A few weeks ago I took a weekend camping trip in Death Valley with son Ian (who was born unto me some 28 years ago). We had made an earlier trip to Death Valley in February 2019, in which I proceeded to drive the car into a snowbank moments after Ian handed over driving duties. (I may dig up that story and post it on this site on an upcoming Throwback Thursday).
Anyway, as I said, we recently made another trip into Death Valley, and this time, mercifully, we didn’t encounter any snow. Ian says that Death Valley is one of his favorite haunts (har!), because of its unique landscape: sand dunes, slot canyons, mountains, playas, etc. “Nowhere else have I found such a seemingly desolate area with so much to look at,” says he. The other advantage it has these days is the almost complete lack of humans. There’s no need to wear a Covid mask in Death Valley, because there’s no one else there! So, after fortifying ourselves with some bacon maple doughnuts from Sidecar, we set out for the northern Mojave Desert.
Death Valley is a unique, impressive place. It hosts the lowest spot on the continent, at 282 feet below sea level. It holds the record for the hottest temperature on the face of the earth (134 degrees in 1913). It covers 3,000 square miles of variegated landscape, as Ian noted. It’s downright inhospitable, and yet its stark desolation has its own kind of beauty.
Leaving LA, we headed up the eastern Sierra on US 395, and took state route 190 to cross over the Panamint range. Eventually we dropped into Death Valley, where we found ourselves surrounded by….nothing.
The slow, twisting drive through the arid landscape was oddly relaxing, and the lack of cell service strengthened the sense of liberation from our sublunary cares. In the mid-afternoon we came to a simple, remote crossroads known as Teakettle Junction. It’s unclear exactly how it got its name, but at some point people took to hanging teakettles from the sign.
Not far from Teakettle Junction is the storied “race track.” It’s a dry lakebed that now amounts to a large, perfectly flat oval of dirt surrounding a rock outcropping. The oval resembles a racetrack and the outcropping evokes (for some) grandstands.
But it’s the mysteriously moving rocks that are what the Racetrack is famous for. Scattered about on Racetrack are large boulders that have scraped long, straight wakes into the dirt as they evidently scooted across the flat lakebed. The cause of their movement was a mystery for many years, but a few years back some scientists installed GPS units on a handful of the rocks to track their movements. (I’m not making this up.) The researchers, who referred to their project as “the most boring experiment ever,” described their findings in a jargon-laden journal article, essentially concluding that the rocks get moved by wind when thin ice covers the ground.
As the sun began to drop behind the Cottonwood Mountains we decided to set up camp back near Teakettle Junction. “Camp” amounted to a relatively flat clearing beside the road. No wood fires are permitted in Death Valley, so we used a gas-fueled fire bowl to cook our dinner and keep ourselves warm as we sat in the dark drinking Japanese whisky. When it came time to bed down, Ian slept in a sleeping bag under the stars. I opted for the illusory safety of a small nylon tent to protect myself from the jackals. Ian insisted that no dangerous beasts would bother us, but I remembered the last time I camped in Death Valley I awoke to the sound of a jackal devouring some hapless animal right next to my tent. In the morning Ian pointed out there were no tracks or any other evidence of a nighttime visitor. But I read The Hound of the Baskervilles, and I know about spectral beasts.
The next morning we headed out to Ubehebe Crater. The crater, whose name is taken from a Paiute word that sounds to me like the name of Obi-Wan Kenobi’s wife, is enormous: about 600 feet deep and half a mile across. As we hiked around the rim I was thankful it wasn’t mid-summer.
Next we headed south toward Badwater Basin (the lowest point in North America). Now, the sites of Death Valley are separated by vast distances on slow, dirt roads. So this is not a place where you rack up a large number of separate stops each day. Instead, you just let the immensity and desolation wash over you as you slowly move through the national park.
Along the way encountered the remains of the Harmony Borax Works.
As we all know, borax is a naturally-occurring mineral that historically has been used as a key ingredient in detergent and other household products. Borax was discovered in Death Valley in 1881, and a few years later the Harmony Borax Works was constructed to refine the ore. The refined product was shipped out of Death Valley on those 20-mule-team wagons that have become ensconced in the lore of the Old West.
Continuing on through Badwater Basin, we came to Devil’s golf course, whose name, if you refer to the accompanying photo, is self-explanatory. The sharp, jagged surface is composed of decaying salt formations.
Also during our drive through Badwater Basin we spotted a marker for Bennett’s Long Camp. We’d never heard of this before, and between the plaque and (later) Wikipedia, we put together the story of the Death Valley Forty-Niners. The story takes place in the fall of 1849, as the California Gold Rush was in full flower. A particular group of folks from the midwest arrived with their wagons in Utah, and decided it was too late in the season to try to cross the Sierras. (The remembered the tragic example of the Donner Party just a few years earlier.) So they decided to instead go around the southern end of the Sierras, enter California though the Mojave, and then head up to the goldfields through the Central Valley. What could go wrong?
The short version is that the group split into several smaller groups, and tried different “shortcuts.” But unreliable water sources, weakened oxen, and other challenges almost resulted in catastrophe. Miraculously, the Death Valley Forty-Niners made it to civilization with only one death. And as they were headed over the Panamint range toward their salvation, one of them purportedly looked back and said “Goodbye, death valley!” And the name has stuck ever since.
Ian and I eventually ended our camping trip and made our own trip back over the Panamint Mountains. When we got back down to the Panamint Valley we discovered a bright green mailbox sitting in the middle of nowhere, with a sign suggesting that it was connected with aliens somehow. As I’ve mentioned in other posts, there’s something about being in a desert wilderness that inspires unusual artists.
We made a final stop in the nearby ghost town of Ballarat. It was founded in 1897 to serve the nearby mines in the Panamint Mountains. The population (once as high as 500) declined precipitously after the mines played out in the early 20th century. Ballarat experienced brief notoriety in 1969 when Charles Manson and his “family” set up a camp here.
These days Ballarat has a population of one: Rocky Novak, who claims to be the mayor. We saw him sitting on a chair in front of his house/general store. I’d highly recommend you invest five minutes seeing him in this short documentary:
We made it home with only one incident: A blowout a few miles after we left Ballarat. The tale of the Death Valley Forty-Niners kept our setback in perspective, and we were thankful for a spare tire, cell service, and an ice chest full of beer.
Chasing Phantoms 