Two Hams on the Road

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

We are camped at Furnace Creek Ranch in Death Valley. It’s 218 feet below sea level and 62 degrees at 8 pm. Here's our view out the back window.

But other than the trees along one side, this is about the least hospitable campground we’ve been in. It’s just a gravel lot. At one point there were palm trees lining some of the sites, but they’ve all been cut down, leaving two foot stumps. No water or electricity. There are a few picnic tables, but not one for every site.

As barren as this parking lot is, Furnace Creek Ranch next door is really a resort with a capital R. This is a picture of the road we took from check in to the RV area:

There is a hotel, cabins, stores, restaurants, golf course and a HUGE solar array. They have 5740 solar panels covering 4 acres and generate more than two million kWh of electricity per year, which only supplies about one third of the electricity for the resort. Their water bill must also be huge.

Most of today’s pictures were shot through the car windows, so I apologize for the quality. We spent most of the day driving and the scenery changed so often, we didn’t stop for photos.

When we left the campground at Willow Springs and got on US 93, I saw snow capped mountains I hadn’t seen yesterday when we drove this route to Boulder City. Either it snowed in the mountains overnight or the clouds obscured them yesterday. We continued on through Boulder City, Henderson and then Las Vegas, always with snow capped mountains in site. Coming out of Vegas on US 95, I started taking pictures.

West Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada have a lot of desolate desert land. It’s dry and parched looking even after a rain. But it is infinite in its’ variety. As we headed north out of Vegas, we had soft hills on the right:

and snow capped mountains on the left:

We saw several signs for ski areas, but no cars with skis.

As part of the desert’s variety, you sometimes get the crazy:

I didn’t know it, but we were running along the edge of the Nellis Air Force Range and test site, otherwise known as Area 51 to UFO enthusiasts. This building was at the junction where we turned toward Death Valley. They also offered adult entertainment in an establishment in the rear. We are in Nevada. If you are unfamiliar with Area 51, there’s a nice write up on Wikipedia, which goes into it’s use by the Air Force, but it’s major claim to fame are theories connecting it to UFO’s. In the movie, Independence Day, it’s where the government had been hiding an alien aircraft.

We turned onto the scenic drive into Death Valley and this is where I took most of the pictures. This one shows unusual patterns made by the vegetation on the mountains.

This mountain had softer colors and the striations were almost vertical. So after all the layers were compacted, there was a tremendous upheaval in the earth.

Then we started descending into Death Valley itself and the scenery changed again.

It’s a bit hard to tell, but on the right the mountain is covered in small uniform almost gravel, while on the left are much larger stones.

Then we enter another valley, where some of the mountains are white stone.

And we get even more white stone. The texture seems very rough, almost like pumice.

The terrain turns more rugged.

And then we see more white hills.

We’re headed up to Scotty’s Castle tomorrow. It’s a rich man’s 20^th century retreat that has become part of the National Park.

By the way, spring is hiding out in Arizona. As soon as we left Arizona, we stopped seeing flowers. And in spite of the fact that it has recently rained, as evidenced by a few puddles along the roads, there were no blooms in either Nevada or, so far in California.

When we entered Arizona on February 22, we headed for Roper Lake State Park. On the way we saw a couple of flowering trees and some blooming flowers in yards. I even saw a few daffodils. We even saw blooming cactus. See yesterday’s pictures. And in Phoenix, there were even blooming bushes along the highways. Robin and Mike had two red blooming bushes in their front yard. So spring is waiting in Arizona for the rest of the country to warm up.

When Steve booked us at Roper Lake State Park, he tried to pick a site with a view of the lake. None of the sites had a rear view of the lake, but we did manage a view out our side window: