well, we finally are going to make it happen this year. Heinz’s sister will be joining us in a few weeks to visit family, do some sightseeing, and shop at the many Christmas Markets throughout Germany.

While Suzi is flying with a commercial airline, Heinz and I are going to try our hand at flying through the military Space-Available (Space-A) system. The Space-A system is designed to allow active duty military or retirees to hitch a ride on military aircraft that have extra… you guessed it… space available. The flights are mission-dependent, and fly to many stateside and overseas locations..

We’ll be trying to fly out to the east coast sometime in the next week (hopefully), and then try to catch another Space-A flight to Germany after Thanksgiving. I say hopefully, because one never knows with military flights - sometimes they have lots of Space-A seats available, and sometimes they have none; sometimes airplanes take off on time, and sometimes they’re delayed; sometimes new flights are added to the schedule, and sometimes flights are cancelled at the last minute; and sometimes flights land at an airport far from your destination due to maintenance problems.

But that’s all part of the adventure, with one trading uncertainty and time (waiting for a flight that might, or might not happen) with a free passage to/from (in this case) Germany. This is also our chance to get more acquainted with the military Space-A system. The last time Heinz flew Space-A was back in 1985, and things have certainly changed over the years. This is our chance to get the up-to-date details of Space-A travel, and if this trip works out as expected, Space-A may well be a way for us to travel overseas in the future.

Needless to say (but I’ll say it anyway)… I won’t be posting for a while, as I don’t plan to haul the computer along on this trip. But when we get back in January, I will be posting again on our adventures.

In the meantime, here’s our “friends of the day”: