We made it all the way from Baton Rouge, LA to Navarre Beach, FL today and had a bit of time to walk on the beach and swim in the pool before cooking burgers for supper.
This is essentially the end of our 2012 trip and we hope very much that you’ve enjoyed sharing it with us. Please drop us a note if you have a moment and let us know what you thought of our posts. I might post one more time with some “out-takes” but maybe not … you might have to wait for our next trip to see some more pictures.
Who would have thought that we’d climb higher than Mt. Washington, NH in Texas? Not us, but we did. Big Bend National Park is an incredible place, full of surprises at every turn.
We’re staying outside the park at Lajitas, TX, just down the road from Terlingua. It aspires to be a full-featured resort with all the amenities you could imagine, including a nice RV park, but it seems to have fallen on hard times, just like everything else around here, changing ownership several times over the last decade or so. But we like it. Our a/c is running when we return to the park for siesta around 3 pm when the temperature is approaching 100 degrees.
Our first hike was about 2.4 miles up the Lost Mine Trail with an elevation gain of about 1100 feet (remember, we all have geezer cards from the NPS…we’re not youngsters!). The scenery was spectacular with clear views up to the peaks around us right from the start of the hike. The views evolved as we hiked and gained a higher perspective on the peaks rising well above 7500 feet. And of course, the views down into the canyons were stunning as well.
We all felt the effects of the higher altitudes than coastal Florida but we persevered, huffing and puffing, and reached the summit.
That was yesterday. Today we drove out the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive, a nicely paved road, to the Rio Grande River and more surprises.
First we stopped at the Sam Nail ranch with its adobe ruins and dilapidated structures including a nice old windmill. Amazingly, there was one windmill still operating, pumping water up to the surface where the birds enjoyed it immensely.
We also hiked out to the Lower Burro Mesa Pureoff, a short but pretty hike ending with some spectacular geology but featuring some nice flora along the way.
We saw many interesting sights during the day and took pictures of most of them. But cutting to the chase, our day ended with a visit to the Rio Grande River and the spectacular escarpment on the Mexico side, and then some expert off-road driving by Susan Amanda to get us home.
It is not really a castle and it was definitely not Scotty’s. Scotty was promoting his bogus gold mining venture, based on a couple of nuggets that he had purchased in Colorado, and enticed Albert Johnson to become an investor. The two men formed a life-long friendship.
Construction began on the Death Valley Ranch, aka Scotty’s Castle, in 1922, and cost between $1.5 and $2.5 million. A man named Walter Scott born in Cynthiana, Kentucky, also known as “Death Valley Scotty”, convinced Chicago millionaire Albert Johnson to invest in his gold mine in the Death Valley area. By 1937, Johnson had acquired more than 1,500 acres (610 ha) in Grapevine Canyon, where the ranch is located.
After Johnson and his wife made several trips to the region, and his health improved, construction began. It was Mrs. Johnson’s idea to build something comfortable for their vacations in the area, and the villa eventually became a winter home.
Unknown to the Johnsons, the initial survey was incorrect, and the land they built Death Valley Ranch on was actually government land; their land was further up Grapevine Canyon. Construction halted as they resolved this mistake, but before it could resume, the stock market crashed in 1929, making it difficult for Johnson to finish construction. Having lost a considerable amount of money, the Johnsons used the Death Valley Ranch to produce income by letting rooms out. The Johnsons died without heirs and had hoped that the National Park Service would purchase the property, and in 1970, the National Park Service purchased the villa for $850,000 from the Gospel Foundation, to which the Johnsons left the property. Walter Scott, who was taken care of by the Gospel Foundation after Johnson’s passing, died in 1954 and was buried on the hill overlooking Scotty’s Castle next to a beloved dog.
The springs of Grapevine Canyon provided the water supply for the ranch and were used to generate electricity. The springs, located about 300 feet (91 m) higher than the villa, generated enough water flow and pressure to turn a Pelton wheel, which ran the generator that furnished the villa’s electricity. The springs provided enough water to meet all the needs of the ranch, with enough left for other uses. A water fountain was constructed in the Great Hall, where water dripped down a rock face creating evaporative cooling and into a catch basin for recirculation.
Text is adapted from Wikimedia.
The U.S. National Park Service gives guided tours of Scotty’s Castle for a nominal fee. Park rangers dress in 1930s style clothes to help take the visitor back in time. During the tour, guests are treated to the sounds of a 1,121 pipe Welte theater organ. An underground mystery tour is also available for those wishing to see the inner-workings of the building. One-quarter of a mile of tunnels run under the building, where visitors can visit the powerhouse and see thousands of tiles that were to be used for the never-finished swimming pool.
Pete Aguereberry was born in 1874 into a Basque family in France. At an early age he read about the wonderful gold discoveries in California and begged his father to let him come to the United States. When he turned 16 his father relented, and Pete sailed for America in 1890.For the next several years he struggled to learn the language while taking on a number of jobs. He worked as a handball player, sheepherder, cattle driver, milk truck driver, ice delivery man, ranch hand and stage driver until he wound up in Goldfield around 1902.
He came out to this area in 1905, and in June of that year he almost died trying to cross Death Valley in summer heat. He was found and nursed back to health by Oscar Denton, the caretaker for the Greenland Ranch, and just a month later was headed up to Ballarat with Shorty Harris. Along their journey Pete found a ledge that looked promising, and indeed it contained free gold. Pete filed claims for himself on the north side of the hill while Shorty took claims on the south side.
By August, at least 20 parties were working in the area and samples of the gold were assayed as high as $500 a ton. Three hundred men and women settled into the camp which became known as Harrisburg. Originally Pete and Shorty had agreed to call it Harrisberry, but Shorty changed the name in telling the story about it. Water was brought in from Emigrant Spring, Blackwater Spring and Wild Rose Spring.
By 1907 the Eureka mine was tied up in a litigation battle that ended in 1909 when Pete got control of the claims. Pete worked at the mine from 1907 until the early 1930’s when his health was failing him. Except for some help from his nephew in his later years, the Eureka mine was built and worked by Pete alone. Pete died on Nov. 23, 1945 and he is buried in Lone Pine, California.
Below is a picture of me on the hike up to the Eureka Mine and below that, several pictures of what is left today of the mine. Narrative above is from NPS material.
In his later years Pete would take visitors on a tour of his mine and what he called “The Great View” of Death Valley. If you follow the road further on, you will reach this view. It was later named Aguereberry Point in honor of Pete.
Yesterday we drove south through the Mojave Desert to Joshua Tree National Park. It is chilly here at an elevation of about 4000 feet but the view down into Yucca Valley through the joshua trees is very impressive.
But before any reporting on JTNP I have some pictures to post from Death Valley where we seldom had an Internet connection. For a few days we were able to use the unsecured network of a fellow camper who had a Hughes satellite link but when he left, we were out of business.
In an earlier blog I posted a picture of the five of us at Teakettle Junction. Here’s another picture from that spot and then some pictures of the mysterious sliding rocks.
The Racetrack Playa is six miles below Teakettle Junction. It is a dried lakebed surrounded by rugged mountains and its geometric patterns seem to stretch forever. Aside from its stark bright color and perfect flatness, the most notable feature of the playa is its rocks. They obviously must tumble down from the mountains but then something takes place that no human has ever observed directly. They slide some distance across the playa. They leave definite tracks from sliding, not rolling, and many of them are too square to roll anyway. Sometimes they change direction, leaving sharp angles in their paths. So it is easy to see the evidence that the rocks have moved, but even the park rangers have not been able to acutally see the movement. But I think our team solved the mystery of the sliding rocks. Last picture was taken by Sue Caron.
You think gas is expensive where you are? Here’s the prices at one of the only two gas stations within about 90 miles of our campsite. Breath-taking, isn’t it?
It seems as though everyone out here has an antique fire engine. The hardware store in Beatty, the Jeep rental place in Death Valley, and here’s the one at Stovepipe Wells RV Park in Death Valley.
Here’s a picture that we took yesterday out at Teakettle Junction, more than twenty miles from the nearest paved road.
From there we proceeded six miles down to the Playa to photograph some of the mysterious sliding rocks. We also spent some time poking around the remnants of the Lost Burro Mine. More on that later.
Hi, everyone. We’re now in Beatty, NV for the day to do a lot of laundry. There are no washing machines in DVNP that we could use, but there is a lot of blowing dust, dirt and sand, so we had to drive about 70 miles up out of the valley, over the mountains, to this little town. We stopped at the chamber of commerce and learned of a vew RV park that has a public laundromat attached. So here we are and wonder of wonders, there also is a nearby Sprint cell tower so I can connet to the Internet.
Here are a few random pictures taken over the last week.
This good Samaritan found Sue’s purse at a remote historical marker and rummaged past the credit cards, money and so forth and found my cell phone number. He then called us in the truck and we were extremely lucky to be in one of the very small areas where a connection could be made. He waited at the marker with the purse as we raced a couple of miles back up a dirt road followed by a huge plume of dust. He had peeked at the driver’s license and demanded that Sue tell him her date of birth before returning the purse. If she had flunked the test, he said that he would have mailed the purse to the address on the driver’s license. They were very concerned that we might have flown to Las Vegas and wouldn’t be able to board the return flight without picture ID.
More later as connections permit. We’ll probably leave Stovepipe Wells RV Park on the 20th but we’re not yet sure where we’ll head from there. Perhaps down to Joshua Tree National Park.
This is my favorite picture that I’ve taken so far…the salt flats at Badwater Flats, DVNP. We walked quite a way out onto the rock-hard salt at about 280 feet below sea level.
One of the prettiest canyons that we’ve encountered so far is Mosaic Canyon which takes its name from the abundance of multi-hued conglomerate in the canyon walls. Some of the rock is polished as smooth as Vermont marble and has a similar veined pattern to it. The hiking was easy with firm footing except on a few highly polished rocks. I think the pictures tell the whole story by themselves.
We hiked out to Darwin Falls, a very surprising spring-fed waterfall in the desert in the south part of Death Valley National Park. It was an easy hike with sure footing (except for creek crossings), little elevation change, and a short distance. The road into the trailhead was bad enough that I used 4-wheel drive which I seldom do. Most of the trail followed the creek and its lush vegetation with frequent crossings aided by logs and stones in the creek bed.
The falls themselves certainly were no match for Niagara or even Bash-Bish on the NY-MA border but they were a worthy objective in the desert. Apparently the water flows here all year long unlike some snow-melt supplied falls.
Next we drove off into the desert west of the Panamint Mountain Range looking for the Panamint dunes, an infrequently visited part of DVNP. The time was two o’clock. The road was rough and dusty but quite passable at low speed. About five miles from the paved road we saw three tents quite some distance apart and also saw the dunes in the distance. Since what was left of the road curved away from the dunes, we parked and began hoofing it towards the huge piles of sand. After about a mile, we met a husband and wife team of hikers returning from an all-day hike to the dunes. I asked them to use my camera to take a photo and they produced the result below.
The husband clearly was concerned that we were setting out late in the day and quite diplomatically pointed out to us that his own trip to the dunes had taken all day with a 9 am departure from near where we had parked. We smiled and thanked him and then he added the information that the sidewinders were now out of hibernation and we should watch out for them. I think he really wanted us to return to the truck.
We marched on for awhile and finally got to within about a mile of the dunes. But not before seeing some interesting man-made additions to the landscape.
And even a native inhabitant who was almost perfectly camouflaged.
We reached our turn-around time, took some pictures of the dunes, and then hiked back to the truck as the sun sank in the western sky.
Sunday our day began with leaving the park towards Beatty, NV and then a long drive out into the desert on a rough dirt road to cross over the Grapevine Mountains back into DVNP. The road itself was a dramatic feature of the trip, with banks on each side from plowing operations that plow fallen rocks much as one would plow snow in NH. The cleared road then has been reduced by tourist traffic to the most severe washboard that you can imagine. In the picture below, the tiny yellowish crescent at approximately the center of the frame is in fact the road up ahead as it climbs to Red Pass through the mountains.
The road was replete with fantastic scenery with towering rock formations and mountain peaks on all sides. The first hint we had of civilization (other than the road, of course) was a very primitive miner’s hut that has survived since 1927.
We parked the truck nearby and spent some time looking around the abandoned buildings and mining structures. Apparently the mining opportunities in the area were grossly oversold on the San Francisco stock market and never really were based on anything more than high hopes and speculation. At any rate, as can be seen from the size of the tailings heap in the picture below, there was some considerable effort expended digging into the mountain in a quixotic search for riches. We saw many mines in the immediate area but the one shown below was by far the largest. The entire history of the town lasted less than a year and the USPS post office established there earlier was closed in 1927.
After leaving Leadfield we stopped at Klare Spring which is still flowing and supporting the growth of some wild orchids. There also was abundant scat from bighorn sheep and Jon followed a trail of the stuff some distance up a rocky slope hoping to find the sheep. No luck. Then we entered the very narrow Titus Canyon where we had to fold the mirrors on both sides of the truck flat against the truck in order to fit through. We stopped in one wide spot to enjoy our lunch.
Friday, March ninth, we took our first hike in Death Valley, up Golden Canyon to Manley Beacon. The trailhead is right beside the main paved road and there was plenty of space for our truck. We set out full of vim and vigor and headed up canyon to the famous peak in the middle of the golden badlands that we had viewed the day before from Zabriskie Point.
We took our time, poking short distances into side canyons just to see what was there. We saw interesting conglomerates in some of the walls and a variety of shapes and colors that wouldn’t quit.
As the trail approached Cathedral Canyon we headed off towards Manley Beacon, the most prominent peak in the badlands. This trail soon became quite strenuous as we climbed up the flanks of the soaring rock formation. Huffing and puffing we neared the intersection with the Gower Gulch Trail and decided that with water running low, we should return to the truck. We had a leisurely stroll back to the trailhead, stopping frequently along the way to take many pictures that will remind us of our day in Golden Canyon.
Wow! Drop-dead gorgeous scenery greeted us as we coasted down the highway from Pahrump, NV into Death Valley, CA on Thursday, 3/8/2012. Every way we looked we were overwhelmed by scenery that looked nothing like Punta Gorda, Wilbraham or Ft. Lauderdale. We went from about 2600′ to 282 feet below sea level in just a couple of hours. Of course, we stopped for the obligatory tripod-self-timer shot at the entrance sign.
Since we had taken a fairly leisurely departure from Terrible’s and then spent more than an hour at Walmart, our immediate priority on entering the park was to find a place to park two big rigs and have some lunch. We found Zabriskie Point and what a find it was. We were able to park and were treated to more mind-numbing scenery.
We then found our campground at Stovepipe Wells Village. Our sites are pretty level, necessitating only a couple of boards under the wheels on one side of the trailers and they have full hook-ups (electricity, water and sewer). We’re a very short walk to the general store and located fairly centrally in this huge park (more than 3,000,000 acres). Our view in one direction is the Mesquite Sand Dunes with the Grapevine, Panamint and Inyo mountains on either side. Wonderful!
There have been two big obstacles to posting more often: each day some problem seems to crop up and take a chunk of the schedule away from us (yesterday it was our a/c) and the Internet connection here is intermittent at best. I’ll do the best I can to keep you informed.
Well we made it across the continental divide somewhere in New Mexico, through high winds and blowing dust in Arizona, into the Pacific time zone in California, and now we’re camped near Las Vegas, Nevada. The picture of our Kodiak in New Mexico was taken by Sue Swanson as she followed behind us down I10.
We spent a “terrible” night in an oasis in the desert and will see to provisioning at a grocery store this morning. Then we’ll head down into Death Valley this afternoon.
I’ll try to post some pictures from the valley as connections permit. I think I’ll be limited to finding an electrical outlet in the lobby of a motel so there might not be many opportunities.
After some hard driving for a couple of days, we rewarded ourselves with a day in the park with no transportation other than our feet and our bicycles. The chilly morning was a shock to us Floridians at just 27 degrees and Paul’s pipes froze so he had no water until about 9 am when everything thawed out.
We had a wonderful time doing odd jobs such as topping off tire pressures, installing new bicycle seats, reorganizing all the storage in the Kodiak, trying to fix the tongue jack, etc. But we also went for two wonderful bike rides, one along the river on a dirt road and woodland paths and the other on the paved park entrance road. 
We saw a lot of cactus and other Texas flora, of course, and also some burros and sheep on a farm adjacent to the park. We didn’t see any of the turkeys that made the park famous but it really was the wrong time of day…we need to get out at sunrise to catch the colorful birds strutting their stuff.
Here’s a picture of our campsite. 
This park did a great job of laying out fairly level sites with lots of buffer space between them. It wasn’t too difficult to sit at the picnic table and imagine that we had the park to ourselves. On Saturday night, no less!
I wonder if Walt Disney had something to do with the landscaping?
Roberta also enjoyed rooting around behind the campsites.
We’re now camped in South Llano River State Park near Junction, TX about a hundred miles along Rt. 10 from San Antonio. It’s a serene little place, a sharp contrast to last night’s stay in a noisy Walmart parking lot in Breaux Bridge, LA. We’ve seen very little of the park as yet because we arrived late and then had trouble with the Kodiak’s tongue jack. Just finished dinner at 9 pm.
Here’s an updated map showing the states that we’ve covered so far on our trip. I’ll get some pictures here at the park tomorrow and post one or two of them.
We left the house a bit after 7 am, stocked the refrigerators, pantries, etc., hooked up and left Port Charlotte at 9 am. Both trucks and trailers checked out ok (tire pressure, lug nut torque, oil levels, etc.) and had full fuel tanks.
We stopped at a rest area to switch drivers in both rigs at about 11 am. The rest area was frustrating since there were lots of vacant car slots but nearly every over-sized RV slot had a single car in it, blocking its use by the intended customers (us). But we did find places to stop long enough to trade places in each cab.
We stopped for an RV galley prepared lunch around 12:30. As you can see from the photo of the rest area parking lot, we are NOT the only folks seeing America in RV’s. Ours are the two white trucks approximately in the center of the picture. But we did enjoy a “home-made” lunch and got underway again a bit after 1 pm.
Three o’clock found us searching for gas and diesel and as a result somehow or other wandering around a hospital and medical center parking lot and road system. We narrowly avoided driving under the EMERGENCY canopy and managed a U-turn in an office area then proceeded to the Shell station out on the main road. Whew! We took on fuel and then headed back out to I-75 for the final few miles up to the big “eye-one-zero” as we’ve been told the sourthernmost route west is called.
After just 22 miles on I-10, we detoured off to Suwannee River State Park where we all broke out into song. Really. But then we saw the campsite. Oh well, we won’t do that one again although we love the park and would return to a better campsite (stay away from site #9…terrible site in every way).
Tomorrow we’re anticipating an early start and three more states.
