Ubehebe Craters, The Devil's Racetrack, Sand Dunes and Artist's Palette

In Death Valley, if you need to buy gas, you have two choices-- Chevron in Furnace Creek or you can drive 50 miles to Pahrump in Nevada. So if they decide to charge more than $1.00 per gallon over the price of the nearest gas station outside the park in California, there's not much a person can do besides complain.

I took this photo on April 13, on the 14th the price had risen another 15 cents a gallon but I couldn't bring myself to take another picture. A Ford Expedition isn't exactly a fuel-efficient vehicle, gas-guzzling hog would be a more apt description, but not really having a choice we closed our eyes and tried not to think about how close to three figures it cost to fill our tank which wasn't even completely empty.

We drove to the Ubehebe craters, formed about 2,000 years ago when rising magma created intense steam pressure, resulting in an explosion that spewed shattered rock over a 6-mile square area, to depths of up to 150 feet. Ubehebe is the largest of several craters in the area, half a mile across with a depth of 500 feet.

For the first time I decided to go to the bottom of the crater, temperatures of over 100 degrees on previous trips have prevented me from being willing to brave the steep climb out over the slippery volcanic sand.

Steven, Sean and I went all the way to the bottom this time and the kids posed next to the stake marking the bottom of the crater.

We headed out across jarring washboard toward the Devil's Racetrack and made our obligatory stop at Teakettle Junction.

Every year in February or March the rangers go out and cut down all the teakettles attached to the sign and the cycle begins anew, with passers-by who've braved the 20+ mile trek on dirt roads to the junction attaching teakettles or sifters or other kitchen utensils. The teakettle Doug is holding was our favorite, painted all the way around with scenes from Death Valley. The last time we were there, our favorite kettle was decorated for Easter, with marshmallow bunnies melted all over the outside of the pot.

We arrived at the Devil's Racetrack, an ancient dry lake bed and parked at the edge of the playa so we could walk to the Grandstand, as the rock formation in the center is called.

The Racetrack is one of my favorite places in Death Valley, it's like entering an alien landscape. The kids staged elaborate battles on the rocks of the Grandstand.

The rocks on the racetrack playa move. You can walk around and see the tracks left by the movement of rocks on the playa. It's a mystery, there are many theories on how the rocks move involving specific combinations of winds and rain and ice, but it's all theory as nobody has ever seen them move, only the tracks they leave behind.

We didn't see any this time, but some of the rocks that move are huge, weighing over 100 lbs.

We left the Racetrack and drove to the dunes.

The winds that cause us so much discomfort at night have their purpose, it is the winds that shape the dunes.

We drove back toward our campsite, passing the lowest point in the California Highway system at 242 feet below sea level.

Our sunset excursion was to the Artist's Palette, not far from Furnace Creek. It is a place of colored mineral deposits that have the appearance of paints splashed over the rocks.

The night was calm, clear and beautiful and the next day we drove home.

72% of visitors to Death Valley come from foreign countries, primarily France, Germany and Switzerland. 21% are from California and the remaining 7% are from other states in the US, primarily Nevada.

It never ceases to amaze me that people travel from far places to visit Death Valley, but there are few people in California who have ever been there.

It is a place of great beauty and wide open spaces. Maybe its better that it remains a relatively undiscovered place, it will be that much easier for us to find a campsite when we decide to go.

- Kathleen

Dante's View, Zabriskie Point, Keane Wonder Mine, and Titus Canyon

No vacation is ever complete without a glitch, and on our way into Death Valley going uphill, the right front brake of our rented Ford Explorer started squealing loudly.

We stopped at the service station in Furnace Creek, who told us the rotor was scored. We hadn't even hit any steep downhills when the brakes started acting up.

So the next morning we went to the visitor center and called Hertz on the payphone, since we have Cingular and if you want to use your cell phone in Death Valley, you need to have Verizon.

Hertz was willing to bring us a new car from their nearest office (Las Vegas) but apparently they couldn't drive out without having a street address for the visitor center and campground.

It's not like there's any confusion driving to Furnace Creek, it's the only real settlement in Death Valley and it's at the junction of Highway 190 and Badwater Road. Still, they insisted they couldn't dispatch a tow truck without a street address.

I asked the rangers what address they used for the visitor center and they asked me who wanted to know. I said Hertz and they said when people insist on an address we usually just make one up, just tell them 101 Highway 190. The Hertz guy could see Furnace Creek on the map but still he didn't want to dispatch a vehicle without a street address.

The Hertz guy finally found an address for the post office in Death Valley and used that. We had to spend some time convincing him that a 2-wheel drive minivan was not an acceptable trade for a 4-wheel drive Ford Explorer, and finally he found us an acceptable car. We were then connected to the tow truck driver, who had been to Death Valley once that week already and who not only knew where Furnace Creek was, he knew where the campground was too and and just had us give him the number of our campsite. We agreed to meet him there in three hours.

We drove to Dante's View which is almost 6,000 feet high, directly above Badwater. We hiked along the edge of the cliffs admiring the view. We drove back toward our campground, stopping at Zabriskie Point to catch the early evening sun, then back to camp to wait for the tow truck. We traded the Ford Explorer with 25,000 miles on it for a Ford Expedition with 4,000 miles and settled in for the evening.

The next day we attempted a hike we've never tried before because it's been too hot. The trail to the Keane Wonder Mine rises 1500 feet in a little over a mile, it's steep and strenuous and too difficult a trail to attempt in 100+ degree heat.

This time temps were in the low 70's so we decided to try it. The steep climb yielded panoramic views of the valley.

After the hike we drove out of the park to Beatty, Nevada to the start of the one-way road that winds its way back into the park and down to Titus Canyon.

Titus Canyon winds its way down toward the valley floor past abandoned mines and petroglyphs. The most dramatic part of the drive is the final stretch through the canyon narrows, with cliffs on both sides rising vertically over 500 feet above the canyon floor.

It was windy again when we got back to our camp, and in our absence several tents had blown down, including a tent identical to ours, but we were happy to find our tent still standing, even if it was filled with sand. We were tired enough that we managed to sleep well through the dirt and sand that blew into our eyes, nose, ears and mouth during the night.

The wind was irritating, but looking up at the awesome beauty of the night sky it always seems worth it.

- Kathleen

Ridgecrest to Furnace Creek

Our favorite route into Death Valley is to leave the highway just past Trona and drive about 60 miles over dirt roads before we hit pavement again just south of Furnace Creek, the main settlement in Death Valley.

About 30 miles of this route requires a high-clearance four-wheel drive vehicle and crossing a rocky mountain pass, and even without the kids, Doug and I are not crazy enough to attempt this trip in the dark, especially without a full moon, so we drove first to Ridgecrest and spent the night so we could get a relatively early start in the morning.

We stopped at the Trona Pinnacles for the first time this trip, it's a little like visiting an alien landscape with the tufa spires rising suddenly and inexplicably from the desert floor.

Then a few miles on paved road to the Ballarat turnoff, marked by a sign which reads:

Now a ghost town, Ballarat served nearby mining camps from 1897 to 1917. They produced nearly a million in gold, the jail and a few adobe ruins remain. Seldom Seen Slim, it's last resident, was buried in Boot Hill in 1968. It had a school but no church.

Post Office Spring, 1/4 mile south is where the Brier Party, some Jay Hawkers and other '49ers came in their escape from Death Valley in 1850.

On Sunday morn at 3 am, March 22, 1908, a car in the world's longest race, a Thomas Flyer, arrived in Ballarat. It won the New York to Paris race, covering 13,341 miles in 169 days. The car is now in Harrah's museum in Reno.

We drove up Goler Wash, which starts out as a narrow canyon, up a dry waterfall and past several mines.

Goler Wash is full of abandoned mines. Rusting mining equipment and the remains of housing for the miners are plentiful.

We stopped at the Newman cabin, part of the abandoned Newman Mine.

Most of these cabins are relatively clean and well-maintained by passers-by. Sometimes we find people staying in the cabins, this time there was no one there so we went in.

Inside the cabin on a shelf was an empty box with an attached envelope containing a permit for the removal of the cremated remains of Ernest Leroy Hill, whose final wishes presumably were to have his ashes scattered in Goler canyon.

We have yet to make a trip to Death Valley that hasn't resulted in at least a small amount of damage to our car. We left a piece of our running board somewhere along our descent over two large rockfalls below Mengel Pass.

On the way up Mengel Pass, we encountered a man and his wife and son descending the pass, heading back toward Ballarat. They told us not to even bother trying to go over the pass, they'd attempted it and managed to go over the pass but turned back after encountering the first rockfall on the opposite side.

Doug took the man's warning as a personal challenge and we got out of the car at the rockfalls and moved rocks in an attempt to build a path that would protect our undercarriage, and we made it down.

We finally made it to the salt flats of Badwater, 282 feet below sea level. At 88 degrees, it was by far the coolest time we've walked out over the salt.

There's a sign way up on the cliffs above the Badwater parking area that marks sea level.

Then on to Furnace Creek and our campsite where we pitched our tent in blowing sand and an increasingly strong wind.

But walking around that evening and staring up at what seemed an impossible number of stars, the journey seemed worth the effort.

- Kathleen

A Desert Place

Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while.
- Mark 6:31

Death Valley has long been a favorite place of mine.

Before Doug and I were married, I lobbied hard for us to make a trip out to our largest national park, and he thought I was completely nuts.

He told me it would be baking hot and windy like a blast furnace, with no reward other than a barren landscape.

I've always loved the desert and I was certain before I ever went that I'd love it. And I did, although it was hot and occasionally very windy, it was also a breathtakingly beautiful place.

Death Valley occupies 3.3 million acres in the middle of California. It is home to Badwater, the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere at 282 feet below sea level, as well as the 11,049-foot summit of Telescope Peak.

Doug's only experience going to Death Valley before he met me was a drive-through the park with his family in the middle of August with no air conditioning, and without me begging to go I don't believe he would ever have returned.

On our first trip there, his prediction about wind came true the first night, we'd pitched our 2-man dome tent under a cottonwood tree and the wind was so strong we had to tie the top of our tent into the tree to keep it from being blown down.

But wind in Death Valley comes and goes and it can go from 60 mile-per-hour winds to dead calm over a period of about 30 seconds.

The rest of that first trip was calm, daytime temps in the 90's and 70's at night, our car had air conditioning, we explored miles and miles of the Death Valley backcountry driving on dirt roads in our car, and Doug's dire predictions of the miserable time we were likely to have never came to pass.

It became an annual Memorial Day weekend event for us. Temps in late May were variable, high 80's and up to 110 degrees. Sometimes windy, sometimes dead calm.

Doug and I were both working full time in those days and our usual thing was to pack up the truck after we got home from work, sometimes not leaving until 10:00 pm. We'd drive into the desert in the wee hours, one time we were en route to the park, making our way across the Panamint Valley on a barely paved road that was being reclaimed by the desert. It was a full moon, so bright the mountains on either side cast clearly defined shadows on the desert floor. Our road that could hardly be called a road was deserted, so we turned off our headlights and drove for miles and miles, enjoying the beauty of the moonlight on the desert floor.

We ventured further and further in the backcountry on our trips, inching our way over rocky mountain passes and dry waterfalls in Doug's 1988 four-wheel-drive Bronco II, it was in Death Valley that Doug taught me how to pick my way over boulders and through washes and what four-wheel low gear was used for. I learned how to drive on washboard and how to find the speed that produced the least jarring. I learned not to panic when the car would slide sideways during a turn on washboard or loose gravel and how to turn the car using a four-wheel drift.

Morning sickness prevented me from wanting to attempt the trip the year I was pregnant with Steven, but the next year when Steven was 9 months old my sister watched him while Doug and I returned to our old haunts. I was still nursing and I took a battery-powered breast pump with me so I could survive 3 days away from Steven.

For nine years we didn't return. The kids were small and Doug and I didn't want to expose them to the risks we knew we were taking by venturing so far into the backcountry. Doug and I always knew that if we had to, we could walk 20 miles back to the main road, traveling at night if necessary, but not with young children.

We returned to the Death Valley with the kids for the first time in 2003, three months before we found Steven's brain tumor. We rented a car and took the Goler Wash four-wheel drive route into the park. It was the hottest it's ever been for us, 123 degrees when we hit the valley floor.

We'd come prepared to camp, but when we finally hit pavement in Furnace Creek, Doug drove to the hotel without ever saying anything and we paid for a hotel room. Nighttime temps that trip were 105, the air conditioning was more than just a luxury.

Had we stayed in the campground, we would have had our choice of spots, it was deserted. We cooked our meals on our camp stove on the patio of our hotel room. We curtailed some of our backcountry trips, not wanting to venture too far from the paved roads in that heat.

Steven finished his treatments in Memphis in early May 2004 and we began our drive home on May 5. We were back in San Diego for Memorial Day weekend and the thought of Death Valley again crossed our minds, but even though Steven's oncologist gave his OK for a Death Valley trip, even encouraged us to go, Doug and I couldn't quite work up the courage to take bald, thin, pale, battle-scarred Steven into such a remote and harsh environment, so we went to Palm Springs instead, a much cushier sort of desert trip.

We ventured back to Death Valley for Memorial Day 2005 and except for the first sleepless night of blasting sand we had a wonderful time.

This year we broke tradition and went for spring break instead of Memorial Day. It was much cooler, wonderfully pleasant. We got to stay longer since the kids had the whole week off.

Our lives are very tumulutous right now, although to be truthful I think I'd have to admit that much of the turmoil is going on in my own head.

We needed this all-too-short respite.

I'll write more about this trip and about some of the good things going on with Steven soon.

- Kathleen

Spring Break

Photo by Brad Cotrell

I wish I knew how to do it all, heaven knows I try but every single time something always seems to go wrong and in the process I end up letting someone down.

If you're one of those people, I'm sorry, really.

It's time for a reboot of my brain, maybe a reinstall of the operating system or something.

I'm hoping this will help.

- Kathleen