We decided to take a weekend trip to the west side of Death Valley to see the Racetrack and a few ghost towns. We left after work on Friday night, knowing that we would get to our lodgings, the Panamint Springs Resort, late. After a quick drive to Pahrump, we enjoyed a sumptuous meal at the local McDonalds. Fast food it was not. The place seemed confused and therefore slow. Then on to Death Valley. We made it across Death Valley to Panamint Springs uneventfully.
We awoke to a bright, sunny spring day. It was cool but not cold. After a hearty breakfast at the resort restaurant, we took off to Stovepipe Wells and the ranger station to find out about the condition of the roads to the Racetrack. The roads were in "good shape", so we drove on to Ubehebe Crater. We hiked part of the way around Ubehebe Crater to the trail for Little Hebe Crater, leaving just as a busload of tourists arrived. Good timing. The hike was up and down, but not very hard or long--2 to 3 miles total, with shortcuts of you didn't want to go that far.
The road to the Racetrack is unpaved and rough, so anyone taking it has to know they want to get there. We passed one car on the way and encountered a jeep retracing the road to find out where he lost his spare tire. We had seen it in the middle of the road and moved to to the side where it would not get run over. We told him how far back he had to go to get it. There were about 10 cars and trucks,at the racetrack, but many of the occupants had gone on hikes. We never had anyone near us at the Racetrack.
The racetrack is a playa abutted by granite hills on the southeast side. Rocks fall from the hills onto the playa. Some rocks are pebbles, some are small boulders. If the rock has high enough a profile, under conditions that continue to be argued, the rocks move across or back and forth on the playa. No one has ever seen them move. But people have measured their movement. An you can clearly see the tracks they have made in the playa. Some move in a straight line. Some move in a gently curved path. Some go out and come back at a sharp angle. Almost all of this movement takes place in the south end of the playa. This end appears to be lower than the north end, so gravity has some effect. Most people agree that the wind speed needed to move the rocks exceeds any wind speeds on earth. Most people also agree that ice sheets forming on the playa somehow cause the movement. But no one can come up with a mechanism that works well to explain the movement. Every so often a flood wipes out the rocks trails and the tiling of the playa, so scientists and interested souls get to start over again in their explanations.
We lunched on a rock formation (limestone) in the middle of the racetrack called the Grandstand and then walked down to see the rock trails. It was all very interesting, but I have no explanation for the rock's movement. It is also very quiet out there. It was quite pleasant, very much worth the afternoon.
On the way back we stopped at the Death Valley Dunes. They were nice in the days light. We did not walk out there, having been there before, but enjoyed them from the road. We drove back and enjoyed a late dinner outside at the resort. It was cooling off by 9:00pm, but it was still pleasant to sit outside.
The next morning we awoke to cold and rain.The season had changed on us overnight. But that did not stop us from visiting areas of interest to us. After another breakfast at the resort, we took off. But because of the weather we stuck to either paved or well maintained unpaved roads. At least they were supposed to be maintained. First we drove to Darwin Falls. While there was a lot of action there, there were no falls. Even though it was raining. What we got to watch was the park helicopter herding burros into a chute so that they could be tested for health problems and either returned to the wild or put up for adoption. We enjoyed the hike through a wash with a permanent creek, but, as I said, there were no falls.
Our next stop was to drive to Darwin. As we increased in altitude, we lost vision. We were driving right into the clouds. There was no view to see from any of the ridges.Finally, we broke through the clouds and got to the cutoff for Darwin. The town itself is small and quaint, trying to keep the old time flavor while attracting just enough tourists to survive. The old mine and the company town, the ghost town, was fenced off. It looked like a dreary place to live.
So we took the road from there to Ballarat. We got there in the drizzle. The store was open, so we wandered around it for a bit. Then we went to the cemetery and then walked around the buildings. This was a real, decayed ghost town. The tiny jail was interesting, as were the habitations still standing. We spent a while wandering around in the cold rain. Finally, we took the road back to the heart of Death Valley. We went past Wildrose and over Emigrant Pass. That is where winter fully intervened. It started snowing on us. It made the winter desert beautiful. Finally, we descended Emigrant Canyon to a level below the snow. It stopped raining at that point. However, it was getting late, so we started home. The snow hit us again at Mountain Pass between Pahrump and Las Vegas. Our Death Valley trip, in two days, allowed us to see two seasons!
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