Death Valley Adventure
Sunday and Monday - March 15-16, 2009
After assisting Jim in retrieving Dave and Joe after midnight Saturday, I finally got to bed after 1:30am. But as I usually do, I wake up early Sunday anyways and grab a shower. Vern wakes up a little later, gets his shower in and then we head to the restaurant for breakfast - a final chance to reminisce about the rides over the last few days.
Joel's interested in seeing what my front wheel looks like, so we walk over to my bike and he takes a few pics.
I take my time in geting packed up,
and I'm finally ready to leave about 11:30am. I head over to fill up at the gas
station and see Vern there. He got packed up quite a while before I did, but
he's apparently been over at the campsite saying goodbyes. I fill my bike up
with gas, say goodbye to Vern and then I head over to the campsite to say
goodbye to the remaining few that are still getting packed. I hit the road about
noon, heading east on Hwy 190.
My original thoughts were to just ride straight back to Vegas as I'm not too
sure about my front wheel, but it seems to be riding just fine. So as I reach
Stovepipe Wells I say the heck with it, I'm going to stop and get a single-use
camera (since my digital is not working) and see a few more sights of Death Valley.
I check the air pressure in my front tire, and it seems to be holding fine. I
figure as long as I stick to pavement I should be OK because if I do get a flat,
I can probably get help if I'm on the pavement. And besides, it's a beautiful
day for a ride!
So shortly after Stovepipe Wells, I head north towards Scotty's Castle. Not
really a castle, it's a pretty large Spanish style villa basically in the middle
of nowhere. There's quite a story to the place, but you can look that up on your
own. Almost as soon as I park, an older guy come over and starts talking to me
about my bike.
He agrees to take my picture in front of Scotty's Castle.
Next time, I'll stop long enough to take
the tour of Scotty's Castle, but I'm anxious to keep riding and seeing more
sights.
Next stop - Ubehebe Crater, a large volcanic crater not far from Scotty's
Castle.
I make it just another quick stop, and
then I'm on my way to Rhyolite - a ghost town just outside the eastern boundary
of Death Valley.
Rhyolite's an interesting place, with
some rather unique artwork dotting it's landscape.
After Rhyolite, I'm hungry and decide to head to Beatty to get some food. I
forget the name of the place I ate at, but I had a good pizza there and some
interesting conversations with the locals. It was getting late so I decided to
get a room at the Super 8 (or Motel 6 or something like that), and continue on to
Vegas on Monday.
Monday morning rolls around, and I decide to head to Vegas via Badwater since I
haven't seen that yet. So I head west from Beatty, and back into Death Valley.
There's a lot more haze this morning in DV than the past few days.
I stopped in Furnace Creek for
breakfast.
After breakfast, I continue south and decide to take Artist's Drive, a short 1-way loop road. It brings you a couple of areas where the minerals provide a coloful pallete to the landscape. In person, the colors are a lot more vibrant than what appears in my pictures.
A little further south, and I finally reach Badwater - the lowest elevation in the US at -282 feet below sea level. It's interesting, but doesn't really lend itself to be a great picture spot (especially on such a hazy day).
After Badwater, I just continued on the pavement back to Vegas, through Shoshone and Pahrump. The tube in my front wheel is holding up!
Getting to Death Valley Friday's DV Ride Saturday's DV Ride DV to Vegas Back to Camas