Death Valley day #6: Titus, Eureka & flying things
This post is part 6 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
After a great night's sleep, we woke up just before sunrise, packed up all our stuff into the Jeep and headed west back towards the park. Our first stop of the day was a quick jaunt around the Rhyolite Ghost Town, and the adjoining open air art exhibit. David & I had been before, but Denise was curious to look around. Sadly, even more of the buildings had been fenced off than 2 years ago, and there seemed to be even fewer buildings standing (although I might have been remembering wrong). I did manage to catch the sun rising across the distant range, which brought out some gorgeous crimson coloring.
Next, did the 26 mile Titus Canyon drive. This is the unpaved road that runs over Red Mountain, down to Leadfield Ghost Town, and then threw the narrows of Titus Canyon, exiting into Death Valley proper. I'd driven this two years ago in the Passat, and it was so much easier in the Jeep, although beyond the reduced difficulty everything was much as I had remembered it.
Once we exited the canyon, Denise & I switched seats, and she did her first (and only) day of driving on the trip. She had never driven off road before, and the remainder of the driving for this day was going to be relatively easy. So we figured this would be a great opportunity for her to get some off road experience in a safer environment. She drove down from the Titus Canyon exit, and then back up the main park road towards Scotty's Castle. We took the turn off for Ubehebe Crater, and shortly afterwards, turned onto the "Death Valley Road" which runs 75 miles all the way across the northern boundary of the park to Big Pine, CA. Denise was a bit nervous on the DV Rd, but she did just fine, and did the 21 miles to Crankshaft Junction in less than 2 hours. After a brief lunch stop at the junction, we continued onward to Eureka Valley, and our destination for the day (and night), the Eureka Sand Dunes.
We arrived at the dunes just before 1PM, and had the entire valley to ourselves. In fact, the only other human being that we saw since leaving the paved road near Ubehebe Crater was one guy in Jeep Wrangler who blazed past us about 15 miles south of Crankshaft Junction, never to be seen by us again. After selecting a campsite, David & I headed off to hike & explore the dunes. When we last hiked up there back in April 2007, we made it to the top of the tallest dune near the campground. This time, we went much, much further. We ascended the same dune to start, but then continued along the southeast ridge, all the way up to the next 'peak', and continued onward. The interesting thing about the dunes is that they are ridiculously steep along their southern and western flanks, so much so that if it wasn't very soft powdery sand, I'd be very scared of getting badly hurt if I fell down. Additionally, there are alot of 'bowl' dunes nestled between the taller peaks, which have a decent number of plants growing in them. As we were hiking (and David was playing), I saw two military fighter jets enter the valley from the south, and fly all the way up to the north. I've heard stories from others in the past that Saline Valley tends to get used alot for Airforce training, so I wasn't too surprised to see the jets zip up the valley. We ended up making a huge circle around the dune ridges, and came back down a bit south of where we started. In total, we spent 2 hours exploring the dunes.
Shortly after returning to camp, we heard the roar of another jet, and it buzzed right over us from the south, and then veered back towards Saline Valley. It was absolutely awesome. Then a few minutes later, another jet buzzed us again, from the same direction, but this time, it headed through a pass in the Last Chance range. Less than 2 minutes later, it came barreling up from the southeast, between the dunes & the mountains, and came in closer than any of the previous passes. It was barely above the height of the dunes (\~700ft) initially, and definitely dropped even lower as it flew above us. Thrilling & exciting don't even begin to describe the experience. I'm sure that it helped that we had a large orange tent beside a navy Jeep, which both stood out easily amongst the pale sand, making us an obvious 'target' from across the valley. A few minutes later two more jets blasted up the length of the valley one last time.
The remainder of the afternoon was relatively uneventful, and we enjoyed the sunset over the dunes and striped mountains as we had dinner. Denise also built a decent campfire. Almost immediately after sunset, the temperature started to drop rapidly, but we spent some time outside with our headlamps. As we sat around, I started hearing swooping sounds around my head, as if some crazy bird was dive bombing me. Turns out that our headlamps were attracting insects, which then attracted bats. These small bats were diving & swooping all around us, likely feasting on all the stupid insects. The bats were flying fairly fast, so we never got more than a brief glimpse of them with our headlights, but it was still cool.
We headed to bed a bit later.
This post is part 6 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