Thanks to Chet Atkins, The Cramps, the Undertones, Bonnie Raitt, and Kate Bush for the soundtrack to this travelogue...

We've endured diminishing expectations this year, since I lost my job in November 2001 and Terrie has watched coworkers leave, one by one bequeathing their duties (but not their salaries) to her. We weren't sure if we would get our accustomed spring desert vacation at all this year.

But in the past few weeks, we just decided to go for it - if only for a four-day weekend, we WILL see our beloved desert this year.

We decided to time it so we can be in Death Valley on the anniversary of our marriage there, April 29 last year.

Saturday, April 27

We plan to leave bright and early Saturday morning, but we're not so bright Friday, so not so early Saturday. Still, we're on the road by 6:05 am, and that means we get the worst of the Bay Area behind us and are on Interstellar 5 by 9:00 or so.

The desert vacation really begins after we cross the Tehachapi Pass and get onto state highway 14 where the greenery ends and Joshua Trees start to be plentiful. The beautiful Red Rocks Canyon, along this route, has always been intriguing, but we've never made the stop because we tend to pass that way already in anticipation of Death Valley (or already full of Death Valley and tired, anticipating getting home in a timely fashion).

The Maturango Museum at Ridgecrest, CA is a nice stop. Say hi to Janet!

We now favor route 178, which takes us past China Lake and through the town of Ridgecrest (where we usually stop at the Maturango Museum, if only to check the "Morning Report" for weather and road conditions), and then on through Trona and Wildrose to Death Valley.  There's a route variation along this way that may even be slightly quicker - we'll take it on the way home this time.  Anyway, we do stop at the museum and buy a couple of postcards - and stop at "a Scottish-themed restaurant," where Terrie has a chicken sandwich and I have the #4, supersized, and wonder why I'm not losing weight.

That accomplished, we decide to visit the Trona Pinnacles. You can see them from the road on the way to Trona - and my advice to you is that you do.  They are nothing really but slim conical piles of mud at the end of three miles of poorly-maintained dirt-and-rock road, and you can get the paint sandblasted off your Saturn on a day like this.  We actually only get within about a quarter-mile of them before turning around.

"We go so you don't have to!"

Then, note the huge, black, and VERY dramatic sharpened rock "pinnacles" on a big hill in a bend on the north side of the highway about half a mile south of Trona, which kick the ass of the official pinnacles in my opinion.  Next time I'll stop there and climb up.

Trona is a weird little town.  Home of the Trona Tornados high-school team, there is a lot of mineral refining of unknown kind.  I always think when passing that school, if MY parents had thought to raise ME there, I'd probably have killed them the day I first saw just about any other place in the world.

t: Everytime we've passed by here, I've insisted that we should stop and see these pinnacles.  And, in truth, on a non-windy day in a 4-wheel drive vehicle, there might be something to be said for this side trip. But I don't think we'll be going again, and I certainly won't insist that the trusty Saturn be forced to endure it again.  There's not much of anything out there, other than, uh, pinnacles.

S: After Trona, the road has long straight stretches where last year and the year before we saw riotous wildflowers, but this year very little blooms.  Nonetheless, it looks like desert, and the temperature is climbing, and we like that.  To the right, across Searles Lake, the Panamint Range includes Telescope Peak, which we'll see again from Badwater and Dante's View, so we know Death Valley is just a mountain range away.  178 here is a nice nearly-empty two-lane road, which will support speeds above 70 mph in most stretches, and yet we have a carload of people on our tail for upwards of 20 miles before Terrie finally pulls over to force them to pass -- and then they slow way down, such that WE are on THEIR tail for the NEXT 20 miles.  But this is a good 20 miles, climbing over Emigrant Pass (5318 ft), with great rocks and straggling plants all around, and the occasional spring bubbling up out of the middle of the road, even a genuine oasis, before the quick descent to meet up with highway 190 and then Stovepipe Wells at near sea level - a mile descent in about 20 miles.  We pass the erstwhile tailgaters on 190, and then pull into the Stovepipe Wells Village to get souvenirs.

t:  Keep 'em behind you on the straight and narrow parts, but let them lead on the twisty parts...it's a good system.  I've been this way before and I don't want to have to worry about someone on our bumper while we're crossing the springs or gravelly areas.

S: There is a campground at Stovepipe Wells, but I never had any desire to camp there.  It is abysmal-looking - a place for RV owners to hook up their shit-dumping connections and satellite dishes so they can take a crap and watch TV.  It's just a big dirt parking lot, and it looks like it would be EXTREMELY unpleasant to camp there.  The store, too, is a pale shadow of the facility at Furnace Creek Ranch, but they sometimes have stuff that's not available there.

For this trip, I've wised up and only packed a couple of T-shirts - coals to Newcastle, since typically half of my annual T-shirt wardrobe is purchased in Death Valley.  (The other half is at the drag races.)  I buy a nice hat at the Stovepipe Wells shop, and within minutes, I'm wearing it.  The Hat Club for Men - "I actually am just a client."  And on we go to Furnace Creek.

It's now early evening, around 5:30.  This trip could take as little as nine, maybe even eight and a half, hours, but we've stopped for two meals, the Maturango Museum, and gone to the Trona Pinnacles so YOU don't have to.  Thus we find the campgrounds almost full and most of the good campsites taken.  However, we know a little secret that's less and less secret each year: the regular "drive-in" campsites, you can park your car right in your firepit if you want, but you can ALSO park quite near to the "walk-in" sites - it's a mere matter of dragging our supplies about 100 feet to these sites and we will NOT be woken by RV generators at 7am on the dot tomorrow.

We have everything sorted within a half-hour, even in what seems like 50 mph winds blowing sand across the barren stretches of camping area.  We then hit the Furnace Creek Ranch store for firewood, ice, beer, and other essentials, and are back starting a fire within another 30 minutes. 

Various pix from walk-in campsite #39...

The view to the east from the campground at around sunset. (25%; click for 50%.)

t: At the campground, it's obvious that the wind has wreaked havoc on some of the campsites.  We take care to stake down while putting up the tent (though stopping to watch a coyote case out another tent two sites over).  We hear a crash and Steve investigates the next site -- their Coleman two-burner has flipped over to the ground, but he sets it back up and notes that their cooler is open, with coyote treats like Slim Jims <tm> and a hunk o' cheese  in full view. I suggest that perhaps the coyotes don't really want to get heartburn.  Within minutes the two women from that site return, and it appears that both their cooler and stove will be safe for the night.

S: As is traditional, we have brought prawns and scallops for our first meal in the desert.  Call us perverse, but really it's about being proud of our ability to provide ourselves this luxury item when other campers may be scraping beans out of a can and roasting them one by one on a willow reed over the coals of a pitiful campfire.  No no no!  We have a nicely roaring fire, and the aforementioned shellfish protesting sputteringly in the pan thereon, and we invite one of our neighbors, a lone camping British ex-pat named John from the Bay Area of course, to join us for dinner.  I don't know if he would've been scraping beans without us, but he does seem appreciative of the Native Kjalii Foods guacamole and chips we've brought (have I ever mentioned this is absolutely the best guacamole you can buy?  They also make the legendary Avo-Mango salsa - if you visit us for a day or more, you will undoubtedly taste one or more of these salsas) , and the main course, which Terrie has at once raised to an art form and reduced to a science - man, it's REALLY good, and we continue to chat and pick at the remains in the pan till it's pretty much all gone.  John has our email addresses and URLs, and we believe he also sneaks a six-pack of beer into our tent in appreciation before he leaves the next day.  But, y'know, while we're not very social people, we find we generally like the people we meet in a campground like this, and we're pleased to share our special dinner - otherwise nobody would know how great our dinner is!

t:  Another neighbor, a woman from the flipped stove/open cooler site next to us, also visits...to borrow some antacid.

Anyway, blessed or not, sleep!  Our 4-man Walrus tent (really, an adequate 2-person sleeping area, in my estimation) is set up nicely, and our new self-inflating Thermarest pads RULE.  I mean it, they RULE - I bet this pad added a full hour to my night's sleep.