At 8 am, no less. Imagine that.

Then the light bulb went off in my head: it was my POLOROID SUNGLASSES. When I looked over the tops of them, the readout on the camera was JUST FINE. Sigh.

We got back from Aguereberry point, and Doug met me in front of our room. Come with me, he said, there's a ring in the gift shop I want your opinion on.

The gift shop had all kinds of pawn jewelry, and a lot of it was really nice. He showed me the ring. I think it's beautiful, looks great on you and the price is excellent, I said. So he got it.

AND OVER THE COURSE OF THE NEXT FEW DAYS, MOST OF US HAD TO GO GET OUR OWN PAWN JEWELRY. Signe got the turquoise bracelet with the corn maiden. Ellen got the white agate bracelet. I finally broke down and got the gorgeous woodpecker pendant that I admired for three days. And when we left, Bill was planning to get a bolo tie slide...here it is, along with the turquoise earrings Signe got for her daughter Rhiannah. Insidious stuff, this pawn jewelry...

Anyway. Our room became party central, and of course this otter loved that. We talked about the evening, and the perennial question, Where to catch the sunset?

We decided to take the newbies to Artist's Palette for the sunset, and to hit Badwater first (one of the famous things you have to see when you come to DV) and have dinner afterwards.

You should thank me, he said. For what? asked I. For saving your husband's life, he said. Evidently there had been a rattlesnake that Doug did not see. My response? DID YOU GET A PICTURE OF IT?

He, expecting abject gratitude, was nonplussed. No, he said, I was too busy SAVING your husband's LIFE.

Sheesh, I said, or words to that effect, if he's wandering around the desert and not looking out for rattlesnakes he dserves what he gets. Sorry I missed the snake, though.

Then, a week after the trip, Mark sent his pics. Not only is there one of Doug and Bill, engrossed in conversation, moments before the Wild Snake Scare...but he GOT A GREAT PIC OF THE SNAKE.

Thank you, Mark!

The first 9 miles or so are just flat boring washboard. Then the road starts going up the mountains towards Red Pass, and it's suddenly beautiful. Rocks, plants, colors. The pass is a little steep and clifflike, but not a problem. Then you come down into the town of Leadfield (a mining town that lasted for 8 months, becuase the guys who founded it planted samples to make people want to come there; as soon as word got around, everyone left...) and then into the canyon itself, which ends at the spectacular Narrows.

You can also approach Titus Canyon from the other side, park at the entrance, and walk in to see the pretty rocks, which is fun too.

There aren't many pictures of the rocks on this trip because we took so many in the 2007 trip, you can see them there.

Now, the reason this trip has the epithet, Trying to Herd Cats, is because I was the one with an alarm clock. So every night, when we decided what we were going to do, I was the one everyone asked to bang on their door at whatever godawful hour we decided to get going. I was also the one getting everyone to the cars on time, lunches packed, water stored, all the details. And it was indeed like trying to herd cats. But it's the kind of thing I often end up doing, so it was okay.

So the night before, when we had decided on the days activities, and that we were going to try the Stagecoach for dinner, I said, okay, after Titus Canyon, we'll all do whatever we want and meet here at 5:30 pm, and take off for dinner around 6. After we got back from Titus Canyon, and people started wandering around doing stuff, I said, remember, meet at 5:30. Okay.

So I went on my hike...the guidebook said the road to the trailhead was 3.6 miles down the Badwater road, turn left on the road and go 1 mile to the trailhead. The canyon trail itself was a half mile each way.

Piece of cake, I thought. Half an hour to the trailhead, half an hour of hiking through pretty canyon, half an hour back. I left at 3:45, and told everyone I'd be back at 5:30 and reminded them all that that was when we were gathering for dinner.

So I drive down the Badwater road. There's an unmarked road on the left at 3.3 miles, but at 3.6, I'm going around the Artist's Drive hills and there is no road. I figure that the road I passed must be it, go back and turn.

The book says the road splits and to take the left hand path. The road I'm on goes half a mile and ends in a turnaround. Yes, they had changed it, so now the drive is shorter (and less likely to wash out in spring) and the hike is longer. But I'm brave and intrepid, and I leave my car, chase my hat and barely catch it before the wind takes it to the hills, leave my hat in my car, and am off on my hike. Which is now a mile in each direction, and it's 4:30...

OH MY GOD, I'M GONNA BE LATE! None of the others will ever let me live this down. After being the one who got everyone everywhere on time all weekend, and I'M LATE.

I drove not quite like a maniac, but certainly faster than I should have. I got back to the motel at 5:45, expecting to see nine pissed-off friends standing out in front glaring at me.

There was nobody in front. The door to our room was ajar...I walked in...and it was HAPPY HOUR! Everyone had decided to have a lovely drink and let me show up when I wanted to. And don't think I didn't greatly appreciate it!

So I showered and changed, Elise called the Stagecoach Casino and let them know ten of us were coming, and we went off for dinner. Which I thought was pretty good, my filet mignon was great. Unlike the beer selection, which ran the gamut from Miller to Bud to Coors...ew. Ellen and Elise had the forethought to bring three bottles of good wine with them, so by paying a corkage fee the wine drinkers got to have some good stuff. Glad they liked it.

I was not in this contingent, but Doug was. He put his clothes out the night before, I set the alarm for <shudder> 6:45 am, and he put the camera where he could get to it. Morning. Alarm goes off. I shut it off, Doug grabs his clothes and disappears into the bathroom, comes out fifteen minutes later, takes the camera, kisses me and leaves. I hear him say something to Bill, and try to go back to sleep.

7:15. Bang bang bang on my door. I get up and open it.

Jo Nell: I thought people were going to the sand dunes:

Me: They are, they've left.

Jo Nell: I wanted to go! nobody woke me up!

Me: You didn't tell anyone you wanted to go. They're two miles down the road, you can catch them.

Back Row: Tom, Doug, Jo Nell, Ellen, Elise, Diana, Signe

Doug, Diana and Tom stayed at the motel, with the intention of visiting Furnace Creek (and I think ice cream was going to be involved as well...)

The rest of us piled into Natty Bumppo and drove 45 miles north to Scotty's Castle, which was a home built in the late 20s and early 30s by the Johnsons, who were rich folks who wanted a nice vacation home. It's at a higher elevation, in a nice valley on the north of DV, with a big spring that supplies plenty of water. Construction stopped in 1931 when Johnson found out he had built on the wrong land, and by the time he got the title to the land he HAD built on in 1937, his health was failing, he had lost most of his millions, and labor and materials had gotten way more expensive. So they pretty much abandoned the place, leaving it in the care of Johnson's friend, Death Valley Scotty, who lived there until he died in 1954, telling wild tales of his gold-mining days and claiming that he had built the place with his own money and getting sued by his ex-wives, who thought he owned the house and land and wanted their share of it...

I'm a hebe, he's a hebe, she's a hebe, they're all hebes, wouldn't you like to be a hebe too? be a hebe, climb Little Hebe...

Kind of gives you the heebie-jeebies...

The rules: no points for the Jack of Diamonds, bleed on the first trick, and the Queen of Spades breaks hearts.

The outcome? I was winning for most of the game, but on the last hand Ellen pushed my score two points over hers and Jo Nell's over a hundred, winning the game BRILLIANTLY. It was GREAT.

By 7, Bill and Signe and Doug were leaving. Ellen and Elise were just about ready to go, and we are seriously hoping to see them again too on the next trip. I had been talking to Diana, and she mentioned breakfast. The hike I'm taking is only over there, I said, gesturing to the hills across from the motel, I wasn't going to leave for my hike til about 9. Why don't we try the restaurant here for breakfast and see if it's improved? Diana thought this was an excellent idea, as did Jo Nell and Tom when we mentioned it to them...all of them are from Southern California, and had only a four hour drive to get home.

Ellen and Elise have to get back to Reno (about a 6 hour drive) in time for a 6:45 pm flight home to Seattle, so they opted out of breakfast, and we all said goodbye and the four of us went to the restaurant in search of bacon and pancakes. And I have to say, having gone 4 1/2 years since my last experience at this place...IT HASN'T CHANGED. IT WAS STILL TERRIBLE.

The sausage was bland. The sausage gravy was bland. The fruit was all melon. Jo Nell said, when we mentioned breakfast, anyone can make decent eggs. Evidently these people couldn't. We think they were trying to please the palates of middle westerners and old people, but for whatever reason, it was just awful. So the Stovepipe Wells restaurant is permanently on my list of Places Not To Eat Again.

And breakfast was over. And it was time to go hiking.

I was here with a couple of friends in 1995 (back when we visited occasionally, before I realized that I need more DV than that.) Our vehicle was my high-clearance 2 wheel drive 1991 Toyota SR-5, the truck that turned into the Tacoma years later. And she was a good truck, was Red Sonja, even with just 2 wheel drive. She had been to the Racetrack and back on a previous trip, and we figured she could do almost anything. My two friends and I had a guide to roads and sights in DV that we were using, and it said that there were petroglyphs in Marble Canyon. So we set off to go there.

The part we didn't realize til later was that this particular guide was a FOUR WHEEL DRIVE road guide. So we were carefully navigating this road, which was rough but not terrible, but is very sandy, being so near the sand dunes. And we came to a curve where the (obviously) real road went to the right around a big curve, and another track cut across the short way. And being good park visitors, we knew perfectly well that one should not cut across but should take the actual road. And we did.

And when we sank up to both axles in sand, we figured out why people had been cutting across...TO AVOID THE SAND PIT.

So there we were, in the sand. No way out, we tried. We were about 5 miles from Stovepipe Wells, so I said (knowing that neither of my companions could do it) I'll hike out and get help, it's not hot (it was about 80).

Then we looked back, and a plume of dust was coming up the road toward us. Someone was coming! at the least, we could probably get a message taken to the rangers, much better than walking out in a sundress.

And a Suzuki Samurai pulled up. A four-wheel drive Suzuki Samurai. WITH A WINCH ON THE FRONT, oh my god. And when the nice gentleman who was driving got out of his car and said, do you need some help...A COLLIE DOG JUMPED OUT OF THE BACK.

Lassie! Lassie has saved us! we all said.

And he winched Sonja out of the sand and we went carefully back to civilization.

But we never made it to Marble Canyon, which is supposed to have great hiking and petroglyphs. And on EVERY SINGLE TRIP SINCE, I say, how about Marble Canyon? it's right there...and we end up not doing it.

So I was going to do it. But the thing is, after getting stuck in the sand, I was kind of scared it would happen again. All Saturday morning, my tum was rumbling because on some level I was sure it would happen again, Natty Bumppo's excellences notwithstanding. And I was going ALONE, which meant that if I got stuck I would have to get out of it by myself.

But we got back from the awful breakfast, and I packed my stuff. Put on shorts, hiking boots, a tank top and overshirt. Packed a lunch, and some trail mix and water and my guidebook in my backpack. And left.

I had told Doug, Bill and Signe that I should be home around 1, and if they got back and wanted to go out again, to just leave me a note about when to expect them. And off I went.

And of course everything went fine. And as soon as I was obviously past the area we had gotten stuck (the road has completely changed since then) I relaxed and had a WONDERFUL time.

And how did we do on our goals?

1. I hiked every day, and loved it. Sometimes a couple of short hikes, sometimes a long one. Very nice.
2. I FINALLY got to Marble Canyon, and that was great. I felt totally Dadworthy, and it was a blast doing it all by myself, once I was over the jimjams from getting there.
3. The weekend went well: our rooms were together and in a good place, they got the reservations right, the food sharing thing worked out fine (everyone brought GREAT stuff), and our patio out front was wonderful.
4. Doug wrote a lot. He was EXTREMELY GOOD about staying at the motel to get the rewrites done, and although we missed him, I was really impressed with his strength of character.

November of 2010, anyone?

Jo the Happy Hiker