wardsgirl
Active member
I wasn't sure where I wanted to go next, but I thought I deserved a shower to get all the desert sand out of my crevices and clothes, so I drove north to the nearest town, Baker, CA. Ha hah! The only thing there worth mentioning there is the World's Largest Thermometer. I drove to Barstow instead, and got a room for the night.
The next day, I drove north on Route 395. Good call, Chugach001! The route started off in the desert west of Barstow. The landscape was totally flat and the long slash of blacktop highway pointed toward a mountain in the distance, many miles away. Song after song went by on the radio until finally the red-tinged mountain was on my left. I crested the shoulder of the hill and the horizon opened up in front of me. There it was- the snow-capped Sierra Nevada dead ahead. I drove the road partway up Whitney. I intended to go on a short backpacking trip there, but unfortunately the weather forecast for the following day was dire. Ten feet of snow was predicted and they expected to close the highway. I quickly formulated a Plan B.
I didn't realize that Death Valley National Park was virtually right across the street. I picked up a six pack in the Lone Pine convenience store, where the clerk was battening down the hatches for the storm, and off I went.
The road into Death Valley National Park through the Panamints had perhaps the most spectacular scenery of my entire trip. Mountains towered on each side of the road and the low valley slid into view as I negotiated scary hairpin turns and steep grades. I arrived at Stovepipe Wells and took a peek at a park map. Apparently the most multitudinous camping opportunities were ten miles down a side road toward Telescope Peak, so that's where I went.
This is an old kiln, one of ten at the trailhead to Telescope Peak. But, before we get to that... I drove past the first campground, Wildrose, because the other two, Thorndike and Mahogany Flat, which lay 9 miles down the road, looked much more appealing on paper. After several miles, I arrived at these kilns, which looked quite interesting in the dark. I continued down the road toward the two campgrounds, thinking they were just around the corner. The road turned to dirt. I continued on. The road became increasingly more treacherous with ice, washed out areas, boulders. High Clearance Vehicles Recommended, the sign proclaimed. Did you ever have that feeling that you made a really bad decision but it was too late to turn back? This was one of those. Kevin Rooney, I shake my fist at you! LOL! I couldn't turn around, and the road led onward over ruts and bumps into the unknown darkness. Surely the campground was around the next corner, but at every turn, it never came to be. Finally I reached a campground turnoff. I parked on the gravel, relieved that I could turn around if necessary. I left the vehicle and stepped onto the icy road that plunged toward a picnic table, visible in my headlamp's glow. There was no one here. Flakes of snow fell. I had the feeling that if I didn't leave here now, you'd be digging me out in the spring. I backtracked toward the other campground. It was a white-knuckled ride the whole way, and I thought I might roll the minivan at any point, but I made it there and spent the night.
The next morning, I awoke with a couple inches of snow on the car and I abandoned my idea to climb Telescope Peak. I still had plenty of time to see things on the trip, so I decided to drive through Death Valley. I backtracked the ten miles from Wildrose Campground to Stovepipe Wells a crazy little ghost town type place. This is what the scene looked like at Emigrant pass: snow in the desert.
Driving through Death Valley was a lot of fun. There were very few cars on the road. Here is the sign that marks 282 feet below sea level. That's not snow on the ground. It's some kind of weird salty substance. As you can see, it was still kind a lousy day, weatherwise. This was when the Sierras, across the way, were getting their ten feet of snow.
Here is one of three coyotes I saw in DVNP. He looked pretty healthy. He trotted up to the car looking for a handout. I hoped he could catch Roadrunner some day.
This raven was perfectly posed on the sign. It was only about noontime when I was here. Since the weather here was iffy, and there really weren't any good places to camp nearby, I decided to head back to Joshua Tree for my last night in CA.
I drove into the same campground where I had stayed earlier in the week. It was getting dark as I pulled around to my old campsite, where a dude approached the minivan. "Do you want a campsite?" he asked. "It's way too cold here for me and I already paid for this site, I've got a fire going, but I'm heading home." The guy left me with a good supply of firewood. I cooked a nice dinner by my the campfire. The next day, I drove back to LA and flew home!
I'm sorry that I didn't get any pies or go to In-n-Out Burger! Thank you all so much who posted on my original thread. I tried to do as many of your suggestions as I could!
It's easy to get lulled into a false sense of security when you're down in the valley at 0 or even -200' elevation and it's quite pleasant temperature-wise. But, when you go up 6,000' and higher ... whole different world. I climbed Wildrose the day after Christmas 2 years ago - it was about as challenging a winter climb as Washington. Needed to put my Tacoma in 4WD to get from the campground (where you slept) to make it to the kilns.
