Death Valley: Day 3, Part 3 and Final Day

I had entered Death Valley from the east, through Nevada.  I left through the main western exit, via California highways 190 and 395.  Mono Lake, visible in the distance, sits just over Tioga Pass from Yosemite National Park.

The lake has no outlets, and thus has very high levels of salt and alkalinity.  It does have an active ecosystem, however, based on brine shrimp.  Like the Racetrack Playa in Death Valley, it is also prominently featured is geology text books and was a must see for me.

Just over 8,143-ft. Conway Summit is the turnoff for the ghost town of Bodie.  Unfortunately, like Scotty's Castle, I arrived shortly after closing time.

I did get a pretty good zoom shot of many of the remaining buildings though.  Will have to try again in October.  Looks like an interesting place to snoop around.

Bodie's access road is mostly paved, but the last few miles are very scenic gravel, especially on the return trip, when the backside of the Sierra Nevadas is in full view.

Yosemite Valley lies on the other side of that ridge, but the road over the pass was still closed for the winter.

You may recall that I had been concerned about the three high passes along route 395 south of Reno.  Primarily for that reason, I had opted for the desert route into Death Valley.  I decided to take my chances on the way home, and so far things had gone well.  Then I saw this wall of dark cloud at a gas station in Bridgeport, with one of those passes still remaining.

By the time I reached 7,519-ft. Devil's Gate Summit, however, the clouds were nowhere to be seen and it was all downhill to Reno!  That IS snow on the top of the ridge behind me though.

Oops.  Here come those clouds again!  But they look much more friendly.

One hundred eighty miles later, I had passed my previous campsite at Honey Lake and made it on in to Susanville.  "And you made it before dark," you exclaim in disbelief.  No such luck.  The darkness descended about an hour and a half before my arrival.  I took this photo the next morning.

All loaded up and ready to go again.  The Apple Inn turned out to be a great Mom and Pop stopover - simple, warm, clean, quiet, affordable.  And the proprietor was even interested in my bike and trip stories.  'Continental Breakfast' consisted of 2 cellophane wrapped snacks of my choice from a large basket of assorted goodies.  Honey Bun for now.  Granola bar for later.

Only thing wrong with this stop, was that by the time I had checked in and unloaded, all the restaurants but fast food were closed.  I went through the drive-through at McDonald's (a bit tricky to pull off, as you might imagine) and had a surprisingly great chicken sandwich back in my room.

Last order of business before departure was to air up a bit more for the freeway I'd be on later in the day.  Yes, I have several ways of airing up a tire in the boonies, but slipping a few quarters into the machine is so much easier and quicker - usually.  It took some doing to get the change shoved up into this one!

Susanville is a quaint little place - kind of on the border between the desert and the forest.

Just outside of town, I saw a deer get smacked by a car coming towards me.  I was plenty far back, but the deer went tumbling across my lane and I was sure he was a goner.  Then he jumped up and bounded away into the trees.  I took the remaining 150 forested miles to the Interstate on high alert, and a bit slower than I might have.

It really is a different ride, going the opposite direction.  I had completely missed this view of 14,162-ft. Mount Shasta on the way down, a few days before.

Ashland is a small Oregon town near Medford that I've often heard people talk about.  It's famous for its Shakespeare festival, and for this elegant old hotel - among other things, I imagine.  On this day, it made a nice little break from the freeway - and my last bit of new territory for the trip.

No, this photo is not at breakfast the next day.  I actually did make it home before dark for a change.  My wife was still away in Kansas City, so I called my buddy Dave and he was happy to share in a little post trip pizza celebration.  He even listened to a few stories and seemed genuinely happy for me, even though he had not been able to go himself this time, and might have been just a tad bit jealous.  Good friends are like that.

Death Valley: Day 3, Part 2

After my cold Coke at Panamint Springs, the next sign of human inhabitance along the main paved National Park road was Emigrant Springs Campground.  The humans, however, were strangely absent that day.  I did happen to notice a pay phone in the shade, beside the only building!

Yes, pay phones are still in operation in many National Parks, and other out of the way places, where signals from cell towers cannot reach.  I took the opportunity to check in with my wife and let her know I'd made it out of the desert - sort of.  'Out of the frying pan and into the fire,' was probably more accurate.

Just past Stovepipe Wells, I passed a 'Sea Level' sign and kept going down, down, down.  I tried to imagine what it must have been like to drive your dehydrated wagon team through here, back in the day.  I was very glad for the 90-something horses powering my little orange wagon.

The Furnace Creek Ranch was not quite as elegant as I expected.  I thought I remembered seeing a sprawling, castle-like mansion in a magazine, years ago.  Oh well.  I wasn't planning on staying long anyway.  In fact, I just posed the bike for this shot and promptly left.  The shade under the palm trees sure looked inviting though.

I turned off onto the West Side Road, which appropriately skirts the west side of Badwater Basin, a  five-mile wide salt flat which occupies the lowest elevation in the United States - 282 feet below sea level!

Salt flats are other-worldly places.  Their surfaces can have widely varying textures.  Here, it almost looked like a goose down comforter - badly in need of a wash.

This area is called the Devil's Golf Course, as the flat surface is completely broken up by large halite salt crystals.  The smooth part, just on the other side of the bike, is the unpaved road, composed of a mixture of gravel and salt.  It made an amazing rolling surface!

The temperature was nearly 100 degrees by this time and climbing fast - and it was barely noon.  The map showed almost 40 more miles to the next paved road.  If the surface conditions continued like this, and nothing went wrong with the bike, I'd be across the basin in less than an hour.  If not, I might have to spend a very long, very uncomfortable time in one of the most inhospitable places on the continent.

Allowing the relative wisdom of my 40+ years to trump my excitement for a change, I turned around and took the shorter, paved way to the more touristed side of the basin.  The enormous parking lot and deck were a bit hokey, but I liked the simple wooden sign.  Did I mention it was hot?

There's a well worn path, leading from the deck out into the middle of the salt flat.  Not waning to shed all my gear, and not wanting to melt into a fluorescent orange pile of goo, I settled for walking only a couple hundred feet out.  Here, the surface was the smoothest yet, but still not something you'd probably want to play a round of golf on.  Did I mention it was hot?

By the time I got back on the bike, it was definitely time to get some air flowing around me again - and get back to sea level and above.  On my way out of the park, however, I couldn't resist a side trip on Artists Drive, a one way, single lane loop through some colorful rock formations.  Once I got around a large RV (who must have had a nearly impossible time in the curves to come) the road was all mine.

It's hard to tell through my large-beaked helmet, but I'm grinning from ear to ear!

I got off the bike once, at the high point of the 5 to 10-mile drive, then saddled up for the best part.

The trick here was leaning over far enough to avoid the overhanging rock on the right, but not so far as to bump your head on the rock on the left.  Yes, this is great fun!

Here the rock hazards were replaced with a fairly shear drop-off.  This was a good time to put the camera away and get both hands back on the bars.

On the two-lane again, approaching the junction with the main road, I spotted something I hadn't really noticed when I was coming from the other direction.

It was the Furnace Creek Inn!  The Furnace Creek Ranch I had parked in front of earlier, turns out to be the low-rent alternative to this original, 86 year old 4-Diamond rated Inn, which goes for $345 a night and up!  If only I didn't have to be back to work in a couple of days - and made about twice as much there as I do - and could send the private jet to go get my wife!

Naaa, I was pretty happy with the way this trip was turning out.  If I had a bit more time, I might try to drop in for a cold beverage, but by then it might be 120 degrees out.  I was content to head for the mountains and put Death Valley in my rear view mirror - for the time being.  As I write this, plans are already confirmed for a return trip in the fall, via 4-wheels, with my Dad and oldest nephew, to hit the spots I missed on the bike.

Yes, my life is that good.

Death Valley: Day 3, Part 1

The weather last night was perfect for camping - calm, clear, and cool.  Death Valley National Park is famous for Badwater Basin, hundreds of feet below sea level, but I had spent the night at almost 4,000 ft.  The plan for the day was to go up and over Hunter Mountain (over 7,000 ft.) then down to Badwater - and get out of the park before noon, when things would really start to heat up.

To that end, I had the tent taken down and everything packed away well before sunrise.  The seven rough miles back to Teakettle Junction were even more difficult to negotiate in the inky blackness, but I just took it extra slow.  These are the times those $300 auxiliary lights in the catalogue would come in handy.

At Teakettle I hung a right - the straight path is where I had come from the evening before.  The sign says 27 miles to Hunter Mountain, but I knew the dirt road extended far beyond that, down the other side, before finally joining the pavement in Saline Valley.  How much farther, the map did not say.

When it finally got light enough for a non-flash picture, I found myself in some rolling hills on a high plateau, dotted with Joshua trees.  The most difficult part of the road in the dark had been the deep sand and dust washes, that were hard to spot until I was in them.  My street oriented rear tire did me no good there, but I was still able to make it through.

This part of the trail was great fun, as there was plenty of light now, and the surface was fairly solid and smooth!  I had gone over a rounded hilltop, which I took to be Hunter Mountain, taken a left at an unmarked junction, and was soon descending toward the valley far below.  I'd be on the pavement soon and headed for breakfast!

And then, the road ended abruptly at the remains of a miner's shack!

I had passed the mine a bit before, and there was even a rusty old 1930's truck in the sage brush.  Evidently this was a popular destination - more popular in fact than the through-road I was looking for.  My rule of thumb had failed me.  Nine times out of ten, the most well traveled fork is the one that goes through to the pavement.  The other(s) are dead end spurs.  This was one of those tenth times.

The sun came up as I backtracked the 2 or 3 miles to the last junction and hung a left.  The more I thought about it, the more I realized the error in my thinking.  I reread the trail description.  It stated that Hunter Mountain was covered with trees.  I had not seen any trees since the day before.  Evidently, I still had to climb Hunter Mountain before heading down to the valley.

Sure enough, before long the road began to ascend some steep switchbacks.

And then I passed the first of many stubby pine trees.  This one, in fact, reached out and put some scratches in my right pannier.  That wasn't nice.  But I was feeling good - much more confident that I was on the right track.

The top of the mountain was rocky and narrow - the most technical section I've had the big KTM on to date.  The map showed a few miles of 4 wheel drive road as opposed to just 'high clearance.'  That must have been it.  I was concentrating too hard to stop and get a photo, evidently.  The section shown above was where the road smoothed out again.

And then - another unmarked junction.  I'd been expecting a major one down in the wide valley, but not way up here.  I finally had to face the facts.  I should have brought a better map.

I climbed one of the hills to get a better idea of which direction each of the roads was trending...

...and consulted my handy dandy compass.  The right fork was heading northwest, more or less, and the left one, southwest.  That matched a point labeled 'South Pass' on my rather poor map, and if indeed, that is where I was, the left fork is the one I wanted.  Again, that was not the one that seemed to be more traveled.  A correctly used compass does not lie, however (unless you're standing too close to your bike, or to iron-bearing rocks - a definite possibility here).  I took the left, regardless, and hoped for the best.

Eureka!  Before long, I was down on the wide, flat valley floor, making up for some lost time!

The road had been a bit of a stretch for my sport touring tire, but she'd gotten me up and over, with only a couple of unplanned, extra exciting moments.

Looks good from every angle, don't you think?  I'm probably starting to lose some of my less moto-focused readers at this point, but this post is only a few more pictures long.  You've almost made it!

I finally reached the pavement - about 15 miles and an hour and a half later than I'd anticipated.  With all the potholes, it turned out to be rougher than the gravel.  And only lasted a couple of miles before reverting back to crushed rock.

By the time I reached the real paved highway, the sun was beating down pretty good and the temp was climbing.

I looked back and took this photo of all the warning signs for the road I'd just come over.  The yellow one in the background says, "Caution Severe Washouts."

Hanging a left on highway 190 took me down some amazing switchbacks to the Panamint Springs campground, restaurant, and gas station.  Fearing to spend too much time there, I skipped breakfast and sipped down a large ice-filled glass of Pepsi instead.  It was already 90 degrees and I still had about 75 miles to go to Badwater Basin.  Should have left earlier.