Death Valley

March 15  Weather hot in Death Valley up to 90 + at Furnace Creek in the shade.

March 15/2015 Winter in Furnace Creek - temperature 90degrees F in the shade at 11:30 am

Tour Bus to Death Valley - had air conditioning and 2 coolers of ice water

While attending the Monaco Rally we took advantage of a site seeing tour setup by the group to Death Valley National Park.   We wanted to ride the motorcycle out through the Park but always wondered how hot and parched we would get spending the day out there.   Have you read about the 49ers' crossing Death Valley ?  You know in 1849 when the California Gold Rush was on; pioneers thought they would take a shortcut across this area (which they later named Death Valley after few made it). 
 
The infamous Death Valley Wagon Train. The worst tragedy was the Donner Party in 1846 with a 90 wagon trains of emigrants, half of them starved to death and some survived till rescue only by eating the bodies of the dead.

 
With those old western TV shows rolling around our heads ~ on the tour bus we went!  We would get to see the 300 mile park loop and not have to worry about driving home and being tired.   If we get time this week we will go back and do a couple of the hairy rides up the canyons with the motorcycle.

At first glance driving into Death Valley it appears forsaken and desolate but there is an unusual natural beauty and geographical extreme.  Many of the stops are aptly named - at Dante's View you can see the

Telescope Peak in the distance, snow on top.  Walking on the Badwater Basin lowest point.

highest elevation in the park being Telescope Peak  11,043 feet and the lowest elevation at Badwater Basin which has a small spring fed pool of where accumulated salts make it undrinkable;  it is 282 feet below sea level and the lowest point in North America. 

about 3/4 of the way up there is a sign "Sea Level"  282 feet below we are walking

When we got out to look around you had to look way up on the side of the canyon for the white marking of "Sea Level".  

Devil's Golf course

 Devil's Golf Course which in a 1934 tourist guide book it was stated 'that only the devil could play golf on such a surface'; there are gnarled crystalline salt spires dotting the landscape that look like a coral reef run a muck.

Zabriskie Point

Zabriskie Point is a popular lookout of wildly eroded and vibrantly colored badlands. (Zabriskie was a VP of the Borax Company in the early 20th century). 

$1 and a Borax box top got you a model 60 years ago

Remember the 20 Mule Team Borax company?   They mined and transported millions of pounds of Borax out of Death Valley by mule teams to the nearest railroad spur which was 165 miles away in Mojave.  Billy actually had a model of the 20 mule team when he was a little kid.  His parents sent in $1.00 and a box top and was mailed back the model.

here is the real deal = the wagons used for the mule team plus the water tank

Ubehebe Crater is a 770 foot deep steam explosion crater that is about 1,000 years old.

Ubehebe Crater

Furnace Creek is where you will find the Visitor's Center for the Park and where the Timbisha Shoshone Indians have their native homelands.  In the summertime the campground and lodging facilities are shut down due to the extreme heat.  Death Valley is recorded to be the hottest place on earth 134 F degrees recorded at Furnace Creek in 1913, it has been noted to have had ground temperatures of 200 F degrees.  

Scotty's Castle

At the north end of the park is Scotty's Castle which is really Death Valley Ranch and not Scotty's but a wealthy friends' Albert Johnson.   Scotty was a big talker who played at being a cowboy in the  Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.  The winter ranch was built in 1939 for the Johnson's who used it only 6 weeks a year to vacation in the winter, meantime Scotty Walker let on to everyone it was his castle.  The National Park owns the premises and provides living history tours of the ranch. 
There is still so much more in Death Valley to see.  There is the unusual phenomenon of moving rocks in a dry lake bed.  Unexplained.   That place is 29 miles down a dirt washboard road.  Maybe kept remote by the Park ?  If so we agree that it should be, few visitors make it there. 

this is a picture from the Visitor's Center of the Racetrack Playa and the moving rocks, they wiggle and jiggle and slide across the perfectly flat bed