Las Vegas 115

Wildfires!

2006-07-11T14:32:00.000-07:00

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I should have known it would be a weird sky day. Coming home after an early morning hike in Death Valley there was a cloud hanging over Corkscrew Peak that struck me as so unusual I stopped and snapped a pic. It made Corkscrew look like a volcano belching great plumes of white smoke. What a harbinger! As the pic shows, the rest of the sky was utterly cloudless.

Late that afternoon I went outside for something and noticed smoke rising from behind the "Beatty B" hills, which are west of town and, oh, about three blocks from my house. Sheeeee-it, I thought, that's awfully close. A few minutes later I looked out the front window, and OMG! now there was smoke rising from behind the mountains east of town! It was miles away and on the other side of several mountains, but still. Any wildfire is always remarkable. Two at once is downright eerie.

Naturally, I had to go out and drive around. First, I drove over to check on the ghost town, RHYOLITE, which is situated more or less on the other side of the Beatty B mountain, but before I even got there it became clear the fire was much further away than it had appeared -- behind other mountains, the ones that surround Rhyolite, so Rhyolite was fine. And sizing up where the fire seemed to be in relation to our house I felt, while not exactly reassured, less imminently threatened.

I then drove up North 95 to check out the fire east of town, but it was way back from the road behind still more mountains. If there are roads leading back there I don't know them yet, and it was late and starting to get dark, and I didn't have Ryan or the 4-Runner, so I wasn't feeling adventurous enough to go exploring. Besides, it might even have been on Nevada Test Site land and completely off limits. So, I just went back home to sit and watch and wait.

It's not often that I'm aware of any drawbacks to living in a tiny and remote community like Beatty, but if no local radio station, TV station, newspaper, or even web site could be deemed drawbacks, I was keenly aware of them that afternoon. I had no source of info about what was going on At. All. I could only watch and guess. I found myself sort of wandering back and forth from the front porch (facing east) to the back porch (facing west) snapping pics and wishing Ryan were there to see it all.

After a couple of hours the wind picked up considerably, blowing straight from the west. The Beatty B fire, which had died down, also picked up, and before I knew it smoke was pouring down the mountain and starting to envelop the town. The air had taken on a brownish yellow color, and it smelled like smoke inside the house. The "Beatty B" became all but invisible. I hunkered down and started trying to think about what I might throw in the car to take with me, if I needed to flee. And all this time I could not believe Ryan wasn't there. I couldn't even reach him by phone. Here's the most interesting thing that's happened in Beatty since we moved here, and he's missing it!

Fortunately, after a couple more hours the winds died down in Beatty and so, apparently, did the Beatty B fire to the west. Before long the air had cleared up enough to sit on the front porch and watch the drama unfold to the east. That fire was farther away, but as night dropped over the landscape it became apparent that it was by far the worst of the two. Where during the day I'd only seen dark smoke I could now see bright red, as fires blazed over ridges and through canyons looking exactly like glowing lava creeping down the side of a volcano. There's that volcano theme again for the second time in the same day.

Eventually, I went to bed but sleep was fitful. I awoke and looked out at around 4am, and the fires were still glowing off to the east. Sunrise an hour later revealed plenty of black smoke still billowing up from behind the mountains (visible in the last pic).

As the day wore on there was less and less smoke visible in the east, so those fires either burned out or just burned out of sight behind more mountains. In the afternoon I went down to the store and got the skinny, which was that no humans had been injured, and no structures had been burned or even threatened, "only land." Consensus seemed to be that Nature was just taking care of necessary maintenance, getting rid of old brush. Late afternoon brought rare huge rainstorms to the whole area, so that, dear reader, was that. No more fires, and all's well that ends well.

Now the only mystery that remains is that weird Corkscrew "cloud." Hmmmmmmmmm...

: - )
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All photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

Artifact!

2006-06-25T14:43:00.000-07:00

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Okay, it's definitely summer now -- 103 degrees (39C) in the shade at 12:30pm on its way to a predicted 108 (42C) this afternoon. And that's just Beatty. They're predicting 126 (52C) for Death Valley!

I can only hike early in the early morning when it's this hot, but I do hike. A couple of days ago I set out around 6am to walk across an alluvial fan to the mouth of a canyon about a mile from the highway. I wanted to check out what appeared from a distance to be possible remnants of an old road.

I picked a random spot, pulled onto the shoulder and parked -- about a mile's walk across the alluvium from my goal. Walking across an alluvial fan is harder than walking up or down one because you have to walk in and out of all the channels that have been carved out like tiny Grand Canyons during eons of flood waters running down the fan, and believe me it's a lot easier to walk with the flow of the channels than across them.

I was picking my way carefully over the alluvium, looking down most of the time watching where to step, so I didn't see the old wreck until I practically stumbled over it, and even then I could hardly believe my eyes. What a find! Out in the middle of nowhere, with no warning, the best artifact I've ever discovered. And in such condition!

I've seen wrecks like this in the desert before -- although never so deeply buried -- but always along trails or in other spots where people go. These wrecks are all so well known that some people can identify a location just by looking at a picture of a wrecked vehicle. The well known wrecks have long since stripped by relic collectors of every possible removable piece and are often covered with graffiti and/or riddled with bullet holes from being used for target practice.

This wreck is unusual because it's not located in a place where people go, so it's in pristine condition -- no bullet holes, no graffiti, not even very many dents, and it even has a piece of trim still intact across the windscreen area. I've no idea what kind of vehicle this was or how it looked in its day, but its day was clearly a very long time ago. There is a mostly rotted wooden slat still attached in back seat area, so at least some part of it was made of wood -- the foundations for the seats, maybe?

There are so many questions! What was it? Whose was it? How did it get there/what happened? When did it happen? Why was it left there and not towed out? Who all still knows it's there today? If only it could talk!

After that amazing discovery I figured it was a good sign that I would find a road up at the mouth of that canyon, but no! It turned out to be nothing but a huge wash of gravel. Just goes to show ya about signs.

: - )

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All photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

The Edge of Summer

2006-06-12T16:14:00.000-07:00

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Distance from Beatty: 45 miles

Summer is still officially ten days away, but you'd never know it by the weather. The days are hot (90s), sunny and mostly cloud-free. Nights are cool, though (50s), so no matter how hot it gets during the day you know there will always be relief when the sun goes down. The humidity is so low that I haven't had the air conditioner on at all during this hot spell -- only the swamp cooler.

The other way to tell it's summer is that the number of tourists around town and in Death Valley has dropped drastically. The fancy hotel down there (Furnace Creek Inn) closed May 15th and won't open again until mid-October, so "the season" is over in the eyes of many. There are accomodations at the less ritzy Furnace Creek Ranch, but only the clueless, the crazy or the truly stout of heart -- and they may all be one and the same -- venture into DV in the summer when temps routinely soar above 115 degrees.

I'm certainly not stout of heart.. more like clueless and crazy, but I love Death Valley in the summer. I love being able to go to the touristy places and have them all to myself. I love not being around other people. I love the lack of traffic on the roads. And pretty as flowers are to behold in the desert, I love not seeing flowers everywhere, covering up the geology.

I wish I could stay out in the heat longer, but c'est la vie. There's still plenty of stuff to look at driving past in a vehicle, and if I start early enough in the morning I can get in a good two or three hour hike before the heat drives me back inside.

So it was the other morning. I got down there around 6:30 and walked around for a couple of hours before heading back to the car.

I went to the SORROWFUL HILLS area because it's close and has beautiful rocks, and I wanted to photograph rocks. From the time I left home until I got there I never saw another vehicle. You wanna know what heaven is? That's it. Cruising along in Death Valley early on a gorgeous, cloudless morning and having the whole place to myself.

I loved it when I looked in the mirror and saw the wind-whipped fingers of sand blowing across the road in my wake. People who live in colder climes will know exactly what this looks like -- snow! I just had to take a pic. Hee hee, can you picture it -- me doing 50 MPH down this tiny two-lane road trying to take a picture of a reflection in the side mirror? Clueless? Crazy? Or stout of heart?

One other drawback to summer in DV and having to do my hikes in the morning is that the light is different -- not as good for photographing rocks. It was actually difficult to see how beautiful the rocks were because the light was so weird at that time of day. I took a few pics, but they didn't turn out very well, so I'm not posting them. I did come across a rock stack, though. It had fallen over, so I replaced the top two or three rocks before taking its pic.

When I got back to the car I wasn't ready to go home, so I decided to drive up to Titus Canyon. It's been closed to traffic for about a year because the road was washed out in a rainstorm, but rumors have been floating around that it would reopen "in June." I wanted to see if there was any evidence at the mouth of the canyon that a repair crew (or any vehicle) might have gone in the canyon from that direction. But no. The place was deserted, and there weren't any tire tracks in the canyon at all.

But I couldn't resist wandering around the area next to the parking lot. The rocks that come out of Titus Canyon are really wonderful -- and different from rocks elsewhere in Death Valley (which is so often the case). The dominant feature of Titus rocks, for me, is how colorful they are. Other people will talk about what kind of rocks they are, or their composition, or what formation they came from, but what I see are their beautiful colors, which you can get a sense of from looking at the last two pics, especially the gravel.

On the way home I was reminded that it's not truly summer yet. I must have seen two dozen vehicles on the road between Titus Canyon and Beatty. Ugh. All going the other way, fortunately, but still. Just wait until August. It'll really be desert(ed) then!

: - )

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All photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

Zabriskie Sunrise

2006-06-02T13:23:00.000-07:00

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Distance from Beatty: 45 miles

There's probably no place in Death Valley National Park more recognizable Zabriskie Point, and this sandstone formation, sometimes called Manly's Beacon, is truly an icon.

I left Beatty at 4:25 am to get down there in time to catch the sunrise. The first pic shown here was taken at 6:02 and the last at 6:34 so the sequence was shot over a period of 32 minutes.

Dawn of another beautiful day in the neighborhood . . .

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All photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

Around the Yard . . .

2006-05-29T20:55:00.000-07:00

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Spring in Beatty. My oh my -- beautiful wildflowers and exotic animals. Okay, maybe they're not technically exotic, but they're exotic to me; the wildlife I'm used to are things like squirrels, rabbits and maybe the occasional groundhog.

Here, though, we share our yard with things like jack rabbits, pack rats, numerous species of lizards and even, on occasion, a small band of burros.

The yellow flower is from the CREOSOTE BUSH. The purples are mojave asters. I'll take these over dandelions any day.

The lizard is the "desert spiny lizard." It was extremely wary of me.. hiding under the wheel of the car -- "Ha! She can't see me now!"

Oh, and our new back porch (5th pic) is finally finished. It's absolutely fantastic.. keeps the sun off the back of the house and gives us a place to hang, cook out, star-gaze, photograph burros, whatever. . .

Life is sweet.

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All photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

Springtime on Beatty Cutoff Road

2006-05-01T17:43:00.000-07:00

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Distance from Beatty: 20 miles

I've been living out here for about eight months now, so I'm still I'm still in my first year of experiencing the seasons one after another. I had only ever been here in summer and winter, never spring or fall.

I don't know if it's typical, but this year spring didn''t arrive at the same time everywhere. Not even close. Heck, I thought spring had sprung back in January when I went on my CHICKEN RUN and discovered a veritable flower garden blooming beside the road near Jubilee Pass in southern DV. But then that petered out after a few weeks, and it's only now, three months later, that the same garden grows beside the Beatty Cutoff Road 75 miles to the north. True, the Beatty Cutoff Road is a thousand feet higher in elevation, but I didn't realize that would translate into a three month difference in the arrival of spring.

A huge part of the Spring equation, too, is water. DV gets about 2 inches of rain per year, so the gardens growing beside the road were just that -- beside the road, where water gathers when it rains. Beyond the roadside area, away from that critical water source, there are very few flowers growing and nothing like the large variety that grow where there is water. Was there more rainfall in the south this year? Or, do more cars pass through that southern area, splashing more water on to those roadside gardens than our Beatty Cutoff Road gardens got? I'd love to know what accounts for the huge difference in when the flowers bloom in these various areas.

Btw, dontcha love the name, Beatty Cutoff Road? It's the road that "cuts off" Hwy 190 and goes to -- you guessed it -- Beatty. Why it isn't just called "Beatty Road" is another mystery in a land that's already as mysterious as it gets.

Every mountain a mystery, every canyon a story, every trail a promise...

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All photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

Tucki Trail

2006-04-15T16:24:00.000-07:00

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Distance from Beatty: 60 miles

It was a rare sunny day, so we decided to go on a back road adventure. We have a few books on where to find SUV trails in Death Valley and the surrounding area, so we turned to one of those for ideas and came up with the Tucki Mine for a goal, a fifty mile drive on the hard road and another ten miles on the rocky trail that winds its way up Tucki Mountain to the mine. Cool!

It was a great drive. The road was never bad enough to be scary but bad enough that a couple of time we had to get out and assess the situation to decide how best to proceed. That's part of the fun, though.

The pics show some of the things we saw.. spring flowers; the rusty frame of an ancient pickup truck (with part of its wooden running board still attached); and lots of cool geology including rocks, of course, but also a pretty spectacular natural arch.

The mine area was the tidiest abandoned mine area we've seen. Not that we've seen many, but still. There just wasn't as much old junk lying about as there is at the other sites we've been to.

There is a cabin that can be used as a shelter in emergencies. It was like THE CABIN we visited back in March only not as nice, possibly because it's more remote and not visited as often as that other one. But if you were in need of shelter, you'd be delighted to find this place.

Like the other cabin it's furnished but with the seediest of items. I suspect people (all volunteers!) would be willing to furnish it with nicer things, but they'd likely get stolen, unfortunately, whereas the shabby furnishings stay put. So, there's a lumpy old couch, a rickety table with a couple of chairs, a cot with dirty mattress, even a small bookcase full of books. On one of the walls hangs an assortment of tools that can be used to make repairs. On the table is a spiral notebook - the visitors' log, with entries dating back to 1999.

"Kit and Ryan were here!"

Dune Bugs

2006-04-07T16:56:00.000-07:00

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Distance from Beatty: 33 miles

Yesterday, I had a bad case of cabin fever, so I left poor Ryan slaving over this year's ta*es and drove down to the Stovepipe Dunes for a short hike.

I was hoping to find something cool to photograph but didn't have high expectations since countless gazillions of people have been taking pics in the dunes for as long as there have been cameras, so at this point it's pretty hard to come up with Something Different, if you know what I mean. Then, damn if I hadn't been in the dunes five minutes before I came across the rock of the day! Absolutely. There it was just sitting in the sand looking gorgeous, not another rock anywhere in sight, just as if someone had put it there for the specific purpose of having its picture taken. Click click.

After that, I wandered around for a couple of hours but didn't see anything remarkable. Then on the way back to the car, not far from the rock du jour, I spotted some critter tracks in the sand and decided to follow them. I twisted and turned my way across the dunes for ten or fifteen yards until the tracks stopped abruptly at a tiny piece of sun-bleached twig lying in the sand.

I glanced around to see where whatever-it-was might have gone, but I wasn't searching very intently because I didn't really expect to see anything. Then, the more I thought about it the more it didn't make sense that the trail had just stopped. So, I looked back at the tracks to see if I could tell which direction the critter might have gone, and that's when I realized that what I'd taken for a sun-bleached bit of twig sitting at the trail's terminus wasn't a twig at all, but a bug. The tracks were bug tracks, and there sat the actual bug!

It wasn't until I'd hauled out my camera and set everything up to take its picture that I looked more closely and saw that there were two bugs!

Springtime in DV. : - )

Now the big question is what kind of bugs are they? If anyone reading this knows the answer, I'd love it if you'd leave a comment or EMAIL ME about it.

As cool as the bugs are what may be even cooler (if you're me and therefore somewhat strange about things like this) is the sand around the bugs. It's just common dune sand, but magnified like that it looks more like beautiful, multicolored gravel!

*MORE BUG PICS*

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All photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

Coffee Cup Canyon: The Artifacts

2006-03-26T15:15:00.000-08:00

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When we drove to this place a couple of days ago it was only to walk up a gently sloping alluvial fan to an interesting-looking canyon. We figured we'd get some seriously needed exercise, explore a new canyon and, hopefully, find some cool rocks to photograph. I'd gone past this place many times and had always admired the rocks I could see near the road as I flew past. I'd made many a mental note to stop there and explore that area sometime, even to the point of scrawling the mileage with my finger in the dashboard dust. So, finally that's what we did.

A while ago I wrote about the phenomenon of being able to walk in certain places in Death Valley and feel like it's possible no one ever walked there before (v. SORROWFUL HILLS). Well, Coffee Cup Canyon is the opposite of that. It's a freaking debris field of human artifacts. You have to hike about half a mile from the road to get to where it starts, but once you get there, it's an archaeological gold mine. It's hard to say when the artifacts date back to but probably no earlier than the 1950s. The things we found looked more modern than the mining boom era of the early 1900s. We're no experts, though, so we could easily be wrong.

I don't have a picture of the various pieces of sheet metal we saw half buried under the alluvium, but it made me wonder if there had been a structure up the canyon somewhere that had that stuff for siding or roofing. Among other the other debris I didn't photograph (I'm now kicking myself) are what seemed to be remnants of stainless steel (not rusty) equipment, possibly institutional kitchen equipment, and several huge slabs of broken concrete such as you might see laid down as the foundation for a structure.

As we walked we saw countless glass bottles and jars, many of them unbroken, and at least one completely intact china plate. There was no brand name on the bottom of the cup fragment, but the back of the plate was stamped "Buffalo China," a well known brand of china frequently used in restaurants and institutions today. The horse or burro logo on the cup reinforces the idea that whatever had been up this canyon at one time either was a restaurant, or the occupant was using restaurant stuff. Another possibility is that we were seeing debris from more than one structure.

The second pic shows what was a large jar of "Kern's [?] Preserves and Jellies," apparently never opened and still containing what used to be preserves or jelly, now a hard, dry, solid mass that broke in half when I shook the jar too vigorously. The third pic, though, shows a bottle I can't identify by its shape. It's a complete mystery.

One of the more astonishing -- and poignant -- items we saw was a lonely piece of white fabric hung up on a thorny bit of dead desert flora and fluttering in the breeze . It looked like drapery fabric! And in spite of being in the desert for who knows how long and being worn thin by the harshest of circumstances, it was clean-looking and shiny white.

The big question, of course, is where did all these things come from? It's possible they washed down the canyon from miles away, but if so, why are there unbroken glass bottles and china dishes? And what would have caused people just to walk away from their structures and leave, not only curtains at the windows, but jars of food on the presumed shelves?

We searched all of our maps, ancient and modern, for some inkling of where this debris could have come from, but to no avail. And since the canyon didn't have a name, and since it's damned awkward to try to talk about places that don't have names, I've once again taken matters into my own hands and named it: Coffee Cup Canyon.
: - )

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All of the photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

Coffee Cup Canyon: The Rocks

2006-03-26T15:10:00.000-08:00

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Before, during and after we explored the debris field of ARTIFACTS in Coffee Cup Canyon, there were indeed fabulous rocks to photograph. Here are just a few.

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All of the photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

Pleasant Canyon

2006-03-24T09:47:00.000-08:00

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Distance from Beatty: 95 miles

This is nearly a week late, but better late than never.

Last Friday was a darkandstormy night, and on Saturday the forecast was for rain or snow, depending on elevation, but we set out early anyway and headed for PANAMINT SPRINGS, California, sixty-five miles, two mountain ranges and three desert valleys away. We were going to meet up with a bunch of Internet folks AGAIN, and go along with them on a run up some canyon or other, followed by a big potluck dinner that night out on the PS patio.

We barely got out of Beatty before I had to stop and take pictures. The Grapevines were covered with snow all the way down to the ground! When we got to Hell's Gate we could see there was snow on the Panamints, too, but not all the way down; there was a distinct snow line. When we crossed the Panamints half an hour later, there were flurries up at Towne Pass (elevation about 5000 feet). When we came down from the Panamints and crossed the valley to PS, the sky was fitful -- gray and overcast in most places, looking like the sun might break through in others.

It had rained steadily there the night before, we found out later, starting around midnight and not stopping until dawn. But except for some standing water here and there on the dry lake bed, you'd never know there had been a drop of rain there for months. The road, the side of the road, the desert, everything was dry as a bone.

We met up with our peeps at PS and everyone headed for BALLARAT. Like before, everyone milled about in the parking lot for a while shooting the breeze and deciding which canyon to run. While that was going on, I chatted with Rock Novak, the Ballarat caretaker. Rock knows the history of the area and has a thousand tales to tell, such as the one about the first car ever to come to Ballarat. Apparently, there were several hundred people living there at the time, and the car was such a novelty that everyone wanted to try it out. It lasted, according to Rock, about a week before it broke down so badly it couldn't even leave Ballarat. A couple of its wheels are still there to this day.

The next pic shows Rock on the left and David, who was one of the main organizers of the get-together, taking a pic of me taking a pic of him.

The canyon they picked is called Pleasant Canyon, and so it was. A steady stream of water was running down it, and the rocky trail we drove on ran beside the stream and back and forth across the stream -- except for those places where the trail and the stream were one and the same. The stream was unbelievably picturesque in places.. a perfect babbling brook, full of pretty rocks and banked on both sides by Spring blooms.

A few miles up the canyon were the remains of an old mine called Clair's Camp, an old gold mine that had run out of gold when Mr. Clair bought it in 1927. He and his family reworked the tailings looking for gold that had been missed the first time around -- to the tune of about $250,000 over a fifteen year period. Not too shabby.

We came back down the canyon after visiting Clair's Camp and headed for Ridgecrest to do a bit of quick grocery shopping. Ridgecrest was less than fifty miles away, and when you live in Beatty, it's hard to get so close to a good grocery store (Stater Bros!!) and not go there. Besides, it was clouding up and starting to rain.

We did our shopping and drove back to PS for the potluck dinner, getting rained on intermittently both going and coming. The rainbow in the desert was a beautiful sight, but unfortunately, it didn't signal the end of the rain, which stopped for a few minutes but started up again and continued off and on all evening.

The dinner was a blast anyway, in spite of the weather, just because of the people. I will never stop being fascinated by meeting Internet people IRL, and will probably always go out of my way to do it any time I get the chance.

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Unless otherwise noted all photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

More Rocks!

2006-03-13T12:29:00.000-08:00

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Distance from Beatty: 28 miles

Between the recent fitful weather and all kinds of Real Life distractions we haven't had much opportunity lately for playing around in Death Valley. It sucks; we're getting fat and out of shape!

When we have gone down there we've mostly just gone to the Mud Canyon / KIT FOX HILLS / SORROWFUL HILLS area because it's close to home and never, ever disappoints. There are always hills to climb, small canyons to explore, great and small washes and channels of alluvium to hike through, and everywhere - everywhere! - spectacular rocks to photograph.

The rocks in these pics aren't from any one special place; you can pull off beside the road anywhere for miles and miles, and you won't have to walk far to find rocks as beautiful and unusual as these.

One thing the photos don't always convey is the size of the rocks, so here's the skinny:
The rock in the first pic was about the size of a baseball; the next one was about the size of a shoe box; and the cracked golden egg was about the size of a small loaf of paisano bread. :-)

The rocks in the gravel pic were small to tiny. The large one in the middle was about the size of a large coin, and lying against its upper right edge is the little beauty shown close up in the next pic.

That's followed by my attempt to make a small rock and some tiny desert flora look like a landscape with mountain and trees.

The last two were part of a whole group of similar pieces lying nearby looking exactly like discarded slices of fruit.

I would give anything to know the history of all these rocks - what they're made of; why they look like they look; where they came from; what processes they've gone through; what they looked like originally; why and how long it took them to become what they are and get where they are now.

If you know, dear reader, please do tell.

: - )

MORE ROCK PHOTOS
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Unless otherwise noted all photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

Snowy Beatty

2006-03-12T15:26:00.000-08:00

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I don't know what happened to the weather out here. A couple of weeks ago it "went north," becoming unsettled and unpredictable, changing day to day, even hour to hour. One day it's mild, the next windy and cold.

We've had rain a couple of times (just over half an inch total), and yesterday we got sleet. It was the weirdest sleet I ever saw; it was dry as a bone and looked like somebody spilled perlite all over everything. Then, this morning we woke up to an inch or two of snow all over the ground and surrounding mountains. As of this afternoon, it's only on the taller mountains.

These pics were taken very early in the morning, hence the long shadows.

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Unless otherwise noted all photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

The Cabin

2006-03-04T11:04:00.000-08:00

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Distance from Beatty: 100 miles

The winding desert dirt road we'd been driving on took a final turn and suddenly looked like someone's driveway. It became wide, straight and smooth with a pretty rock border to separate the driveway from the front yard, which was landscaped with massive red boulders and ancient yuccas. At the end of the driveway behind the boulders was the cabin, and as we drove up the driveway it looked for all the world like someone lived there -- chairs on the front porch, knickknacks on shelves, a rock mobile dangling from the porch roof, and door closed up tight. If I hadn't known it was a "public" place, I would have thought for sure I was trespassing on someone's homestead!

We parked behind the cabin, walked around front and went inside. It was nothing less than amazing. I'd heard tell of places like this but never seen one -- cabins that are designated for public use but are unadvertised and so off the beaten track that relatively few people know about them. Such places aren't usually vandalized and trashed as the BARKER RANCH was. Not only was this delightful little cabin not trashed, it had obviously been cared for and maintained. Since it isn't used on a daily basis it was dirty, but I reckon it would only take a couple of day's work to clean it up sufficiently to live in.

There were four rooms -- main room with wood-burner, chairs, a small table and a couple of beds; a bedroom with three more beds; kitchen and dining room. All of the furniture was seedy and dirty, but it was easy to imagine what great a place it would be all cleaned up and with better furnishings.

The kitchen was filthy, but stocked with stuff you could actually use, if you were desperate. Canned goods, dishes, pots and pans, etc. There was a tool drawer stocked with common household tools. There were cleaning liquids and candles and stuff hanging on the walls.

In the dining room there was a bookcase containing dozens of books, many of them good, appropriate books on topics such as hiking, backpacking, and identifying the local flora and fauna. On the table was a log book, which had been signed and written in by visitors to the cabin dating back for several years. We added our names to the many.

Lying on the table beside the log was a long, handwritten note signed simply "The Goodhew Family." It explained the cabin's history:

Lou McGirk from Ontario, California, staked a claim on this site in the early 1900s and built the shack. He had an iron ore mine on this site and a mica mine up the road.
He was allowed to take one bucket of water a day from the natural spring by the shack ...
He built a cooler (still across from the front door) to store food. He lined it with screen, hung burlap over it and would soak the burlap in water. The breeze would then blow through and cool the food.
He would store his linen in barrels to keep the pack rats from chewing them up. He kept his paper goods in an old refrigerator.
McGirk had to do $100 worth of improvements per year to keep his claims. This could be any type of improvement.
When the park extended its boundary and the “shack” was incorporated inside its lines, the shack had to be open to the public. It has only been open about 15 years.
How do we know all this?
Our family has been coming to the shack with McGirk since 1934, before his death, and on our own since then, once a year on Thanksgiving until 15 years ago. Since then we have a family reunion at the shack every few years.
Thanks to all of you for your help in keeping “the shack” a great place to come visit.
-- The Goodhew Family

I've been to this cabin twice now, and both times I had to leave before I was ready, so I'll definitely be going back again. There are outbuildings in the surrounding hills that must be explored, trails to hike, mines to seek and many, many more pictures to take!

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Unless otherwise noted all photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

Sorrowful Hills

2006-02-24T15:07:00.000-08:00

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Distance from Beatty: 31 miles

One of the things I love the most about Death Valley is the experience of walking in certain remote places and feeling like it's entirely possible that no other human being has ever walked there before. Nearby... perhaps. But just here, or just there.. I could easily be the first. DV is just so vast -- more vast than you can imagine unless you see it -- and its climate so inhospitable to humans that I can't imagine enough of them having gone there over the years for every place to have been walked on.

The Sorrowful Hills are like that. They're right next to a road, so they're not all that remote. They're just rather nondescript in appearance (from afar -- they are lovely up close!), so most people passing by would never dream of stopping and wandering up in there. And in fact, it's easy to tell whether other people have been there recently because on that soft, flat, gravel-mosaic surface every footstep leaves a print, and ours were the only prints we saw.

Click on the second photo to see where the hills are situated. They're on the far left side of the picture at the edge of an enormous alluvial fan that spills out of the Grapevine Mountains. The pic was taken from across the Valley -- maybe twenty or thirty miles away as the raven flies.

The next photo shows the view of the hills from the road where we parked the car. This would be the view that called out to us and made us decide to hike up in there.

The next pic shows what it's like walking among the hills on the ground level. It's just alluvium -- channel after channel after channel, large and small, of rocks and gravel of all sizes that have washed down out of the Grapevines over the millennia during those handful of times each year when there's a rain event. It looks so gray and boring in that picture, but when you see it up close, it's truly beautiful.

The most dominant plants growing in this wash are creosote and desert holly, but they're relatively sparse here, so it's unusual to see them growing as close together as the ones in the picture. Here the creosote grows right out of the middle of the holly! Since desert plants always space themselves away from each another in order to share water, our guess is that the holly roots grow down and deep while the creosote roots spread out wide but up close to the surface, so the two plants don't have to compete.

The next photo was taken from up on one of the hills. It shows the two kinds of surfaces that are prevalent here. The light stuff is sort of like dried mud, and hills composed of that seemed unstable and unsafe to climb. The other common composition is gravel, and although it, too, is often unstable and unsafe to climb, sometimes there are places where, with the aid of a walking stick, it can be done.

The reward for climbing hills in Death Valley -- any hill -- is always, at the very least, a fresh, stunning view of the Valley and surrounding landscape. The next pic shows a fabulous view of the Sorrowful Hills and the alluvium wash that runs through them, peppered with dark green creosote and salted with pale green holly. The mountains on the far side of the valley are the Cottonwoods.

The last three pics show some of the gorgeous rocks and gravel that are all over the the hills and down in the wash. The pics are completely typical. The gravel was just what happened to be where I was sitting to take a break and enjoy the view of the Valley. When I finally finished looking at that and looked down at what I was sitting on, I was staggered by the beauty and diversity of it. We always see the big stuff before we see the small stuff.

The Sorrowful Hills were named by me because, like the VAMPIRE HILLS, I couldn't find them named on any map whether recent, ancient or in-between. And because I've been there twice now, and I'll be going back yet again, and because a place like that ought to have a name.

They are named to commemorate the sad passing of my friend Jim's father, Cathy's father, and Mary's husband of forty years, who died last week on the very day, indeed in the very hour that some of these pics were taken.
R.I.P, Michael J. Hill.

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Unless otherwise noted all photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

Porch and Gecko

2006-02-15T15:02:00.000-08:00

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Construction has finally started on our new porch. It's hard to believe that at one time I actually thought it might be done by Thanksgiving, but I'd forgotten to take into account that this is Beatty, and here things are done on Beatty Time. :-)

This porch is a huge, huge deal for us. It will provide shade along the back side of the house, which faces west and gets baked to a crisp in the long, hot summer afternoons, as you can imagine looking at the photo. The porch roof will extend out from the house ten feet, so the sun won't ever hit that glass again. There'll be room for a table and chairs. There'll be room at the far end for a cabinet to put our yard tools in. Extending out from the porch where the glass doors are will be an uncovered "deck" where we can put the grill and, on those warm milky way nights, the telescope. Everyday life will be much improved once it's done, so we're thrilled that construction is finally underway.

When Richard, the builder, tore up the existing plywood steps, he roused a WESTERN BANDED GECKO from its sleep. The poor little guy was so sluggish it couldn't even run away; in fact, it could hardly move at all. Ry rescued it and we stashed it in a tupperware box until after dark. These geckos are nocturnal, and since he was going to have to find himself a new home we didn't want him to have the added disadvantage of having to do it during the day. From now on our little gecko will catch ants and spiders in the front yard under the rosebed rocks.

: - )

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Unless otherwise noted all photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

Bighorn Sheep

2006-02-13T15:49:00.000-08:00

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Distance from Beatty: 15 miles

Coming home from Death Valley yesterday.. Ryan was driving, and we were both kind of spacing out, tired after an afternoon hike up a long canyon and back. Suddenly I realized I was seeing a line of evenly spaced white objects off in the desert where I'd never seen any such things before.

At first I thought we'd stumbled on a new discovery -- like that OLD ROAD we found last fall, which we must have passed a hundred times before we saw it -- but after a double take I realized the white spots were moving. After a double double take I saw the white spots had grayish-brown bodies attached, and the heads had horns! "OMG, Ryan, STOP THE CAR!!"

It was a small band of bighorn sheep!

We were on Hwy 374 east of Daylight Pass. There wasn't any other traffic on the road, so Ry slammed on the brakes, and we crept out of the car slowly and quietly, trying not to spook them. They saw us -- they all stopped grazing and looked up -- but they didn't bolt.

Even when another car came along and stopped they still didn't run; they just moved away, slowly following the obvious leader. We observed them for about ten minutes, and in that brief time we were able to see a clear pattern of behavior. The leader ranged ahead, often going up on a ridge or some other high place, if there was one, where he would stop and look around. Specifically, he would look right at us. Soon the others would slowly move toward him, as if they didn't like too much distance between themselves and the leader. When they caught up with him they'd stop, and the whole group would graze for a while. Then the leader would move off again, and the scenario would be repeated.

Eventually they disappeared down the other side of the ridge shown in the last photo. That's the leader up there -- watching me watching him.

What magnificent animals!

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Unless otherwise noted all photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

BoomCon

2006-02-08T09:37:00.000-08:00

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Distance from Beatty: 47 miles

Last weekend we attended the First Annual Nevada Boom Town History Conference, which took place right down the road from us. Okay, so it was 47 miles away, but out here that definitely qualifies as right down the road. It's the only place we've gone in months that we didn't take a cooler with extra water and cokes with us. Heck, why bother; there's a store (FORT AMARGOSA) -- two if you count the gas station-store-and-brothel across the road -- only thirty miles into the trip, if we should need anything. Luxury!

BoomCon was held at the LONGSTREET Inn, Casino and RV Resort, which is on the Nevada side of the California-Nevada border and exists, apparently, solely to accomodate the hordes of gamblers arriving from sin-starved California so desperately eager for legal action they can't make it the last hundred miles to Vegas.

The Longstreet is the only thing on the north side of the road. Across the road from the Longstreet is everything else: a tiny, two-pump gas station with signs also proclaiming a market, food and restrooms; the Stateline Saloon and Gambling Hall, which appears permanently closed; an abandoned, boarded-up house; and an RV/mobile home park with about a dozen RVs and maybe two dozen mobile homes spread out over five or ten acres of creosote and desert pavement -- the residential district. Beyond these structures there is nothing for miles in any direction except desert.

The little settlement has no name, as far as I know. It's part of the vast Amargosa Valley, which sort of acts like a town and, I think, calls itself a town, but it's spread out over -- oh gosh I'm only guessing, but I'd say 150-200 square miles. As Ry puts it, it's the size of Chicago but with a population of 500. As I put it, if it ever needs to expand to the size of Vegas, it's ready.

What you see of AV from the highway as you fly by at 75 mph are a few roads striking off through the desert, most of them dirt roads. Occasionally there's a house (usually a mobile home) or some other structure and then nothing for miles and then another structure or two and then nothing again for miles. To be fair, there is a road (maybe two) off the main highway with a section that has buildings near each other.. an elementary school, a VFW hall, community center, fire house, a scattering of homes, etc., but even those aren't smack-dab up against each other the way they are in typical cities and towns. Amargosa Valley is big. Really big. You think it's a long walk down to the drugstore, well that's peanuts compared to Amargosa Valley.

The conference went from Thursday to Sunday, but we only attended Friday and Saturday. There was really only one event on Thursday, and we tried to get in on it but we were too late and got shut out. It was a tour (limited to fifty people) of a brothel over in Pahrump! The BoomCon person in charge of setting up the tour encouraged us to arrange one on our own. "Oh, it's easy to get a tour of Sherry's; just go there any day for lunch and tell them you want a tour." ROTFL!! She added, "they have great food!"

Friday the conference got underway in earnest and continued all that day and all day Saturday. Papers; coffee break; papers; lunch; papers; break; papers; long break; dinner; rinse and repeat. The presenters were a mixture of amateurs and professionals, and papers were never very long and some were quite short, so there was never time to get bored. (Well, almost never.) Topics ranged all over the place and weren't limited to Nevada or Boom Towns, which was fine with us. We found all of the talks to be at least mildly interesting and sometimes utterly fascinating.

Conference registration included dinners on both Friday and Saturday night. Friday night's event was held in the AV community center, about ten miles away from the casino, and was hosted by E CLAMPUS VITUS, which is either a historical drinking fraternity or a drinking historical fraternity, one or the other. Or something. It's very old and very Men Only. Their leader is known as the Noble Grand Humbug, and as far as I can tell they're famous for two things: they go around putting up informative historical markers and plaques in spots that would otherwise go unmarked; and they party. Not necessarily always in that order. Another thing we discovered they do, and do well, is cook. They cooked and served up an extremely tasty roast beef dinner for 150+ people, and the men did all the work; there wasn't a female in sight on either side of the [cooking-serving] line. You go, boys!

Saturday night's dinner was held in the casino banquet rooms, and many people came dressed in period costumes, which added considerable color to the whole event. After dinner there was live entertainment, including an interesting trio consisting of a dulcimer, a cello and a twelve-string guitar.. a very pleasant combination.

Over and over again I find myself being impressed with the quality of food we're served out in the middle of nowehere, and this dinner was yet another example of that. The food was astonishingly good for a rubber chicken banquet; I had turkey and dressing and it wasn't rubbery at all. And I could have eaten a second piece of that pecan pie!

The highlight of the weekend for me came when one of the presenters, Jean Johnson, announced she was looking for a photo of the Racetrack for the cover of next fall's DV 49ers ENCAMPMENT "Keepsake" book, and -- long story short -- it now looks like she's going to use ONE OF MINE! I'll believe it when I see it, but stay tuned...

The second best part of the weekend was finding out there is good pecan pie only 47 miles away!

: - )

Unless otherwise noted all photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

Goler Canyon and Barker Ranch

2006-02-01T11:40:00.000-08:00

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Distance from Beatty: 110 miles

Here's something you don't do every day.
Drive ninety miles to a ghost town that's off the hard road from a lonesome two-lane blacktop in the middle of nowhere; rendezvous with with a bunch of strangers you only "know" from the Internet; and then drive another 15-20 miles up a remote canyon wash to the cabin where Charles Manson and his "family" lived in 1969 when they committed the grisly TATE-LaBIANCA MURDERS.

Chris said it sounded like a good plot for a horror movie. :-)

That's what we did last Saturday, though, and it was a blast!

Everyone gathered at BALLARAT, a ghost town about 25 miles from Panamint Springs. There were five people in four vehicles (LARA, David, Jim and us); since maneuvering your vehicle up and down a canyon trail is half the fun of an adventure like this people generally prefer to drive themselves rather than ride with someone else. The Goler trail wasn't difficult -- the easiest it's ever been according to David and Jim, which is why we were able to do it in our Honda CRV.

We milled around the Ballarat parking lot for a while getting to know each other, and then off we went driving caravan-style along the base of the Panamints, gawking at the scenery and chatting on walkie-talkies. So cool! After a few miles, the road turned and crawled up an alluvial fan into Goler Canyon.

Canyons are great. Each one is different, of course, but it's astonishing how truly different they can be -- different rocks, entirely different geological history, etc., even when they're not very far apart. Goler Canyon is no exception, and we must have said to each other half a dozen times, "We have to come back here when we can stop," because, of course, we were with other people and couldn't just slam on the brakes every time we spotted cool rocks, or an interesting formation, or whatever.

Occasionally, something would be so extremely cool that others would see it and think so too, and stopping would just happen naturally. Like the time Lara stopped, jumped out of her car and ran over to add a rock to a budding rock stack. (I had to add one too, natch.) Or the amazing canyon wall dotted with barrel cactus that just sort of stopped all of us in our tracks. Or the melon patch -- in the Mojave Desert! Who woulda thunk it! (They are "coyote melons," Jude, in case you're wondering. :-)

We passed quite a bit of evidence of human habitation and enterprise -- an old abandoned mine, various cabins. We stopped at the "Newman Cabin" on the way in and at the Lotus Mine (aka Keystone Mine) and "Stone Cabin" on the way out. Eventually, though, we arrived at our main destination and Goler Canyon's star attraction -- Barker Ranch.

Barker Ranch is notorious for having been home to infamous cult leader Charles Manson and his "family" in the summer of 1969 when they went on their gruesome Beverly Hills murder spree. Anything relating to Manson has long since vanished, carried off by relic collectors, the Park Service or whomever, and now the property and cabin are run-down, vermin-infested and trashed beyond belief. The furnishings shown in MY BARKER RANCH PHOTOS were added in later years by volunteers wanting to make the cabin habitable for overnight use by passing explorers. Nature can't be kept at bay, however, without ongoing vigilance, and now the furnishings are too disgusting to look at almost, let alone touch. I didn't even like walking on the floor; my sweet walking shoes didn't deserve it!

Everyone agreed, though, that the place must have been awesome in its day -- before Manson occupied it. The layout of the cabin is just delightful with all kinds of unexpected nice touches -- like the "BREAKFAST NOOK" with that archway.. I loved that. It was easy to imagine the place all cleaned up and furnished like a little English cottage or something.

After wandering around the Barker Ranch for a while, we decided it was time to head back down to Ballarat. It's winter and days are still short, and we didn't relish coming down Goler Canyon in the dark, if we could avoid it. We finished a fantastic day with a tasty dinner at PANAMINT SPRINGS RESORT where our server turned out to be none other than Oregon Gal, yet another person we "knew" from ONLINE, so there was much merriment made over that coincidence. "OMG, that's YOU?!!? OMG!!" :-)

At last it was time to head home, and after plenty of hugs and goodbyes all around, Lara, Ry and I hit the road, leaving Jim, David and OG on the porch at PSR nursing their Arrogant Bastard Ales. An hour and a half and two mountain ranges later, we were back in Beatty, wonderfully tired and full of the experiences of one of the best days we've had since moving out here, certainly a day we'll never, ever forget!

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Unless otherwise noted all photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

Winter in Death Valley

2006-01-23T14:14:00.000-08:00

[UPDATED 1/30/06 TO REPLACE PHOTOS]
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Distance from Beatty: 100 miles

I've loved to drive for as long as I can remember, and it's a good thing, too, because I'd never make it out here otherwise. Example.. One day last week I got a hankering for roast chicken with cornbread dressing. A quick survey of the pantry turned up all the necessary ingredients but one -- the chicken. Now, back in Ohio this would have meant a quick, simple trip to the grocery store, probably five miles away, or to the local butcher less than one mile from our house, taking no more than thirty minutes, worst case scenario. Not so here.

Out here, if I want a chicken it's a 150-MILE ROUND TRIP if I take the shortest route. I'm talking about gassing up the car before I leave Beatty and again when I leave the store to come home. I'm talking cooler stocked with diet cokes and extra water and, if it's anywhere near lunch time, lunch. I'm talking extra clothes for when the temp gets too hot or cold (depending on the time of day) and hiking shoes in case the worst happens and I have to walk. I'm talking camera and binocs because I never know when I might see something that simply must be photographed or at least observed more closely. And then, of course, I'm talking about several hours of my time while I drive there, shop and drive back.

So, when I find myself hankering for something I can't get right here in town, I generally talk myself into getting along without it. But this time my hankering for chicken and dressing only got worse. And I love to drive and it was sunny outside. And I'd been stuck inside the house for too many days, and the long way to the store goes through Death Valley! So, on Friday I went to Pahrump to buy chicken, taking the long way through DV via the Badwater Road (Hwy 178) to Shoshone and Pahrump. It's twice as far, but it's at least twice as lovely.

And lovely it was. I was surprised to see so many flowers. It is January in the northern hemisphere, after all, dead of winter and the last time of the year you'd expect to see flowers anywhere, especially in a place so legendarily hostile as DV. But, up around Daylight Pass before I even got into DV itself I started spotting blooms beside the road, and there were even more at the lower elevations, especially at the south end of the park from the Mormon Point area to Jubilee Pass.

ABOUT THE PHOTOS
Since I was Doing The Shopping, I didn't really have time to stop and do justice to the flowers, so I passed them by altogether, making up my mind to return the next day and spend the afternoon just taking pics. I did exactly that on Saturday, only this time I drove down to the south end of the park on main highways and came north through Death Valley. It was wonderful! I hardly ever see DV from that direction, so it was sort of like seeing it for the first time.

I crawled along 178 doing a lot of slamming on the brakes, turning around and going back, parking, shooting pics, turning around again and continuing on. For a while I played leapfrog with some guy with a camper, who was doing the same thing I was doing. I would pass his camper parked beside the road and see him with his tripod and everything just shooting away.. then later I'd stop to take pics and he would pass me.. then later I'd pass him again. Kindred spirits.

Eventually, the sun was sinking and it was time to head home, but when I got there and looked at my pictures -- they were awful, every single one of them! There was something wrong with the color, which was off in every picture, and they were all slightly out of focus. Very weird indeed. On investigation, it turned out that I had unknowingly pressed a wrong button while simultaneously turning a right dial, which had changed some setting on the camera to "Weird Color & Out Of Focus."

I salvaged what I could to try to give you a sense of what's going on down there right now with all these flowers, but most of these pics don't have nice close-ups to go with them. Obviously, I have to go back and do the trip again.

It's a good thing I love to drive.
: - )

UPDATE 01/30/06 ... I did go back, and the inferior pics have been replaced.
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Unless otherwise noted all photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

Keane Rocks

2006-01-18T15:01:00.000-08:00

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Distance from Beatty: 25 miles

Here are pics showing some of the beautiful rocks to be found up near the KEANE WONDER MINE. I wish these pics could do justice to the colorful, glittery schist that's so abundant there, but I can't seem to get the hang of photographing things that sparkle. The colors come through, though, and hopefully you can see why I think this area has some of the prettiest rocks in Death Valley.

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Unless otherwise noted all photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

Keane Ripple Marks

2006-01-12T14:38:00.000-08:00

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Distance from Beatty: 24 miles

There is a great wash that originates in the Keane Wonder Mine area and by the time it delivers its rocky contents to the valley floor is so vast that we drove across it scores of times on the Beatty Cutoff Road without realizing we were in a wash at all. The first photo is a panorama badly stitched together from two images to try to show how huge the wash is. Basically, it extends from the front of the pic all the way back to the low, dark hills in the distance.

I’ve wanted to hike up this wash ever since I first "saw" it because the rocks up around the mine area are some of the prettiest in Death Valley. There’s a lot of colorful, sparkly schist up there, among other things, so I figured there would be some nice rocks in the wash. Boy, howdy!

What must surely be the find of the year for us was this huge chunk of beautiful green sandstone completely covered with ripple marks (I’m sitting on it in the last pic). Ripple marks are associated with sedimentary rocks and are formed by the action of waves and currents on the sediment as it was being deposited.

A little farther along was an outcropping of golden sandstone that had dried and cracked in a pattern that resembled mosaic tiles, each one with a different design imprinted on it.

We've only scratched the surface of what this magnificent wash has to show us. Stay tuned!

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Unless otherwise noted all photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

White Halite

2006-01-08T11:33:00.000-08:00

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Distance from Beatty: 50 miles

Recently I commented that Death Valley has some drop-dead gorgeous dried mud. Well, down on West Side Road, about a mile from the main highway, there's a place where the road crosses the salt pan. There salt and dried mud mingle and form wonderful patterns reminiscent of the geometric DRIED MUD at the Racetrack.

Sometimes the salt has tiny tendrils reaching off at a 90-degree angle. The tendrils all face the same way. Not knowing anything about such things, I like to imagine them having formed while a fierce wind was blowing the salty water and simultaneously causing the water to evaporate, eventually leaving only the salt.

Btw, the first photo shows the "Artist Drive" mountains in the background.

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Unless otherwise noted all photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

High Tech in the High Desert

2006-01-08T09:32:00.000-08:00

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Behold! 21st century toob-watching technology comes to the Desert Palace. Widescreen, flat-panel LCD TV, DirecTV/TiVo, and DVD player. Chris and Leilah gave us the DVD player for Christmas, so we went down to Vegas and got the TV to go with it. We've hated our old TV almost since the day we got it, and when it turned out to be so inferior it couldn't even be hooked up to the DVD player at all, we knew it was time to go to Circuit City. (Yay!)

(Circuit City is my favorite store on earth, period. If it had food, I could live there.)

Since this is the 21st century, not the 20th, it took three days to do this project: one day to go to Vegas; one day to hook everything up but, after trying everything we could think of, not be able to get the DVD player to communicate with the TV and finally just saying Screw it, let's not call them now, let's call tomorrow; and one day to make the dreaded phone call to the manufacturer's Support Line and spend an hour on the phone to get everything working, finally. The result is freakin awesome!

"Leave the gun. Bring the cannoli."

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Unless otherwise noted all photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

Pink Halite

2006-01-01T14:38:00.000-08:00

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Distance from Beatty: 107 miles

Last October while Ryan was gallivanting around Europe I snuck off to Trona to my first Searles Lake Gem & Mineral Society GEM-O-RAMA. I was really late getting there and everything had been picked over, but I still managed to get this fairly cool piece of pink halite for his birthday (Friday).

Pink halite comes from Searles Lake right across the road from Trona. Every year Searles Lake is flooded, and when the water evaporates all that remains are brine pools. The halite crystals grow in these brine pools. The flooding destroys all of the the previous year's halite, so the crystals grow new each year. This piece is 13 inches long.

The water in Searles Lake contains bacteria that turn red when they die and decay, which then makes the water red, so the halite crystals that form out of this water end up being various shades of pink, red or even burgundy.

One of the highlights of the GEM-O-RAMA each year is the field trip where people go out into the brine pools and collect their own halite specimens!
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Unless otherwise noted all photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

Shoshone and Dante's View

2005-12-30T13:42:00.000-08:00

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Distance from Beatty: 121 miles

Last week we decided to go have lunch at the Cafe (Cafe Crowbar?) in Shoshone. Shoshone's only about 80 miles away, practically right around the corner, and the Cafe has the best cheeseburgers and fries I ever ate in a restaurant -- burgers that are charbroiled over an open flame and fries that are thin, crispy and golden brown, not those icky, frozen, thick, pale, undercooked things most places serve. Yes, there it is, I'm a cheeseburger and fries fanatic.. so you can definitely trust me about the burgers and fries in Shoshone.

After lunch we drove up to Dante's View via the Greenwater Valley Road. Dante's View is normally accessed from Hwy 190, but that road was damaged in the summer floods of 2004 and has been closed ever since. GV Road leads from Hwy 178 to the Dante's View Road above the damaged part, so access is still available to Dante's View itself. It's a dirt road, but it's in great condition so driving was easy. There was no other traffic on the road, either going in or coming out, and we had Dante's all to ourselves. Perfect solitude.

The sky was mostly gray and gloomy that day, but of course I took pictures anyway. And of course they sucked. But I posted them anyway, and every time I looked at the post I cringed, so when yesterday turned out to be sunny and mild (does the Weather God read my blog?) we went back up to Dante's so I could try for some better pics. It was gorgeous. It's the best view of Death Valley you can get to by car. The second photo is what the View looked like on a sunny day two years ago. The last pic shows how it looked yesterday. Notice that the saltpan is much larger now than two years ago. That's because of all the new salt that precipitated out when LAKE MANLY, created by last season's heavy rainfall, dried up.

Rumor is that the repairs will soon be completed, and Dante's View Road will be open from Hwy 190 on January 15th!
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Unless otherwise noted all photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

Weather Rant

2005-12-28T09:11:00.000-08:00

WTF. This is supposed to be the sunshine capital of America and we haven't had a really sunny day since Friday, December 16th. I remember it vividly because I'd been staying indoors for weeks BAKING COOKIES, missing out on all kinds of sunny days, and finally that Friday I finished baking, packing, wrapping, mailing -- indeed, finished with all things Kitmas 2005 -- and was ready to head down to Death Valley the next day for some serious rec time hiking around and taking pictures, but noooooooo. When we woke up Saturday morning it was completely gray and gloomy outside. And cold (relatively speaking). And it's been various versions of that every single day since then, and dadgummit, I'm ready for some blue skies, grumble grumble.
[/weather rant]

There, I feel much better now.

: - )

Views from Hilltops

2005-12-26T22:39:00.000-08:00

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Distance from Beatty: 25 miles

We walked up and down a few hills in Mud Canyon today.. found a rock stack on top of one of the hills.. very cool.. another one for my growing collection of ROCK STACKS.

Facing east, the Funeral Mountains (last photo) looked especially nice in the afternoon sun, and we had a terrific view of the Stovepipe Dunes to the west.

Looking down the Valley toward the saltpan wasn't that great today because of haze, but on a clear day it would be a spectacular view. Note to self: return on clear day.
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Unless otherwise noted all photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

Camera Toss

2005-12-26T11:07:00.000-08:00

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[NB: these are not Camera toss photos.]

It will probably come as no surprise that there are whole other worlds out there, and I'm not talking about outer space; I mean right here in River City. I recently stumbled into one of these other worlds, a world populated by a strange breed of risk-takers -- people of diverse backgrounds from all around the globe who have one thing in common: they like to throw cameras in the air and take pictures of what happens when they do.

Don't roll your eyes too hard, now; this is serious stuff. It's called camera toss. Here are some PHOTOS to look at, each and every one of them amazing. There's even an official CAMERA TOSS BLOG, complete with tips for beginners. In case you're feeling brave.

I didn't throw my camera in the air, but I did play with moving it around in front of the xmas lights hanging in the window. The effects are cool, and each picture comes out radically different from any of the others, so it's hard to stop doing it. I'm posting a couple of the ones I liked best. Still, they are no match for the camera toss stuff, which is out of this world.
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Unless otherwise noted all photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

Dried Mud

2005-12-22T19:55:00.000-08:00

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Distance from Beatty: 92 miles

Here's an example of a place in Death Valley that has fantastic dried mud: the Racetrack. It's a playa— a dry lake bed. I wish I could have a mosaic floor that looks like this!
The Racetrack is a delightful, magical place that deserves a long post all its own.
Stay tuned.
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Unless otherwise noted all photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

Camera Alert!

2005-12-22T10:17:00.000-08:00

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Distance from Beatty: 30 miles

This sign always gets me. It's on Hwy 190 a few miles east of the Stovepipe Dunes and appears to be saying CAMERA 1/4 MILE.. as if one could expect to see a giant camera there, or perhaps THE giant camera. It's the area known as Devil's Cornfield, so it's probably an alert to shutterbugs about that, but I still have to roll my eyes. This "cornfield" is nothing more than common desert flora (ARROWEED) growing in a typical desert pattern, i.e., evenly spaced (it's a water-sharing thing), surrounded by ugly dried mud. I say ugly because there is some drop-dead gorgeous dried mud in Death Valley, but this ain't it. The arroweed plants are picture-worthy, possibly, if that's your thing, but worthy to the point of having the only -- let me repeat that -- the only "HEY, THIS IS PICTURE-WORTHY" sign in the entire Death Valley National Park? You've gotta be kidding me. In this pic alone the lovely, pink Kit Fox Hills are in the background with the Grapevines and Corkscrew Peak behind them. That's not picture-worthy? And about two minutes away in the opposite direction are the magnificent Stovepipe Dunes. Do they have a HTIP-W sign? Does anything else anywhere in the park have such a sign? Nope.
So, this sign always gets me.
: - )
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Unless otherwise noted all photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

Christmas Blues and Yellows

2005-12-13T11:01:00.000-08:00

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Quoth Maria Robbins in the opening paragraph of her wonderful cookbook, COOKIES FOR CHRISTMAS:

I hate Christmas. I hate all the hullaballoo. I hate shopping. I hate most of the tinny-sounding music. I hate spending a lot of money on presents that nobody needs or wants. I hate the idea of cutting down trees and bringing them indoors. I hate the Caribbean. I hate to ski. I am a Christmas curmudgeon, prone to getting the Christmas blues. But I have found my salvation, the solution to almost every problem during this midwinter madness— I bake cookies.

I stumbled upon the Robbins cookie book a few years ago, and since I feel the same way she does about Christmas (well, except that I think cutting down trees and bringing them indoors is kind of cool) I adopted her solution on the spot, and it was MY salvation. I indulged myself with a new, fancy Kitchen Aid mixer and started learning how to make cookies— with pretty decent results. I gave some to a couple of friends and got good feedback, so the next year I expanded my giving to include family and more friends, and now that's all people get from me for Christmas. Hey, everybody likes cookies. It might not seem like much, but I guarantee you I put a lot more into it than I would if I just drove down to Vegas to some mall and Shopped like the good little American Consumer society expects me to be. Much as it pains me to go against social expectations, heh.

So, I've been baking cookies for what seems like weeks now, dozens and dozens and dozens of cookies, and consequently I've neglected my beloved Death Valley. But yesterday afternoon I drove down there for a few hours and was delighted to see these brilliant yellow flowers sprouting up beside the road in a few places. Checking my trusty desert wildflower poster I believe it must be Geraea canescens, the Desert Sunflower. Coming from Ohio where the world out of doors at this time of year is gray and brown and dead it's a treat to drive along and see deep green creosote and pale green desert holly and yellow flowers blooming beside the road.

It was a clear day and the light seemed to be especially good for some reason. I got a nice photo of the KIT FOX HILLS I mention so often, and a nice shot of Mud Canyon, which I’ve also mentioned. I didn't have a lot of time, but it’s impossible to walk around MUD CANYON without taking pictures of rocks; they are so beautiful there, and so diverse. I have more pics of MC rocks; I just need to get around to posting them. Hey— MC rocks, and I don't just mean Detroit!
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Unless otherwise noted all photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

Vampire Hills

2005-12-07T13:20:00.000-08:00

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Distance from Beatty: 34 miles

At the northern end of the Funeral Mountains are some brown, rocky hills situated between the base of the mountains and the road. A few weeks ago we hiked up one of the hills to satisfy our curiosity about what was at the top (v. HILLTOP MYSTERY). It turned out to be where a vampire lives. Because of that, and because I can't find a name for these hills on any map I consult, I'm officially naming them the Vampire Hills, and so they shall remain until someone can show me that they're not.

Last week, we went back and walked up a wash just north of the hill where the vampire lives. As we walked the wash got narrower and rockier and its walls steeper, sixty or eighty feet high, or more. Occasionally the wash would fork out, and we'd go the way that looked like the easiest (least rocky) walk. Eventually we came to a place where the wash widened and its walls weren't so steep anymore, so we decided to climb out and get the lay of the land. Wow! Not only was the view of the Valley wonderful from up there, but we were then able to see another hill further back that had a ROCK STACK on it, a rock stack not visible from the road and that we would never have seen if we hadn't climbed that hill. What a fantastic reward! We headed for it on the spot.

It turned out to be huge, and it looked like it had been there for a while; there were bird droppings all over the top rock. And unlike every other rock stack I've seen, it appeared to have been made from one great boulder that had split into smaller ones.

Ryan thought he saw what could have been other rock stacks on other hills, so yesterday we went back to check it out. This time we started with a hill north of the wash we walked up last week. We climbed to the top right away and spent the whole hike (2.1 miles total) walking along the ridges of the Vampire Hills until we looped back out to the road. The views from that ridgeway are spectacular, especially looking back toward the Funerals; there's a whole huge area that's not visible from the road.

And there were rock stacks everywhere. (Relatively speaking, that is. The only thing that's "everywhere" in Death Valley is rocks.) Not all of the rock stacks were worthy, though, so I'm only posting pics of the best ones. The last ones we came to were the pair shown in the pic, the larger of which was four feet high. Beside them on the ground, spelled out with smaller rocks, was the word, DIE.

Yep. Vampire Hills.

: - )

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Unless otherwise noted all photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

Ancient Scorpion Tracks in Scotland

2005-12-02T10:26:00.000-08:00

Distance from Beatty: 5,000 miles

Here's a story about a rare and amazing rock. Be sure to look at the picture of it!

LONDON, Nov 30 (Reuters) - Tracks made 330 million years ago by a six-legged water scorpion bigger than a human have been found in Scotland.

Martin Whyte, the geologist at the University of Sheffield in northern England who discovered the tracks, said on Wednesday they were left by a scorpion that measured 1.6 metres (5 ft 3 inches) in length and one metre across.

"To my knowledge, this is ... the largest terrestrial trackway of a walking arthropod to be found so far," he said in a report in the journal Nature.

Arthropods include insects, spiders, crabs, shrimps and lobsters. They have a body divided into distinct parts, an outside skeleton and jointed legs.

Whyte said the now extinct giant scorpion had at least three pairs of appendages of different lengths. Its lumbering movement indicated the creature could have survived out of water.

"The slow, stilted progression, together with the dragging of the posterior, indicates that the animal was buoyant and that it was probably moving out of water," Whyte added.

The Nest

2005-11-30T12:55:00.000-08:00

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OMG, look what I just found when I opened the glove box of the Honda!

I had some paper napkins stashed in there, and it appears somebody used one for a nest. But who?

And how did this mystery critter get into the glove box?

The nesting material seems to be various kinds of fibers, gathered from I Cannot Imagine Where. None of it looks familiar.

If anyone reading this has any ideas about what kind of critter's nest this might be, please click Comment and clue me in. I'm assuming it's some kind of rodent, and I know there's more than one rodent expert reading this. You know who you are.
: - )
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Unless otherwise noted all photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

Old Road

2005-11-28T11:59:00.000-08:00

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Distance from Beatty: 23 miles

One day last week we wanted some exercise, so we decided to revisit a now familiar haunt, the KIT FOX HILLS. As we were driving down Mud Canyon Road from Hell's Gate, just before we actually got into Mud Canyon, I spotted what looked like a possible road or path waaay off in the distance to the right (north). It didn't take us long to decide to get our exercise by walking over there and finding out what it was. After about a half hour's walk we reached it, and it was definitely a road. Unused for many a year but still clearly a road and a lot better road than some I've been on in DV, wide enough in places to have been a "two lane" maybe. It appeared to come out of the Kit Fox Hills and go up to Hell's Gate.

Back at home we looked at maps and learned that it was probably the old wagon road that went from RHYOLITE (just outside Beatty) to Stovepipe Wells and about which there's a "Point Of Interest" sign on the road to SCOTTY'S CASTLE that talks about wagon wheel ruts.

Now what we want to do is walk the length of the road from where we were the other day down to the Scotty's Castle road. We'd park one car down there and then drive it back to the trailhead to collect the other car. It would be the longest hike we've done and requires more thought and planning than the impromptu hikes we're accustomed to, but we're determined to follow that road, so stay tuned.

ABOUT THE PHOTOS
The first, second and fourth pics show the main road. The third pic shows one of several branch roads we were able to detect. The whole plain up there seems like it must have been criss-crossed with roads at one time. But one is obviously the main road, and that's the one in the other three pics.

Like most of the rest of DV this area is so much more interesting when you get out of your car and walk around than it looks when you're just driving by. The ground looks brown and boring in the first four photos, but when you look at the rocks and gravel in the last five pics you can see that it's actually very colorful and anything but boring!
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Unless otherwise noted all photographs displayed on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

Thanksgiving at Panamint Springs

2005-11-25T09:22:00.000-08:00

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Distance from Beatty: 68 miles

Ryan and I drove over to PANAMINT SPRINGS RESORT yesterday for THE FEAST, and all I can say is Wow, it was nothing less than amazing. First, there were SO many people, omigod! There must have been a couple hundred people in and out of there during our visit, and that was just between 2 - 4pm. I wonder what the total head count was at the end of the day! And everybody was smiling, laughing, having such a great time.. the vibes were just terrific. We didn’t know anyone, but folks were so friendly that in no time at all we were chatting away with other people in the food line, including one lady who’s been there for Thanksgiving every year for fifteen years!

And the food. Oh. My. God. The food was awesome, and I swear I’m not just saying that. Turkey was tender and juicy; mashed potatoes were Real mashed potatoes made from taters that folks right there at PSR actually sat around and peeled; greenbeans were fresh, snapped right there in the PSR kitchen; carrots were just about the best carrots I ever ate; stuffing was exactly right; gravy was so good Ry talked about it later; homemade cranberry sauces to die for; chocolate cake, and pies pies pies pies pies. I know I’m forgetting some things, but you get the drift.. the food was bountiful and delicious.

The weather could not have been more perfect. Plenty warm enough to sit outside, and no wind to scoop up napkins and paper plates and send them flying. There were tables and chairs set up all over the grounds, and we found excellent seats, kind of down front where we could watch the sunlight on the mountains. And what a view! PSR looks out onto one of the most spectacularly banded mountains in the whole area. (I wish I knew its name.. it reminds me of the Carrara formation in Bare Mountain just outside Beatty.)

While I was getting my second (!) piece of pie I overheard a conversation about a small plane that “crashed” nearby just minutes before. Trying either to land or take off (when you’re eavesdropping, you don’t always get to hear everything, lol), it apparently strayed off the runway somehow and “clipped a couple of trailers,” but no one was hurt. No word on the trailers, though. Or the plane. Maybe someone reading this will have mo’ better details. But anyway, that was interesting.

Since we were down by the parking lot, we got to eyeball all the vehicles coming and going, and what an eyeful. I never saw so many tricked out Jeeps all in one place. I kept wondering if anyone from DV TALK was there and regretted that I haven’t kept up with who owns what kind of Kewl Vehicle, LOL.

Last but not least, the best part of all came when I got to meet and personally thank our host, Jerry Graham, a truly charming gentleman and genuinely kind person, who seems to enjoy the giving of this singularly astonishing annual gift even more than we all enjoy receiving it. I get the impression that he is not a seeker of the limelight, and I don’t wish to embarrass him further, so I’ll stop at this point and say again, simply, Thank you.

ABOUT THE PHOTOS
The first one shows the view coming down out of the Panamint Mountains looking across Panamint Valley. The white stuff is Panamint Dry Lake. Way off in the distance on the right at the foot of the mountains is Panamint Springs Resort. If you followed those mountains around to the right, at the end of the valley are the Panamint dunes.

The second photo shows the north end of the Panamint Valley and the Panamint dunes.

The last photo shows the beautiful mountain across the valley from PSR, the one we had such a good view of while we were eating. I took this pic on Monday when I was over that way going to Ridgecrest (a whole nother story). When I looked at it today in its full size, imagine my astonishment to find a Navy jet in the picture (from nearby CHINA LAKE). In fact, it was just after I snapped this that I became aware the fly boys were in the valley. The sound is earsplitting, and they fly so low and come so close that you can almost wave and expect them to wave back. They fly back and forth, up and down the valley practicing their maneuvers and putting on a show for us random drivers down below. It's just one more thing about living out here that completely amazes and delights me.
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Unless otherwise noted, all photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.

Good News, Bad News

2005-11-23T12:01:00.000-08:00

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Or, How Ryan's Desk Got Delivered But Not Completely

Distance from Beatty: 115 miles

A week and a half ago Ryan went down to Vegas to buy a desk at Office Depot. He knew exactly what he wanted because he'd seen it in there a few weeks before, but at that time he didn't have the SUV with him to bring it back to Beatty. So back to Vegas he went a week and a half ago, with the SUV, to get this desk.

Good News: The desk (a nice Sauder DIY) was on drastic reduction sale for $100.

Bad News: But they didn't have it in stock.

Good News: But they'd deliver it to us! In Beatty! FREE! And depending on who delivered it, maybe even put the desk together for us (for an extra, very reasonable, charge).

Bad News: But not until Tuesday.

When I heard this I was like, No. Freakin. Way. No way is Office Depot going to deliver that desk to Beatty for nothing on Tuesday or any other day. It would cost more in labor, gas and truck wear-n-tear than they could possibly make selling that desk for $100. I bet they don't know where Beatty is, right? I bet they think it's a new suburb of Vegas or something. Once they figure out where they have to take it, they'll call you and explain about the extra charge for delivering so far away.

But no, Ry said, they do know where it is; the kid Looked It Up On The Computer.

Oh. Well, in THAT case.

That was Saturday, 12 November. Today, eleven days and many phone calls later (all of them made by Ryan, NONE of them made by Office Depot, and I'm going to spare you the details and associated rants because we've all been through it, and we all know what it's like), I glanced out the window and saw a semi stopped down on the road and a guy walking up our driveway. Oh my gawwwwd, Ryan, it's gotta be your desk!!

Good News: They delivered the desk for free, depending on how you define 'free'.

Bad news: They would only deliver it as far as the front porch. They would not, for any amount of money, bring it into the house. Seriously. Ry and I had to muscle the damn thing inside ourselves, and it weighed a ton, believe me.

I was like, this is too funny for words. After all this time, after all this trouble, after all this way, you won't bring it a few more inches? Why on earth not?

BecauseOfInsurance.

Yeah, but, like, what's the reason for it? Is there a reason?

And it turns out it's to protect them and the company from lawsuits brought by homeowners whose house and/or furnishings might get damaged by careless delivery guys, well, delivering. I am serious!

Good News: The delivery guys were great, though, and kept their sense of humor about the whole thing and even agreed to let me photograph them and put the pics on my blog. I just wish I'd gotten their names.

Freakin lawyers. We wondered about lawsuits brought by irate customers who were expecting to have furniture delivered AND assembled for them and instead found themselves in the hospital with irreparable damage to their backs. . .

Burger? Cinnamon Bun? No!

2005-11-20T18:06:00.000-08:00

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Distance from Beatty: 27 miles

Might this be a fossilized burnt hamburger? A fossilized burnt cinnamon bun, perhaps?
Whatever it was, it's a rock now, languishing on a hillside above Mud Canyon.

UPDATE (11/23):
Many thanks to Ken S. for identifying the mystery rock for me. Writes Ken:
"Where I come from we call this a fossilized cow-pie, or buffalo chip! Great for those prairie or desert cookouts."

I can always count on my friends to recognize shit when they see it.

| - )

Rock Stacks II

2005-11-20T10:33:00.000-08:00

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I just wanted to put up some more ROCK STACK pics, so you can get an idea how different from one another they can be. The one shown here is an old, old pic, from before I really knew my way around DV, and alas, I can't remember where it was located. I think it's my favorite rock stack that I've ever seen. The lines are so pleasing. And it was so big; they aren't usually very tall, but this one was huge -- taller than I am.

Rock Stacks I

2005-11-18T09:20:00.000-08:00

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Distance from Beatty: 37 miles

ROCK STACKS.
Just one more weird, beautiful, unique feature on the vast, multifaceted Death Valley landscape. Who knows who builds them or why; I only know that I love them and that it's almost impossible for me to pass one without adding a rock.

Over the years I've developed a personal code of ethics about adding to a rock stack:
• First, do no harm. Make sure the rock that's added doesn't destabilize or destroy what's already there.
• Second, choose the rock carefully. Rock stacks are works of art, both visually and structurally. Always try to add a rock that's particularly beautiful or unusual and that complements the style of the existing stack.
• Third, consider the next person. Always choose a rock that's flatish on top so the next person who wants to add to the stack will be able to.

The rock stack in the picture was crowned with a pointed rock on top, so it would have been fairly difficult to add a rock. Not impossible, but difficult. Otoh, this particular stack was pretty awesome just as it was, so I left it alone.

My ROCK STACK COLLECTION

Victoria Secret

2005-11-18T09:18:00.000-08:00

NEWS FLASH!
Never mind Tom Cruise's latest heartthrob; here's the kind of juicy celebrity gossip that makes political junkies from coast to coast drop their jaws into their morning coffee and go, "Whoa."

Brian Lamb got married!

Lamb, 63, creator and CEO of C-SPAN and lifelong bachelor, married a childhood friend about whom, apparently, nothing is known on the Web except her name: Victoria. Maureen Dowd, channeling Robert Novak, outed him this morning when she was a guest on his show. You go, Mo! If you crave more info than this, good luck. But start here: NY Daily News - Daily Dish

Hilltop Mystery

2005-11-14T16:13:00.000-08:00

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Distance from Beatty: 34 miles

Driving along in Death Valley recently we spotted something on top of a nearby hill. Something white. That's literally all we could say about it. Structure? Person? Vehicle? (Look at the top photo in a larger size, and you'll see a white speck in the middle of the brown hills.)

I flashed on being seven years old, living in San Francisco. We lived in the Presidio in an area that was residential but also had woods nearby and the occasional meadow. One day I was hanging out with another kid, walking in a part of the neighborhood I wasn't familiar with. We passed a grassy field that was surrounded by woods and completely empty except for a post — probably a 4"x4" or 6"x6" piece of wood about three feet high, painted white, sticking out of the ground in the middle of the field. It looked extremely strange to me for some reason, and I asked my companion what it was.
"That's where a vampire lives," she told me in a quiet, serious voice.
"What's a vampire?"
"I don't know; something bad."

So, anyway, the other day Ry and I were driving along and spotted that white thing on top of that hill and got to wondering what it was. No Time Like Now was the approach we both favored, so we pulled over to the side of the road, grabbed water and camera and headed up there.

Not surprisingly, it turned out to be a great walk. The rocks were awesome, as usual, although you'd never think that just from driving by. I'll never stop being blown away by how different the ground looks when you're looking at it standing still instead of from a car window at 60 mph.

And what was it at the top of the hill? Well duh, it's where a vampire lives. Obviously. But I bet you already knew that.

: - )

Brownie Doing Great!

2005-11-13T15:26:00.000-08:00

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Distance from Beatty: 29 miles

The brownies at Ft. Amargosa today were the biggest I've ever seen for sale there, and that's saying something. They were huge.. maybe the person who usually cuts the brownies had the day off. The one in this pic is 5"x4" -- about as big as two normal size brownies.
Price: $1

It's a good thing these things are thirty miles away!

Distances

2005-11-13T10:00:00.000-08:00

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[Map is a pic of our State Farm atlas.]

DISTANCE FROM BEATTY:
Next gas station (south): 29 miles
Next gas station (north): 66 miles
Next gas station (west): 35 miles
Next gas station (east): can't go east from Beatty
Nearest grocery store: 74 miles
Nearest decent grocery store: 135 miles
Nearest movie theater: 115 miles
Nearest casino: 0 miles, bay-bee
Nearest ghost town: 6 miles
Badwater (lowest point in western hemisphere): 58 miles
Mt Whitney (highest point in continental USA): 127 miles
Nevada Test Site: 11 miles
Yucca Mountain: 18 miles
Area 51: 57 miles?

After spending my entire life living in or near large cities it's a huge change to come live out here where the nearest gas station not in Beatty (which boasts two) is almost thirty miles away. We both really love to drive, though, and I have been known to drive down to that gas station (Amargosa Valley) just to buy one of their delicious brownies. Some guy named Paul makes them, and they are the best brownies in the world. In fact, I just decided, I'm going down there today and get one. It'll be a nice little drive and then I can post a PICTURE OF IT so y'all can drool.

'49ers Covered Wagon Parade

2005-11-12T16:33:00.000-08:00

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Of all the activities scheduled for the Death Valley '49ers Encampment the only thing that really grabbed my attention was the wagon train that was supposed to be a reenactment of the perilous journey through the area of a few hapless settler families back in 1849. Well, it wasn't what I would call a waste of time, but it wasn't exactly what we were expecting, either. The covered wagons -- there were only about a half dozen -- turned out to be the 21st century parade float variety rather than anything remotely approaching authentic. And because I didn't know what direction they'd be coming from I wasn't able to be in the best location for taking pics. (They came up the Badwater Road to Furnace Creek.) And in the end, because it takes my camera so long to process a single shot and the "wagon train" was so short, I only got three pics anyway. But still, you can kind of get a sense of what it was like.

There were tons of people who came out for it; it was truly amazing. Who were they? Mostly the people who came in all the RVs and campers, I suppose, plus a sprinkling of curiosity-seekers like us, and a few other folks who just happened to be passing through. Hundreds of people were sitting around in lawn chairs. Some people parked alongside the road, hauled out their lawn chairs, popped in their western music CDs (Cool Water! Ghost Riders! Tumbling Tumbleweed!) and proceeded to appear to have the time of their life waiting for the tiny caravan to arrive. Once it did arrive, it was artificial as hell and took all of five minutes to pass by, but the crowd totally loved it, so what can I say. They'll all be back again next year, I'm sure. And so, probably, will we.
: - )

Kit Fox Hills II

2005-11-11T19:12:00.000-08:00

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Distance from Beatty: 31 miles

We went back to the Kit Fox Hills a couple days ago. It's a great place to hike because the terrain isn't real steep, and as always, there are cool rocks everywhere. Our goal was to walk up this wash (first photo) and through the hills to a point where we could get an unobstructed view of a particularly beautiful, heavily stratified section of the Grapevine Mountains. We did get such a view, as you can see in the last photo.

Tarantula!

2005-11-10T10:55:00.000-08:00

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This guy was spotted cruising down our driveway a few minutes ago. It's not the first one we've seen lately, -- we've seen several of them crossing the road between here and DV -- but it's the first one we've seen in our own yard.

We captured him and he's currently imprisoned in tupperware while I decide his fate, heh heh heh heh heh ... :-)
Don't worry, I'll let him go soon, but I may want to try to photograph him some more first. It was hard as hell trying to take his picture out in the driveway. He did NOT want to cooperate and kept running off.

TARANTULA FACTOIDS from desertusa.com:
• Tarantulas are harmless to humans and can be trained as pets.
• The Tarantula spins no web but catches its prey by pursuit.
• There are more than 800 species of Tarantulas.
• Weight: 1-3 oz.
• Length: 1-5"
• Span: 3-10"
• Sexual Maturity: 3-9 yrs.
• Mating Season: Fall
• Incubation: 6-9 weeks
• No. of Young: 500-1000
• Birth Interval: 1 year
• Lifespan: 25-40 years
• Typical diet: insects

Death Valley 49ers Encampment

2005-11-08T13:02:00.000-08:00

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Distance from Beatty: 41 miles

Every year about this time thousands of DV enthusiasts pour into the area for a days-long campout, powwow and general get-together known as The Encampment. Many, if not most, are members of the Death Valley 49ers and will "camp out" by parking their RVs and campers in one of the DV campgrounds and living out of them for the duration, usually mere inches away from someone else doing the exact same thing. The campground in the picture, across from the main DV oasis, Furnace Creek, is normally empty. This pic was taken a week before the event officially starts and shows about a tenth of what was actually parked there (which was about half of its capacity). And that's just one campground.

The 49ers have a booth set up in the Furnace Creek parking lot selling memberships for $20 a family, so I ponied up although I'm not sure why we need it other than to contribute to an org that cares deeply about what we also care deeply about. We won't be camping down there, obviously, but we'll be going down there and checking things out over the next few days to see what all's going on. So stay tuned. : )

UPDATE:
The bottom pic was taken a week later after the event was in full progress. Quite a few more vehicles had "encamped" by then.

Stovepipe Dunes

2005-11-06T06:30:00.000-08:00

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Distance from Beatty: 32 miles

"Most sediments are laid down by running water, but sand dunes are deposited by wind. It's not an accident that sand dunes form only in a few particular areas of these desert basins. These dunes occur where the topography forces the wind to drop its load of airborne sand. The sand dunes at Stovepipe Wells are a fine example of this phenomenon. Much of this sand is scooped up from streambeds in Panamint Valley and carried over Emigrant Pass into Death Valley. Winds blowing down Emigrant Canyon run into winds moving north through Death Valley. When these rivers of air converge, quiet eddies spin off in the lee of Tucki Mountain, and their load of sand drops out to form the Stovepipe dunes."
-- Michael Collier
"An Introduction to the Geology of Death Valley"

More Rocks

2005-11-05T08:16:00.000-08:00

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Distance from Beatty: 46 miles

Down the Badwater Road just a little ways south of Golden Canyon there's a gigantic wash, long and wide with walls fifteen feet high in places. The area in and around this wash is one of the best places I know for cool rocks. I've been going there for at least a couple of years, and I can always count on finding something beautiful and/or unusual.

The thing that never ceases to amaze me about the rocks here and just about everywhere else in DV is how different they are one from another even though they're lying side by side. Times a million or so! Where, literally, did they all come from? What manner of violence created them? What timeless journey brought them where they lie now? I wish I could back up history like rewinding the Tivo and watch it all happen.

Gneiss Fan

2005-11-04T12:02:00.000-08:00

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Distance from Beatty: 72 miles

Ryan was busy yesterday getting ready for a conference in Vegas this weekend, so I went down to Death Valley in the afternoon and kicked around on a fan a few miles south of Badwater. The photos are all stuff I saw either there, on the way there, or on the way back home.

It's another drop-dead gorgeous day again today, so I'm not gonna sit here writing about yesterday. I'm going down to DV again. I'll post yesterday's pics and then I'm outta here! : )

Construction!

2005-11-02T13:14:00.000-08:00

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Construction, Part 1
I'm building a wall to keep Petey in the yard, so I can let him out and not have to watch him every second. The wall is just rocks stacked up about a foot high, but since he's old and blind that's all it takes to corral him. He likes to wander around the yard, and if he bumps into the rocks, he veers off.

These rocks don't come from Death Valley, though. It's against National Park rules to take those rocks. But there are zillions of square miles of public lands all around here, and they're covered with rocks. And we have rocks all over our own land. That's one thing there's plenty of out here -- rocks!

Construction, Part 2
Every time the wind blows we lose a few more shingles, so we're getting a new roof. And as long as we're having that done we're also getting a porch on the back of the house! A porch with a roof! This is big because the back of the house faces west and gets the worst of the afternoon sun and heat, and a porch roof extending out nine or ten feet means the sun won't ever hit that side of the house. It'll make a huge difference in the way we use the house and to our whole quality of life here. There'll also be an 8'x8' section that extends out from the porch that won't have a roof, so we'll have a place to put the grill, not to mention the telescope. The front porch will also get a makeover.. where there used to be rotten garden lattice for a roof we'll have an actual roof. If things go well, this might all be done by Thanksgiving. Cross your fingers...

Afternoon Walk

2005-11-01T10:10:00.000-08:00

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Distance from Beatty: 40 miles

It was a beautiful day yesterday and we both felt like we needed some exercise, so we decide to go over to Death Valley and hike up an alluvial fan. We chose one of the fans that spills out of Tucki Mountain, a huge mountain in the middle of the valley.

Stovepipe Wells sits on Tucki alluvium, and just past Stovepipe is a rough dirt road leading to Mosaic Canyon, 2.5 miles up the fan. Yesterday we went part way up that road, parked and just walked across the fan and back, probably a couple of miles altogether across rocky, hilly, ravine-ridden terrain. Just like rocks from other places in DV the ones here have a unique character all their own. For one thing, and most appropriately for Halloween, they were dominated by the color orange, which you can really see in the first photo. Also in the first photo are the Stovepipe Dunes -- all the white stuff across the top part of the picture. And in the last photo the buildings in the distance are the oasis, Stovepipe Wells.

Halloween Rocks!

2005-10-31T06:51:00.000-08:00

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Distance from Beatty: 12 miles

These two Halloween beauties are in the middle of the Amargosa Desert.

Chloride City

2005-10-29T16:35:00.000-07:00

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From our driveway go exactly eight miles south on Hwy 95 to a nameless dirt road, turn right and drive another 13-14 miles, working your way across the Amargosa Desert and up into the Funeral Mountains, continuing on until the "road" gets almost to the top, and you'll be at a place called Chloride City.

Chloride City is a ghost town consisting of multiple mines and ruined mine-related structures spread out over a large hilly area. However, we hardly even looked at that stuff because the distant views were so breathtaking we couldn't tear our eyes away to look at the things around us. It's the best place we've been out here for Views, and that's really saying something because this whole part of the world is nothing BUT Views. But from Chloride you can see for countless miles in every direction; who knows how many square miles it all adds up to. You can see four or five mountain ranges including the infamous Yucca Mountain. You can see all the way to Stovepipe Wells and beyond. Oh, and it was extremely hazy the day we were there; I can only imagine how it must look on a clear day. (See forever?)

Ever on the lookout for cool rocks I spotted some huge pieces of schist as we were leaving, and of course I had to take their picture. I decided to put my wristwatch on one of the rocks for a sense of scale.. then I forgot to pick it back up! We were halfway home before I missed it. Now all I have is the photograph.

"Preserve your memories; they're all that's left you." -- Paul Simon

"The Desert Changes Everything"

2005-10-29T09:51:00.000-07:00

Cory Farley lives in Reno and writes a regular column for AutoWeek magazine. He wrote a great one recently that gets it exactly right about what it's like to live out here.

Check it out: CORY FARLEY'S AUTOWEEK COLUMN

"Your average Californian or Kansan thinks [s]he understands distance, but [s]he hasn’t heard even the First Rule: Never pass a gas station unless you know where the next one is." -- Cory Farley

Mud Canyon Rocks

2005-10-27T17:17:00.000-07:00

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Just a few rocks from an area of Death Valley called Mud Canyon.

Color Tour

2005-10-25T13:36:00.000-07:00

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If we were back in Ohio now -- which would suck, don’t get me wrong -- but if we were, and if the weather cooperated (and sometimes even if it didn’t) we’d have found a weekend in early October to go driving up in Michigan to look at the Fall colors. I must say I haven’t missed doing the Color Tour one bit this year, hadn’t even thought of it, in fact, until Ry heard a rumor that there were Fall ! Colors ! in the Mt. Charleston area. Hmm.. things that make you go, "This I gotta see."

Mt. Charleston is just northwest of Las Vegas, so it’s not far from us.. about 100 miles south down Hwy 95 then about a 30-mile loop up into the mountains and back to the highway. The loop road is paved, making for a super-easy drive. There aren’t that many paved roads out in this area; I think I could probably count on one hand the number of paved roads that go off Hwy 95 in either direction between Beatty and Vegas.

So, we decided to do a mini Nevada Color Tour. I threw sandwich stuff and drinks into the cooler and off we went down Hwy 95, heading for Mt. Charleston. We got down there without incident and drove the loop road, pulling over in a lay-by to have our lunch where there was a Nice View. We saw plenty of trees but not many Fall colors; the trees were mostly evergreens, and it’s probably a bit late in the season for good colors anyway. But there were a couple of spots with some bushes that had turned colors, so I snapped pics of them just to prove it.

Back out on Hwy 95 and heading north toward home we decided to check out another of the handful of paved roads leading off the highway. Cold Creek Road it’s called, and it passes right through a big ole ugly prison facility before getting into the mountains out of sight of prison, highway and, in the distance, smog-drenched Las Vegas. About twelve or fifteen miles up the road we spotted a herd of wild horses -- the first we've ever seen. They were too far away to get a decent pic, so I'm posting an inferior one. : )

A mile or so past the horses we came to a tiny settlement of fairly upscale homes. Just outside of “town” a gravel lot beside the road sported a bulletin board and 128 lock-and-key mailboxes, so I guess that’s an idea of the population, assuming all the mailboxes were being used. There were no stores or business of any kind, just homes and mailboxes. And more horses! There were horses all over the place, just roaming the streets. At least a dozen that we saw, including one that just wanted to stand in the middle of the road. All the residential streets had “Private Road No Trespassing” signs.. hmmmm, for humans or horses?

Beatty Roses

2005-10-24T10:45:00.000-07:00

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Roses do really well in Beatty for some reason. I never gave much thought to roses before, but now I seem to have bonded with the ones that came with the house. They are truly something special. Knowing nothing about them I assumed that because they're so beautiful they must be extremely fragile, but not so, at least not Beatty roses. They can take some of the harshest abuse Nature can dish out.

The pics in the Mary Forest Collection were all taken during the dog days of August when temps were over 100 every day, some days as high as 108 (42 C for you outlanders). At first I watered them once every week or two, and they did fine. Then we had a rainy day. Yep, it rained all day, literally -- not hard, just a steady, gentle rain that never let up, and after that the roses went nuts. They not only bloomed like crazy, they grew fantastic amounts almost before my eyes. It was like something out of an old sci-fi flick where exposure to the dreaded atomic radiation caused whateveritwas to grow too quickly or too large. Hmmmmm, I do live across the road, basically, from the Nevada Test Site...

Kit Fox Hills I

2005-10-22T16:27:00.000-07:00

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Today we walked up a fan in an area of Death Valley called the Kit Fox Hills. The rocks, gravel and desert pavement were gorgeous. Looking at it from far away, as in the top left picture, it doesn't look like anything special, but up close it's a whole different story.

Death Valley Rocks

2005-10-21T10:27:00.000-07:00

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Rocks are some of my favorite things to photograph, and Death Valley has more beautiful rocks than anyone could ever hope to photograph in a lifetime. These rocks are on the third alluvial fan south of Badwater. Rocks aren't the same all over Death Valley -- far from it. Mountains, thus canyons, and thus the fans that spill out of those canyons can be radically different from the ones right next to them -- and usually are. I think that when you can look at a rock, or at photos of desert gravel, and identify the fan they're from, then you're on your way to knowing Death Valley.

CLICK HERE FOR "ROCKS" SLIDE SHOW
CLICK HERE FOR "GRAVEL" SLIDE SHOW

Lake Manly

2005-10-20T08:43:00.000-07:00

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Lake Manly.

That's what they call the Death Valley salt pan when it rains enough to turn it into a lake. This pic was snapped on 21 September 05. It was still a lake when I was there five days later, but by early October the water had all evaporated. There's been a little rain around this part of the country for the last couple of days, but I doubt if it was enough to put water back in Lake Manly. But we're going down there today, so we'll soon find out.

UPDATE: Here's a pic taken today from about halfway up the third alluvial fan south of Badwater. There's some water out on the "lake" but not as much as we saw last month. The tiny silver dot in the middle of the photo is our car!

The Flat Tire

2005-10-18T10:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had a little adventure of the not-so-pleasant sort. I was toolin' down Hwy 95 going to Pahrump to pick up a few things at the store, listening to "Time Is On My Side" off the early and most excellent Stones album, "12x5," and grooving on how gorgeous the scenery was even though it was a rare overcast day. I was about 14 miles past the "Las Vegas 115" sign when something started to sound and feel Not Right. Shit! In the middle of nowhere, husband in fucking Europe, only person in Beatty I know well enough to call fucking DIED three weeks ago, and I don't have a phone with me anyway. I have a AAA card with me but no fucking phone. Shit shit shit! My mind raced through something akin to the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance), as I thought, Maybe I'm imagining it; maybe it's a rough patch in the highway; maybe it's jets flying over; damn, this can NOT be happening again.

Some of y'all know about my Flat Tire Adventure back in May. Briefly, I was on I-70 west of Rifle (gottaloveit), Colorado, and my right rear tire blew out. I had no phone, and no one stopped to help, so I had no choice but to Deal With It. I got out the owner's manual and followed the instructions to the letter, and by god I changed that flat tire. Cussed up a storm and had not one, but two crying fits when I thought I'd done everything I could and wasn't going to be able to finish the job. But you know.. when you have no choice, when getting help is not an option, when there's nothing else you can do and no one to fall back on except yourself, well, that's what you do. You just persist and persevere. You simply do not accept defeat. You keep trying and keep trying. You think of new things to try. You try the same stuff over and over, again and again, and eventually, sometimes, something works and you Get It Done. And so it was for me back in May on I-70 in Colorado.

The sound and feel of yesterday's flat was radically different from the blowout in Colorado, so at first I didn't know it was the same problem. But by the time I pulled over and turned off the engine I had a pretty good idea that's what it was because of the strong, yucky smell of burned rubber in the air. Sure enough. It was the same tire, even -- right rear. Deja fucking vu. Sigh.

Oh well, no big deal, really. I knew how to do it this time. Furthermore, kudos to me for having the foresight to throw a piece of 2x10 in the back to set the jack on. One of the probs I'd run into changing that flat in Colorado was that the jack wouldn't raise the vehicle high enough to suit me. And that was on a hard surface; the shoulders around here are all nothing but graded gravelly desert. Anyway, long story short, I changed the tire with no problema. A nice man from Oregon stopped to help me, but by then the job was done. He really really wanted to help, though, so I let him put the shredded tire up on the back door for me. SUV tires are heavy. : )

I was filthy, and I mean FILTHY after this, so I went back to Beatty, cleaned up and then drove to Pahrump to do my shopping. I was nervous about going out on a 150-mile trip with no spare tire, but whatchagonnado. There's a "garage" in Beatty that will tow people, and they have a sign that says TIRES, so I'll probably go down there after lunch and see if they have a spare for me. Otherwise, I'll have to wait until I'm in Vegas.

So, all's well that ends well. I know I should get a phone. I should. But otoh, if I'd had a phone -- especially if I'd had a phone back in May, I would have pussed out immediately and called for help, and I would never have known how to change a flat tire or that I am capable, even as a geezer, of doing it myself. It's that kind of knowledge that gives me the confidence to go off to (somewhat) remote places in Death Valley by myself. Hey, it's a scary world out there. Confidence is good.

UPDATE:
Revert's Tires roolz!
They had a new tire just like the one that fried yesterday and had my spare fixed in no time, er, flat. Now I don't have to go to Vegas without a spare. All I have to worry about is getting in and out of McCarran airport during rush hour -- Ryan's plane lands at 5:11pm. Fun and games on the Vegas freeways, wheee! ! !

Coming Home

2005-10-18T09:47:00.000-07:00

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Ryan comes home today, YAY!! I'll be driving down to Vegas this afternoon to pick him up at the airport. He's been gone for nearly three weeks gallivanting around Europe -- well okay, England, Ireland and Germany, but still. Living out of a suitcase gets old after a while, though; in his last email he said he is "REALLY ready to be home." Well, so you shall, my pet, so you shall.

Beatty Moonrise

2005-10-17T09:52:00.000-07:00

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So, I'm standing at the kitchen sink last night, and I glance out the window and see this huge moon coming up over the mountaintop. When I first saw it it was only about halfway up and looked unnaturally large, surreal really. I just had to try to photograph it! But every second counts when you're trying to shoot the moon. By the time I dried my hands, got the camera, got the camera's battery off the charger, got to the front porch, and got the camera settings where they should be, it had risen completely above the mountains and wasn't as enormous as when I'd first seen it. It was still breathtaking, though, much better in person than it looks in this photo. I took a few more shots besides this one, but the sky kept getting darker and the moon smaller.

Partly Cloudy

2005-10-16T08:29:00.000-07:00

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How 'bout this sunrise! It's unusual because of the clouds; most of the time the sky is utterly cloudless at sunrise (and most other times, too -- eatyourheartout, you BG people). But when there are clouds at sunrise the effect is often spectacular. Beatty does "Partly Cloudy" a whole lot better than Bowling Green, no doubt about it. The colors were just as intense as the photo (which was not photoshopped) suggests, with the blues and salmon-pinks looking almost unnatural, like Sistine Chapel colors, if you know what I mean. The Michaelangelo effect only lasts a few minutes. Once the sun is fully up the colors revert to their normal shades.

Beatty Burros

2005-10-15T14:29:00.000-07:00

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Speaking of burros, a couple of burros grazed through our yard this morning. These two are regulars; I've seen them many times. There used to be four of them, two large greys and two small blacks, and they were always together. But the last few times I've seen them there have only been the pair -- large grey and small black. I always wonder whether it's the same pair or a different pair. Or whether there was a family squabble, or what.

PS - Yo Fred, I took this pic while I was talking on the phone with you!

Beatty Days

2005-10-15T12:32:00.000-07:00

It's "Beatty Days" time!
Weather is sunny but windy and slightly on the cool side. I'm going to wander down later and see what's going on. Unfortunately I already missed the Bed Races, but tomorrow there's the Greased Pig Contest, so that could make up for it. None of it makes up for the Burro Race they AREN'T having but used to have until just a few years ago. That would have been something to see. It went something like this: you had to make your burro go from Point A to Point B, and once there you had to set up some kind of camp and make pancakes -- who knows why -- all according to very specific rules and guidelines, then you tore down your camp and returned to the finish line. Apparently, burros tend to be fairly incorrigible and independent-minded, and hilarity frequently ensued.

Keane Wonder Mine

2005-10-14T08:07:00.000-07:00

I had to break off writing the Petey story yesterday because the clock was ticking, and I wanted to get down into Death Valley before the shadows grew too long on everything I wanted to photograph. So, I threw a sandwich and some Diet Cokes into the cooler (and plenty of water, of course; that always goes without saying) and hit the road.

I decided to go no further than the KEANE WONDER MINE, only about 25 miles from Beatty,which out here makes it practically a Beatty suburb. I'd been up to the KWM once before with Ryan and remembered there was a nice, wide wash nearby full of colorful schist. I wanted to walk along that wash and take pictures of beautiful rocks.

It was an idyllic afternoon. When I got up there I found to my great glee that I was the only human being there, the only one for miles and miles, in fact. And the weather couldn't have been more perfect -- temps in the 90s and humidity low enough that you never break a sweat, so that even in the hottest part of the afternoon it was possible to be out in it, hiking up and down the rocky washes without any discomfort at all.

I found the wash I was looking for a little further from the parking lot than I remembered, but that was good cuz I definitely needed the exercise. I walked around in it for about an hour and took quite a few pictures, but schist is hard to photograph; I don't know how to capture the glittery effect it has. But there were plenty of other cool rocks in the wash besides schist.

When I got back to the parking lot and was still the only one there I decided to sit on the edge of the ravine there and eat my lunch while looking out over Death Valley. Since the mine sits up at the top of an alluvial fan I could also see much of the dirt road that winds up there from below. I had just finished my sandwich when I spotted the distant glint of the sun on a vehicle slowly making its way up the road. Good timing; I was ready to leave anyway.

Petey Moves to Beatty

2005-10-13T10:36:00.000-07:00

One of the first things people told us when they learned we’d brought our cat out here was never to let him go outside unsupervised. There are entirely different dangers here than back east and different predators, like coyotes, that will get the best -- in the worst possible way -- of an unsavvy house cat before the poor cat ever sees it coming. The only cats that have an “outside chance” are cats that are born and raised here, outside, and have desert street chops in their very genes.

Add to this the fact that our cat, Petey, is old, arthritic and blind as a bat, and it’s easy to understand why we don’t want him to go outside. Unfortunately, however, HRH doesn’t feel that way. He’s been an indoor/outdoor cat all his life, and he’s not about to become a house pussy now just because the Threat Level has changed to a different color. So now, instead of letting him outside (and back in, of course) several times a day, we “take” him outside and stay with him the whole time. And, oh yeah, we do it several times a day, are you kidding, this is A Cat we’re talking about. We’re just the humans here, lol.

When we brought him out here the first time, a couple years ago when we were just coming out here for vacations, he could still see somewhat; at least he wasn’t yet walking into things on a regular basis. So, when we went outside he wanted to check everything out, and we did frequent perimeter sweeps where he would slowly and carefully sniff his way around the outside of the fence that encloses much of the yard. Now, though, he’s totally blind, so he mostly just likes to go around to the side of the house (which trip can take ten minutes or more; there’s so much sniffing to do along the way) and lie in the sun. Or just sit in the sun staring out at the desert, surveying his kingdom as if he could actually see it.

Occasionally, he’ll “wander off,” which means he’ll stray -- possibly by mistake since he can’t see -- in the direction of the desert or the ditch (where he’s been told a hundred times not to go), but the slightest obstruction will usually stop him and make him veer off. Knowing this, I’ve built walls around his playpen by letting weeds grow in certain parts of the yard and placing large rocks in other spots to keep him from wandering off. It’s worked so well that I’ve taken to leaving him outside on his own sometimes and coming back in to do stuff inside the house. I always keep an eye on him, though, and I’m comforted by the fact that it takes him forever to get anywhere, so how far can he go. And if he does wander off, he’ll be standing in the weeds, no more than ten feet from the back door but utterly lost and disoriented. Then the sound of my voice tells him what direction to walk to get back to familiar turf, and everything is alright again.

To be continued...