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:

Not our best, but ok.  We had just finished setting up and were sitting at our back window planning out our visit when I looked up and saw:

The bushes behind us were filled with yellow headed black birds, all chirping away.  Here’s a close up:

The view in the other direction was the stellar view, however:

Lesson learned – we need to look closer at our destination to pick out the best view!

Time for bed, so I’ll sign off.

Take care, and stay warm!

Deb

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

We are at Willow Beach, a campground/boating area on the Colorado River about 10 miles down river from the Hoover Dam (which was originally called Boulder Dam).  It’s in Arizona, but very near the Nevada border.

And this is the view out our back window:

This area is called the Black Canyon and is very scenic.  It’s also very isolated but only about half an hour from Las Vegas.  We’re in the Lake Mead National Recreational Area, which is enormous.  The north end of the Black Canyon is where the dam is. 

We drove up to Boulder City today to check out the museum and have lunch.  We stopped at an overlook on our way and took a picture of the Colorado River.  (It's in the center of the picture!)

Urban Spoon came through again!   We had a great lunch at Evan’s Old Town Grille.  The museum is housed in the Boulder City Hotel, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.  The museum is not large but does a great job of telling the story of Hoover Dam.  Herbert Hoover started campaigning for the dam in 1922 when he was secretary of commerce. (He served as president from 1929 – 1933).  The dam was built between 1931 and 1936.  Workers worked 24/7 for 5 years to build the dam.  It was an unparalleled engineering feat and considered one of the wonders of the world at the time.

The dam was built to control the flow of the Colorado River, whose raging floods would wipe out farms all along the river.  It also produces electricity, most of which was initially destined for Los Angeles.  Boulder City was created to house the workers and gambling and alcohol were banned.  Alcohol and dynamite don’t mix.  The ban may explain why Las Vegas developed as it did!

Boulder City has a lot of public art and several caught my eye.  This one could have been named after our dog, Scrappy, who loved to chase tennis balls:

Across the street was a dentist who obviously loves African animals.  He had a hippo (this is for Bob):

There was also a small elephant and then this mural with a cheetah in front.

After lunch we stopped at the Lake Mead Recreation Area Visitor center.  It had a great view of Lake Mead.

and a great 3d map of the area. 

The scenery out here is breath taking.  And while it’s all desert, it varies tremendously.  On our way back to the campground, we were driving through soft hills of light tan sand with green dots of plants, with a back ground of dark mountains.  We rounded a curve and the tan changed to pale green, as young plants covered the ground.  As we drove down into the canyon, we stopped to take some pictures of wild flowers.  The first one is a beaver tail cactus; I don’t know what the others are.

My apologies for my lack of posts.  We’ve been having lots of fun.  I’ve started several posts to catch up and I’ll attach some of those to this and future posts.

Monday we left Phoenix, where we had been staying.  We spent the weekend with my college roommate, Robin, and her husband Mike.  They had a new house and Steve was able to help them get their house wide speaker system working.  It’s always great to see old friends.  We drove up to Congress, AZ, which is very close to where Steve’s cousin, Jane, and her husband, Martin, live.  They joined us for lunch.  They’re thinking about rving, so you know what most of the conversation was about.  We got back on the road after lunch and found out that we were traveling on the Joshua tree highway.  I’d never seen a Joshua tree, so here are some pictures:

If I don’t quit blogging now, I won’t get this posted.

Hopefully, I'll blog tomorrow, but we’re headed for Death Valley and have no idea what the Internet access will be like.

Take care and keep warm!

Deb

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

We will have little or no internet access for the next several days.  Best way to contact us if necessary is a text to Steve's cell, as we will occasionally be in cell range.

Deb