Month: May 2015

When you live on the road full time, life comes along with you. It’s not like a vacation, where you can imagine that things are on hold for a while.

Case in point, my intrepid traveling companion, Walter the Cat, has crossed the Rainbow bridge, as people like to say.

He was a wonderful traveling companion. When he’d hear me start hitching up Flo the Airstream, he’d get get settled down in his traveling position – under the covers on my bed.

When he’d hear me returning, he’d be at the door meowing. I always imagined him saying, “Hello! Now get in here and feed me!”

At the end of the night, he’d follow me to the bedroom and jump up and get cozy. When it was really cool – or even cold – he’d snuggle under the covers with me.

In the last month or so, Walter really started failing. First he started refusing to eat. I tried him on all sorts of canned food. For a while,  he would lap at the sauce and eat a bit of the meat. In the end, he wouldn’t touch it and he would only sniff at his water.

One thing I have learned in my travels thus far is that there are always people out there to help. My thanks go out to Tammy and Dr. Devon at Valley Animal Hospital in Tucson, who treated me and Walter with great kindness.

Walter was a great companion to my father. He thought Walter had a limp, so he named him after Walter Brennan. Personally, I thought he had more of John Wayne’s swagger than Walter Brennan’s limp.

In any event, Walter has gone on ahead and there is a hole in my heart today.

 

On my way back to the campground from the trip to Scotty’s Castle, I took a bumpy dirt road to the mouth of Titus Canyon. It was one of those intriguing narrow canyons. It was about ten feet across and maybe a hundred feet deep with those smoothed off walls created by years and years and years of erosion.

The colors were fantastic! Even the pebbles on the ground were like gems glowing in the sun. My “beachcomber gene” kicked in and would take a step or two and then stop to admire the stones.

Now, I had seen Lucile Ball in “The Long Long Trailer” way back when Saturday afternoons were filled with old movies. The most memorable scene – well, the only scene I actually remember – was when Desi was having trouble towing the trailer over a mountain pass and he discovered that Lucy had been collecting rocks.

It is a good thing that collecting rocks in national parks isn’t allowed. It has been so difficult to keep my collecting urges in check. So, I satisfied myself with taking photos of the rocks.

By the time I had walked around admiring what was on the ground, I felt it was too late to hike into the canyon. I decided to return to camp and take the drive from the other end of the canyon the next day.

I capped off my day with a refreshing dip in the pool over at Furnace Creek Ranch and RV Resort. For a nominal fee, they let you use pool and shower. I swam and showered and then returned to the National Park campground, Texas Springs, right across the road. That’s a wonderful combination: a spacious campsite with a great view at a reasonable price and a dip in the pool to wash off the road dust.

After another windy night, I set off for my drive through Titus Canyon. The first step is to drive up and out of Death Valley.

I started out at my campsite at Texas Springs, about 100 feet below sea level and drove up and up and up to Rhyolite, Nevada, at about 3800 feet above sea level.

Rhyolite is a ghost town that started up during a mining boom in 1905, grew to around 4,000 people and started a rapid decline after the financial panic of 1907. At its peak, it had more than 50 bars, three banks, a hospital, a school, an opera house and a stock exchange as well as cement sidewalks and electric lights.

The most complete building in town is the Bottle House build by a miner named Tom Kelly. With 50 bars in town, he had a lot of free building material. The enterprising Mr. Kelly raffled the house off for $5 a chance.

After touring the remains of the town, I headed back toward Death Valley and the road through Titus Canyon.

The sign at the entry warned that this was a one-way road and that only high clearance  four-wheeldrive vehicles should attempt it. The road started out straight but bumpy. However, as I got closer to the mountains, it became apparent that this was going to be an interesting drive.

There was a whole lot of white-knuckle driving taking place. With the tight turns and switchbacks, at times I couldn’t even see the road. I just had to put my faith in the National Park system and their focus on safety that there was a road there, even if I couldn’t always see it.

The colors in the mountains were spectacular and unexpected. On one mountainside, I thought I saw pale green plants covering the ground. When I got up to it, I discovered that it was actually green soil or rocks.

I wish I had timed the drive. It seems like I moved along at a sizzling two miles an hour.  Eventually, the road started descending into the canyon. The road ran past two more ghost towns. You have got to respect people who picked up their lives and took off to try to find their fortunes through hard work, even if it didn’t work out in the long run. Leadville was a town with its own post office from August 1926 until February 1927.

After that, those hearty souls took off to try their fortunes elsewhere.

After Leadville, the descent into the canyon began in  earnest.  The walls grew taller and started to close in.

Toward the mouth of the canyon, the layers of rock in the wall changed to a twisted and polished mosaic.

And then, the drive through Titus Canyon was done. I was so busy clutching the steering wheel during this long and bumpy ride, that I forgot to take pictures of some of the vistas. My thanks to the bloggers at ohtheplacestheygo.wordpress.com for sharing their photos to fill in some of my blanks spots.

This was an exciting drive, but all I could think of what my mother would have said at every hairpin turn and switchback: “Uff da!”

Traveling around with only a general idea of an itinerary is quite freeing. Not only is my agenda my own, so that I can stay longer or skip places as my interests dictate.

To tell the truth, I wasn’t all that excited about visiting Death Valley National Park. For one thing, there’s that name. Death Valley. DEATH Valley. It is a bit off-putting. And then, my main images of the place came from Death Valley Days.

An old black and white TV show that would come on when I was a kid. I expected Death Valley to be black and white. Oh, and small, because we had a small TV back then.

Is it any wonder that I expected it to be a drab place?

Since I was a little unsure about going to a remote place with the name DEATH Valley, I was going to make sure I had a reservation. I could only book one night at Furnace Creek Resort RV Park. The campground in the National Park that accepted reservations had nothing available. I wasn’t too disappointed. I had no expectations, so one night would be enough. Or so I thought.

In the first place, Death Valley is full of contrasts. Furnace Creek Resort RV Park is located in an oasis. It is lush and green and has a wonderful spring-fed pool. There is even golf there, for those who play.

So, I dropped my trailer and hooked up the utilities and  set out to see what I could of the park. First stop, Zabriskie Point. As you can see, the wind was fierce.

I continued my drive up to Dante’s View, which is about 5500 feet above sea level. The wind had not abated, and, with the change in altitude, it was actually chilly.

After that view, I thought it was time to visit the lowest place in the country, Badwater Basin, 282 feet below sea level.

I could see what looked like the salt in the soil. I saw a piece laying loose, so I picked it up and tasted it. It was salty! Since this is a National Park, I was sure to put it back down exactly where I found it.

The next feature I had in mind to see was the Artists Drive. The colors were incredible! Was I ever wrong about Death Valley being drab! The pictures don’t do it justice.

After that exhilarating day of surprises proved to me that Death Valley is an interesting place, I took advantage of the wonderful pool at the resort.

The next day, I hitched up Flo and moved across the road to one of the non-reservable campgrounds in the park. I learned something else: a non-reservable campground isn’t like an unassigned seating plan in an airplane. There was lots of room and it wasn’t crowded in the least.

I had a different view, and lots of space. But, the wind! I was looking forward to seeing the stars at night. The night sky is reputed to be one of the darkest in the country. No light pollution to dim the stars.

The wind was so powerful that it turned a neighboring site’s campfire into roaring furnace. It carried tents and tarps away. Out of caution, I decided not go out to look at the stars. It was pitch black. I was afraid that the wind might catch Flo’s door and rip it off the hinges. It was really strong. And, even if the door didn’t fly away, I was afraid that I would get knocked down with a sudden blast of wind.

The wind was a surprise to me. No, not that it was windy, but that there could be a wind chill effect when the temperatures were in the 80’s! That’s around 27 for my celsius friends. People were all wrapped up when they were sitting around. If I had sat around outside, I probably would have been wearing a sweatshirt, too.

All in all, I ended up staying four days in Death Valley, and I would like to go back and see things that I missed.

Ubehebe Crater is an explosion crater, caused by rising hot magma turning water to steam, which explodes. This crater is a half-mile across and about 500 feet deep. It’s the largest crater in the park.

Geology isn’t the only draw in Death Valley. There is also Scotty’s Castle.

This two story castle is a pastiche of Spanish Colonial Revival and Mediterranean Revival architecture built in another oasis in Death Valley. The only way to see the interior is to take a tour with a costumed guide who takes you back to the 1920’s when the it was built.

So, I took the tour with Miss Lucy, who showed told us all about the scheming Walter Scott and his patrons, Albert and Bessie Johnson. What started out as a con ended up as a life-long friendship. Scotty and the Johnsons would entertain themselves by telling wild stories of gold and wild times in the desert. After the stock market crash, they charged people for their stories and dinner.

The last stop of the tour was a music room. Miss Lucy played Bessie’s organ that reminded me of the automatic orchestras that old merry-go-rounds used to have.

I have a more to share about My Death Valley Days and I’ll save it for another post. Thanks for coming along for the ride!