Death Valley day #5: sand, salt & holes
This post is part 5 of the "dv-2008-10" series:
- Death Valley day #1: driving, Darwin Falls & camping
- Death Valley day #2: the Racetrack, Hunter Mtn & the boxcar cabin
- Death Valley day #3: Owens Valley
- Death Valley day #4: Warm Spring, Badwater & Wildrose
- Death Valley day #5: sand, salt & holes
- Death Valley day #6: Titus, Eureka & flying things
- Death Valley day #7: Saline Valley
We got up early, after a windy night. We drove just up the road to the charcoal kilns, and poked around a bit. Afterwords, we attempted to drive up to the Panamint sand dunes, but the road was nothing but one washout after another, and I eventually gave up after about 2 miles when it was turning into deep ruts & larger rocks. It was still interesting, as we came upon these two rather old, wrecked cars by the side of the road. Next, we headed back over the Panamints and down to the Mesquite sand dunes, and David had a blast doing his sand thing. Following the sand, we made a brief stop at the Salt Creek, but due to the severe drought, it was little more than a bunch of salty, sandy washes. We had lunch and stopped at the Furnace Creek Visitor's Center for a bit. David had this strange desire to watch the orientation film, which was actually updated for the first time since like 1975.
After that, we drove just a short bit up the road to an obscure attraction known as the "Gnome's Workshop". In theory, its supposed to be these delicate salt sculptures, however in reality, it just looked like a pristine, untrampled version of the Devil's Golf Course with a salty creek running through it. Not that this was a bad thing, but it was somewhat disappointing from the description that I read online.
The last thing that we did that day was drive about 4 miles down the "Hole in the Wall" road to "the hole in the wall". The name of this attraction is someone's idea of a joke. Its basically this 400ft tall gap in the mountains that opens up suddenly, exposing a canyon behind. The road itself had rather deep gravel (not sand), which brushed the undercarriage of the Jeep more often than I'd like, but other than that it wasn't too difficult to drive.
Next we drove up to Beatty, NV for our only motel night of the trip. We stayed at the El Portal Motel, in the same exact room as I had when I stayed there back in April 2007. Nothing had changed (which was a good thing), and we all slept well that night.
This post is part 5 of the "dv-2008-10" series:
- Death Valley day #1: driving, Darwin Falls & camping
- Death Valley day #2: the Racetrack, Hunter Mtn & the boxcar cabin
- Death Valley day #3: Owens Valley
- Death Valley day #4: Warm Spring, Badwater & Wildrose
- Death Valley day #5: sand, salt & holes
- Death Valley day #6: Titus, Eureka & flying things
- Death Valley day #7: Saline Valley