Scubabunny & The Captain

From Furnace Creek, we moved to the north end of the park, to the Mesquite Spring NPS campground. To be fair, it was windy as hell when we were there, but it was way more peaceful & relaxing and had a lot more ambiance than the other campgrounds in the park. There’s only about 30 sites, but they are large, with at least some bushes around them, making you feel like you have some privacy. The other campgrounds in the park (that fit trailers or RVs) are literally parking lots, you just back into your stall. Mesquite felt more like a typical NPS campground, in the best way. The 2 attractions at this end of the park were both day trips, well at least 1/2 day trips. The first to Eureka Dunes and the second to The Racetrack. I would highly recommend not trying to do these both in one day. The mileage to each doesn’t seem like much, but when you take into account the quality of roads, they are not the most comfortable of drives. Both roads in one day would probably leave you with a migr...

For those of you that know about wildflowers in the desert, there are events known as superblooms that can happen. You get the right amount of fall rain, add in the perfect amount of spring rain and just the perfect temperatures and the blooms abound. Well, I’ll break your heart now...this was NOT a superbloom year! However, knowing how tenuous life is in the desert, I was seriously on the hunt for  any  blooms I could find. I just wanted some proof of life in such a harsh environment. I can’t keep anything green alive, with exception of a single Christmas cactus, so anything blooming & green attracts my adoration. I think Gav was initially bored by my perpetual search for flowers, but even he eventually got on board and spotted a few pops of colour that I had otherwise missed. My first reward of the hunt came from attempting to find a hike that was recommended by a friend of Gav’s, up Hole In the Wall valley. Instead of the slit canyon that was supposedly at the end...

From our base camp at Furnace Creek, we actually visited a couple of spots that are sort of closer to the middle of the park. The Keane Wonder mine, which just reopened last November, and the Fall Canyon Hike, recommended by one of the rangers. It turns out we didn’t really take any pictures of the canyon, only the wild flowers that I spotted (saving them for another post). The canyon was pretty typical of most in the park, steep walls and a gradual climb in elevation until you decide to turn around. Your hike into Fall Canyon ends at a dry waterfall, which actually had a sprinkling of water on it the day were there. Only we go to the desert and get rain! Anyway, it was pretty, but not mind-blowing in any way. I think we ended up hiking over 7 miles and climbed about 1700 foot. The other cool thing near this canyon, if you’re up for a 1/2 day trip, is Titus Canyon Road, which is a 4WD/high clearance one way road that travels 24 miles west, ending at the trailhead for the Fall Canyon ...

Death Valley...the lower end Well, I thought Mojave National Preserve was big. Death Valley is HUGE!!! We spent 6 days in the park and stayed in 3 different parts and, man, were they all really different. Death Valley is a park of extremes, from 272 feet below sea level to over 11,000 feet. We managed to top out at 9,064 feet on this trip. From sand dunes to salt flats to straight up desert...Death Valley has it all. We started our stay in the Furnace Creek area, which is in the southern end of the park. There is a natural spring in the area, so it has long been inhabited by the Timbisha Shoshone Native Americans. There is still a community of about 50 tribal members that live in this area. The history of the Timbisha in the 20th century is, as is typical for colonization, extremely sad. The US government essentially ignored the fact that Death Valley had been their homeland for centuries and only in President Clintons time did they finally get back official claim to their nati...