Sunday, April 28

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

Okay, so we have brought dress-up clothes for the express purpose of revisiting the fantastic Sunday Brunch Buffet at the high-dollar Furnace Creek Inn (as opposed to Ranch) up the hill.  The brunch buffet is on Sundays, 11 - 2:00 - I can't recommend it enough to complete your surreal Death Valley experience.  More in a bit.

Of course, we've woken well before 11, and we can have good strong coffee ready inside of ten minutes after waking, so we have plenty of time to kill before dressing up for the brunch.  We have breakfast (we've also brought stuff for this - not as hoity-toity perhaps as our shellfish dinner, but still good turkey & apple sausage, etc.).  It's a nice calm day after yesterday's sand-blasting.  We see a coyote every now and again out on what I call the "Playa" west of the campground.

t: These coyotes!  They seem to get more plentiful every year, but I'm still running for the video camera each time one passes.  They seem to have a pretty set path back and forth past our section of the campground. I've gotten a little bit smarter about this morning routine, though...the camera is set up and on the tripod. When the coyotes start zipping back and forth, I just pan and zoom.

S: At Furnace Creek, we mail a few cards and I discover we can buy shower/pool passes for the whole day, so I buy two. (On previous visits, I think we had to wait till something like 10:30 for a MORNING shower/pool pass, and then we had to wait again till around 1:30 to buy ANOTHER pool pass for the evening.)

We decide to drive the Badwater Road and get in a little bit of DV ambience before brunch.

Badwater and Thereabouts

Badwater springs eternal.  Something about that place - the lowest point in the western hemisphere of earth at 282' below sea level, lest we forget! - makes me happy.  It's why we got married here last year, and it's why today is at least our fourth visit there together and easily my tenth.  For latecomers, Badwater is at the edge of a huge salt pan nearly ten miles across, where a couple of amorphous pools of (ahem) bad water reside.

t: Once you've been to Badwater, it becomes etched in your mind as the place where the 49ers actually stopped and endured the desert until near death.  It wasn't actually at this spot, but it's tough to shake the image.  One thing I've wondered every time was "why didn't they just head up towards Telescope Peak?" -- but this time I realize one reason why...no snow is visible there today.  It's the first time I've seen this peak without a cap of snow, and I'd just assumed that it was always there.  (It's also many tortuous miles away -- probably not a doable trip for someone in their state...but still, I had always wondered why they didn't head towards the snow.)

S: I shoot pictures.  A man is loudly telling his friends everything he knows about the place.  Five minutes and they're done.

I check, and oddly enough, after a year of being Mrs. Miller, she still wants to marry me.  [Monty Burns voice: "Excellent!"]

T: I'm glad he asked first, it was easier than asking myself. <smile>. Right, story of our lives...

S: We decide to wait as long as possible for brunch, planning to shoot for around 1:00.

Friends of mine on the wonderful Alternet majordomo-list had discussed the accessibility of the Natural Bridge, so on the way back to Furnace Creek I must visit it and take pictures.  It's about a mile's drive to the trailhead/bathroom.  We hike up to the bridge and past enough to get some long shots and of course Art shots.  Cool: I didn't see anywhere NEAR the number of "hoodoos" we saw here in 2000.  It's not a short hike, especially on a hot day, but we've been hiking locally, and I believe it's "only" in the 80s right now, so this is a nice morning stroll for us.

Yes, there is a natural bridge.

We also do the Artist's Drive.  This is always worth doing, if you're on the Badwater-Furnace Creek stretch of 178 anyway..  The road gets wacky, as does the scenery. There's nothing quite like the "Artist's Palette" canyon of muli-colored pastel alluvial fannage.

Then it's back to Furnace Creek for a quick shower/swim/shower (hey, *I* never said we were "roughing it," unless ironically!) in the 80-degree spring-fed pool.  It's not general knowledge among campers we've met, that you can use this every day for $2.00.  So I can usually safely say that fellow campers are enriched by meeting us here.  I've been out in the sun a lot this month, but not without my shirt, so I have deeply tanned arms and a practically bluish-white chest.  The water is WONDERFUL, and there are only two or three other groups/couples at a time here.  After the second shower, I struggle into long slacks and button-down shirt for the brunch.

Okay, the Furnace Creek Inn costs about twice as much as the Furnace Creek Ranch (which can be a little apartment-style motel room OR a nice little duplex cabin), and is typically populated by old blue-hairs in golfish fashion; normally I'd again say "We Go So You Don't Have To," but it has this redeeming feature: the brunch buffet on Sundays from 11 to 2.  In a regular city I'd give this place 3, maybe 3.5 stars out of 5.  It rates 5 in DV, and would in many smaller cities.

First thing, there's a sign saying that denim and shorts are inappropriate, yet almost every man but me is decked out in denims or shorts.  And most of them have a suitcase upstairs (whereas I had to bring "appropriate" clothes 600 miles solely for this brunch - and *my* suitcase is in a dirty, dust-covered car)!

My first plateful barely touches on the main courses. I pile red and black caviar onto a variety of crackers, take some of the sliced yellow and red tomatoes and basil-flavored mozarella sandwich, grab some marinated asparagus and raspberry, as well as some of the blueberry/raspberry/strawberry medley, and a cheese blini, with side orders of capers and such.  The second plateful will be more substantial - note that they've evidently made a point of misspelling everything at least slightly, I dole out Eggs Bendict and Potatoes O'Brian, as well as more caviar and crackers, and small slices of various cheeses and fruits.  They also have lunchy stuff like potato salads, a chef just waiting to make your omelet to order, all manner of ANY kind of breakfast food you might normally have, and... The Dessert Bar.

[Overheard from the bar while serving dessert to self: "I don't usually drink in the morning.  And I don't usually lie, either."]

"Desert Dessert" - these words togeher have meaning well beyond the oddity of the one-letter difference.  This is a deep, deep, transcendent dessert bar, with stuff on the groaning table that you get fat just looking at. I feel I would be remiss, though, if I did not try some 40% of the offered after-brunch treats.  There are three or four different cheesecakes, and they are all wonderful.  Chocolate. Chocolate. Chocolate.  Raspberry makes an encore.  A spectacular cup of layered nutmeg-whipped-chocolate cream, chocolate mousse, chocolate cake/brownie, caramel... Oh god I have eaten WAY too much and they're gonna have to cart me outta here on a hand truck.  I swear I went into some sort of feeding frenzy there - I can't even remember everything I ate.  We pay (our bill, for two, including tip, a little more than $50 - amazing).

Snort snort I AM PIG.  Waddling out of the buffet, we find stuff at the gift shop that we just need to have.  Out into the sun, I am overcome by a powerful sense of well-being. Wow! I think I'm actually hallucinating from the chocolate.

t: I'm not even going to go into it, other than to admit that I dolloped out indecent amounts of caviar and desserts.  And nearly went into a coma afterwards.

S: Then, back to the tent where we have some faint vague hope of sleeping, but the temp is well over 90 and the tent is like a little greenhouse.  I think I *did* doze off a bit.  But it's that sweaty sleep where you feel like you need more sleep afterwards.  We'll go for Dante's View, guaranteed 20 degrees cooler.

Dante's View

A little north of the Dante's View parking lot (5475 vertical feet above Badwater and less than two miles horizontally), a trail goes up to the highest peak in view.  We hike up a little way.  There are lots of caves and hidey-holes along the trail, and we see a lizard or two, and it's good to walk off some of the brunch, and of course, all of Death Valley is below us to the west in spectacular view, of which pictures already exist and more will soon...

Dinner at the ranch is basic yet overpriced - everything the brunch at the Inn is not. The fish and chips are pretty good, tho I imagine if you were visiting from England you wouldn't order that OR the Eel...

New neighbors arrive: a VERY chatty solo camper three sites over, a quiet solo camper two sites over, a woman with an interesting dog in the erstwhile heartburn-women's site next to us (I don't think she actually used the campsite; just slept in her camper).  The chatty solo camper buttonholes the other guy for quite some time, such that he ends up having to make dinner in the dark.  I don't know if he really minds, but MAN that guy just goes on and on about his experiences, his life, every stupid little detail about himself - and loud, too - we hear it all plainly such that when he later attempts to buttonhole US, I can say I already knew that he was in a blizzard in Great Basin yesterday and he has his laptop wth him with which he downloads his undoubtedly great digital photos from his almost-certainly wonderful digital camera.  We let him in on the shower and pool secret, and this does give a new focus to his neediness. Later, when another group is setting up camp next to him, he actually pulls up in hs truck and walks directly to THEIR site without so much as a how-do-you-do, though their obviously busy trying to do something apparently perverse to their picnic table.

A cyclist pulls up in the dusk, looking for an open site, checking out the site next to ours, which we have to tell him is taken.  He has cycled from Berkeley; today from Panamint Springs (about 60 miles) - he says the last twenty miles from Stovepipe to here has taken four hours because of the headwind, and I believe him.  (I'm not sure I believe he got up to 55, 60 mph on the downhill, but I try to picture it when we later drive his day's bike ride on the way out of here; I have to marvel at the singlemindedness that must be required to crawl up and fly down these passes - I've climbed some pretty impressive hills on my bike, but NOTHING like this - much less humping it over the Sierras, as he would've had to do a few days earlier.)  We clue him into the shower/pool thing, and he heads off wearily to find a campsite.

Tonight there is almost no wind.  After the sun goes down, four planets appear as a rhomboid figure in the west.  We have a small fire and a few beers.  At one point, we walk to the bathroom together and then come out to BILLIONS, TRILLIONS of stars, uncountable, unknowable stars.  I haven't seen this in awhile in DV - Terrie thinks it may be the best night she's seen - it IS impressive.

Again, coyotes on the playa (their "song," later,  is not really like the "Owooo" you typically hear in the media - it's a group of coyotes "harmonizing" for maybe a minute or two at a time, and it's really very sweet).

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

I wake a few times during the night.  The sky is incredible.

t: Sometimes I wake and think the coyotes are firetruck sirens -- and finally realize why dogs howl when firetrucks go by.  It is the most eerie and feral sound I've ever heard.  It doesn't instill fear in me as I might have expected; it's wonderful and stirring.