/tr> <
12 Days in Death Valley
or
Leapin' Lizards! Incredible Insects!
Amazing Amphibians and Arachnids!
Fantastic Flowers!
or
What I Learned in Death Valley

Click on any picture to see it full-size.

Antecedents

So I emailed Stan Vaughn, who is the coordinator for the Death Valley trip. It turned out that it would work in with my family trip just fine, and he said he'd save me a place. There was a meetup two weeks beforehand at San Jose State, in a classroom, on Friday night March 6. This was where we would turn in our registration forms, meet each other, find out the details of the trip, and do all the beforehand stuff. I was very excited, and had no idea what to expect.

I got there early, found the classroom, met Stan and several of the other instructors who would come on the trip, and many of the students and people like me, who just come along because it's fun. I was waiting for the meeting to start, and a guy came in the door and sat down next to me. We introduced ourselves (his name was Jim) and started talking, and kinda hit it off. Stan was putting lists on the board for people to sign up for rides down and back in the SJSU van. I told Jim that I was driving my truck down and would be glad to give him a lift to Death Valley if he could get a ride back. No problem, he said, and signed up for a van seat for the way home. After that talk turned to cook groups, and we decided to be one, just the two of us. We exchanged email addresses, and said goodbye.

Jim and I emailed back and forth for the two weeks; he had been on this trip before, once in the 70s when the group stayed in Ryan, in company quarters that were like barracks, and once, last year, in Cow Creek where the group moved when the Ryan location was no longer available. It turned out that about half the group goes down on Saturday, arriving Saturday night. The nearest town with a real grocery store is Pahrump, NV, about 90 minutes away, and the SJSU staff and students do their shopping there- many of the students are new to camping, so everyone does it together and people with experience form cook groups with those who don't have as much experience, so everyone has a good time and good food.

So Jim and I decided to drive down on Saturday (because another day in Death Valley? Hell YES!) rather than on Sunday when the other half of the group would arrive. I picked him up in South San Jose on Saturday morning, and off we went. And he is a great deal of fun; we talked and laughed all the way down there, and (bonus) he could drive stick shift, so he did half the driving on the way there, and indeed all week. Awesome!

Saturday March 21
Aaaaah. The desert. The road from Olancha toward the 190 to Furnace Creek... and our first sign for Furnace Creek! And Stovepipe Wells, which is where I'll be moving on Friday.

This picture was taken at Panamint Springs, about 40 minutes from Death Valley proper. Gas at home, when we left, was about 3.19 a gallon. At Olancha, it was 3.35. Here it's 4.98. At Stovepipe Wells, it was 3.70, which is about the usual price difference between San Jose and Stovepipe Wells, but at Furnace Creek they had stopped being connected with Chevron, and so instead of gas costing a dollar or more than Stovepipe Wells, twenty-five miles away (and that was the situation last time we were here), gas there was 4.04. We were pretty happy- this is reasonable for Death Valley. Of course, I was in Pahrump and Beatty enough that I filled up there (3.35) when I could as well.
A beautiful view of the Inyo Mountains, the first of three mountain chains that surround Death valley (coming from Olancha on the 395) Jim: Oh my god, look at the price of gas here! Get a picture!
A word about pictures: All of my pics were taken with my Panasonic Lumix, which is a pretty awesome camera for a point-and-shoot. I have several other people's pictures as well- Jack Owicki had an amazing camera set, Jim had what looked like a video camera that also shot still pictures, Amber had a really good camera and, like Jack, took some amazing pictures, and Kitty used her phone and got some good shots as well. I'll mention in the page when I use someone else's pictures (and thank you all for permission!) but also the names of the images show whose they are.
The road down to Panamint Valley, and across. Jim is taking a picture of this...and the next picture is the one he took. Very nice!
These are some of my favorite hills on the way in, in the third range you cross on your way to Furnace Creek, the Panamints.
And more beautiful mountains...and we reached Cow Creek, which is 20 miles beyond Stovepipe Wells, where we were going to camp- it's about 3 miles short of Furnace Creek.
Cow Creek! We're here! it's an area with a lot of stuff: the trailer for the Death Valley Natural History Association (which was started by the SJSU group, so they have a permanent trailer here); a group of people in RVs; a few permanent buildings; the Death Valley Elementary School (yes, you read that right) and a few other buildings, like a really run-down and nasty bathroom up the hill from the trailers. Here we all are pitching our tents...oh, I don't have a tent, I'm just sleeping in my amazingly comfortable truck.
Some of the flowers that were in our camp area.

Desert Gold

Gravel Ghost

and I think the purple ones are wild heliotrope.
A beautiful sunset over the Panamints, and Jack took a nice picture of everyone hanging out after dinner. It was a lovely evening.
Setting up camp. Everyone has had dinner, and we're all hanging out and getting to know each other. Merav the ant entomologist is talking to Jim. Jack Owicki is admiring a grasshopper (they were everywhere.) And Bob the biologist, Merav and Jack all looking at an insect.
What I Learned on Saturday: My new friend Jim is awesome! we talked and laughed all the way to Cow Creek, an eight hour drive.
Sunday March 22
These hills are on the DV side of the road back from Pahrump. The closest town to DV is Beatty NV, which is very small; they get some tourists, mostly for extreme desert adventures, but the only grocery stores they have are small mom-and-pop ones...for big grocery shopping and a real store, one must drive 90 miles southeast to Pahrump, NV. Which we did on Sunday. We had breakfast and left a bit before the rest of the SJSU group. Jim and I went through the store and bought everything we thought we'd need for meals through Friday afternoon...and in hindsight, we did pretty well. In the week to come, I borrowed some olive oil and some spices, but that was it; we had everything else we needed. I took these pics from the 190 on the way back.
After we got back and unpacked everything and got ice for the ice chest, Jim and I went hiking at the Goblins' Workshop with David and Gracie, a married couple of retired doctors from Massachusetts, and Ann, who is married to Dan, one of the SJSU guys.
More Desert Gold, some mud/salt formations, and...Selfie!
Top row, from left: Ann, Jim and Grace; bottom row, David and me.
These six are Jim's pictures from that hike, of me, David and Grace. One of the great things about this trip? there are actual pictures of ME doing things! Yippee! says camera girl! Oh, and the flowers were wild canterbury bells, they were everywhere, and so pretty.
Back in the campground, the SJSU guys had just come back from Pahrump, where they had gotten a new refrigerator for the trailer...there was a trailer there on the site, where we could go inside to the AIR CONDITIONED living room, use the actual bathroom (although there was often a short line) and use a real kitchen with a sink and stove. There was a sink and cutting boards outside, but being able to use a real sink was great. Plus there were power outlets there, which got more important when more people joined us. Oh, and Sleeping in Truck girl used the bedrooms in the trailer to change her clothes, that was handy. Here's Jack's picture of a bunch of us in the trailer; Jim and I are in the kitchen, just past the woman with the ponytail, and I'm talking to Robbie the geologist and Lalou. She and I hit it off pretty well and have seen each other since the DV trip. The bathroom and bedrooms are down the hall behind Lalou; there is also a washer and dryer there...those will be important later.
Pics of the hunter-gatherer guys coming home with their catch...Amber, Jack and I all thought it was amusing enough to get photos. The third pic is four of the 'one syllable name' guys, of whom there were many on this trip- here are Dan, Stan, Rod and Bob.
And everyone is back at camp, starting to cook, and settling into the happy chaos that was evenings with this group.
As much as Stan denied being in charge, he was at least the organizer, and here he's giving the official welcome speech and letting us know what to expect all week. The shirts people wore were awesome, but this was my favorite. And someone, maybe Jack, had caught a vinegaroon!
So while we were hiking, David and I discovered a mutual love of IPAs. And (since we had two or three varieties between us in our ice chests) we decided to have an IPA tasting that evening. Then Dana and his two buddies showed up (and they were EXTREMELY amusing) and Dana had honey whiskey, which i had never even heard of. Want to try some? he said...of course I did! but all I had to pour it into was my big ol' china tea mug...and he gave me an inch of it. Which I drank. Then had another beer. Then more of that DELICIOUS honey whiskey...at which point Jim looked at me and said, you know you're basically drinking boilermakers, right? Um, no, it hadn't occurred to me...before I drank A WHOLE LOT of them...

And no, I wasn't drinking it from the bottle, in this pic I was mugging at the guys' behest.
Of course I brought games! My truck is full of them at any given time. Here Jack caught me and Jim playing Scrabble...at least until (second picture) Jim decided that any word ending in 'ite' is a mineral, no matter what the beginning letters are. His actual words were, 'If you're not cheating, you're not playing"! Ah well, so much for scrabble. We laughed pretty hard over it and ditched the game.
What I Learned on Sunday: Boilermakers are DELICIOUS when you alternate good IPAs with Wild Turkey American Honey Liqueur. Oh hells yeah.
Monday March 23
Today we started on the classes. This first day, everyone left camp at 8, or as close to it as we could get 9 cars of people on the road. Amazing to see cats herded without having to do it myself! We ended up with 2 SJSU vans with about 20 people in them, and everyone else piled into their own cars. We all drove up to Dante's View, got there around 9:15 am. Jim and I got there first- it was cold and beautiful.
Not sure what this is, I just liked the green plant against the brown rocks. Mojave Aster growing out of a rock. As windy as it was, it was still pretty hazy all week...beautiful though. We're up at 5400 ft.
Jim has his jacket and long pants on; it's pretty chilly up there. Another beautiful view. Jack caught Robbie the geologist is telling everyone about how the valley was formed. My new word: bajada. It's where a bunch of alluvial fans join onto each other in front of a range of hills and form one big long fan. We are now following a trail into the hills about Dante's View.
Jim took this one of the hills... and one of me looking intrepid! Up the hill... Rod the Botanist has taken over, and the rest of the morning was flowers!
We're on a high part of the trail from the parking lot to the ridges, and Rod is pointing out the plants and talking about the kinds that live up here. Rod, Stan and Grant were goofind around, and Jim (who stayed in the parking lot) got a pic of our group on the ridge.
More beautiful views. Starting down...but wait! Here are some Yellow Throats (guess why they're called that?) and some beautiful Desert Evening Primroses!
The primroses were kind of hard to get to, everyone had to scramble down the slope from the trail... Devil's Lettuce I love using my black-and-white filter in the desert! This is the road down, very steep and twisty at first.
More Devil's Lettuce Some beautiful Desert Paintbrush. I grew up calling it Indian Paintbrush, but times have changed... Right in the center of this pic, where the stem sticks above the bush, is a purple flower...Rod pointed that out, it's purple mustard.
A Word About Flowers:

Rod the Botanist told us all kinds of interesting things about the flowers we saw, and plant life in general around the area. I am writing this two months later, with my complete ignorance of all things botanical sticking out all over me, looking the flowers up in my guidebooks. So anything I say here that is wrong is entirely my fault, not Rod's. He was awesome and it was a joy to follow him around and find out about stuff I knew very little about.

Find the Ladybug! I think this is bristly-flowered langoisia These look like larkspur, maybe Parish's Larkspur
Another Yellow Throat, and a closeup of the blossom. This is a Desert Dandelion. According to Rod, each petal has a seperate ovary, and if you pull out a petal you can plant it and it will grow. Very cool! Desert Gold. These were everywhere.
We drove down from Dante's View, stopping every 2 or 3 miles, and at each altitude, the flowers and plants were different. We'd all park on the side of the road, and pile out and start looking for stuff. Rod would talk about whatever he saw or whatever people brought him, and it was great! More yellow throats. They were so pretty! This might be a desert sunflower...not sure. This is the kind of area we were walking through looking for flowers; you can see some in this picture, but most of them you had to go out and look for; some were tiny!
Desert Pincushion. ??? Gravel Ghost with <insect> inside it. No, I'm not looking up all the insects, flowers and animals are enough. It's probably a wasp, and that's as close as I'll get. Although being with so many entomologists, my appreciation of insects has gone up quite a bit, I have to say... The boys found an anthill and called our resident ant expert, Merav, over, and here she's telling them about (I think they were) harvester ants.
Here are the ants they were looking at. I have no idea in the world what these two plants are... and here's what we stopped to see this time, a beautiful ironwood.
Rod is telling us all about the ironwood. More Devil's Lettuce. I do love these names! This is a jumping cholla, so called because...see all the spines in the ground around it? they are so fine as to be almost invisible...but everyone who came within 2 feet of this cholla was finding them in their shoes and socks for days afterwards; people think the cholla jumped at them or threw the needles, but they actually fall around it and stick into almost everything.
Boudika, my awesome truck. The line of cars parked by the road while we wander around looking at stuff. A nice Mojave Aster Another view of the ironwood bush.
Ironwood. It was really pretty. I think these are both Desert Evening Primrose. Jim got this picture of a lizard, possibly a side-blotched lizard.
My pic and Jim's close up of the buildings in Ryan; this is a working mine just outside the DV border. The SJSU group used to stay here, but moved to Cow Creek a while ago. Jack Owicki has an interesting insect! Just pretty.
Another fun shot. Another kind of Evening Primrose Still talking about plants... Amber got a great shot of an inchworm that one of the students found.
Another insect! I think that's Stan holding it. He describes himself as an entomologist specializing in anything that bites, stings or itches. We stopped at Furnace Creek on our way to the salt flats. Ice cream and cold drinks! Desert in b/w. Another gravel ghost.
Desert Five-spot We have come to the salt flats and parked off the road, and now everyone is walking toward them... Dan is taking pictures of a cluster of Desert Five Spot. It was great to be with a bunch of people who understand that you have to take the time to get the picture right... More Desert Five=Spot. This stuff was everywhere, and was GORGEOUS.
This is some kind of phacalia... and here is a cool insect in a flower.. More discussion of plants that can grow here...this is brittlebush, I think. And I'm ready to go trucking across the salt flats!
In fact, we all went our own ways to see what we could see; Jim caught this pic of the group against the mountains. This gives you a better idea of the size of the salt flats there... and here's Jim, ready to go exploring! Pretty amusing: here are our vehicles, pulled off the road while we go out on the salt flats. Within half an hour, twice as many other vehicles had stopped and people were coming out to see what we had stopped for...
The salt flats and the mountains.

Something was eating me alive...I let one land on me and walked over to Jack and said, what the hell is this? He took it off my arm (which it was trying to chew off) and said, it's a deerfly, see the jaws? If you look closely, you can see its bitey parts against his shirt. The bites I got on these salt flats from the deerflies were worse than mosquito bites, and I got 8 or 10 of them. Yowch!

And here I go, deerflies notwithstanding, across the salt flats...!
These are some of the pictures I took of the surface of the salt flats, which was extremely interesting. It had rained about three weeks before, and there were places I stepped into mud an inch deep; other places were solid salt.
Jack is telling us something interesting about the rock and salt... A horsefly larva, stuck in the salt. My shoes have mud on them up about an inch from the soles from the salt flats having been rained on so recently Our home away from home, Cow Creek!
As I was walking out of the salt flats toward the truck, I realized that Jim (whose camera was a video camera that also took snapshots) was filming me...it was part of the bunch of pictures he gave me, and it made me laugh, so I included it for your viewing pleasure.
And we're back! time for dinner and hanging out. Jack taught the two boys how to catch the ubiquitous grasshoppers and did an impromptu insect class for them; the boys were awesome- they ran around waving their nets and trying to catch the things without knocking into anything, pushing anything over, or annoying people. What wonderful kids!
Monday was also the night I was ready to start charging my camera batteries. Power outlets were few and far between; by jury-rigging a bunch of strip plugs to the trailer power (and it overloaded a couple of times) just about everyone was able to use an outlet a day. I was going to plug in my camera battery charger...except I couldn't find it. I tore the truck apart three times, then called Doug. Yup, I had left it at home, so every night I had to plug my laptop in on the kitchen counter in the trailer and hook my camera up to it to charge directly...thank goodness for the trailer!
What I Learned on Monday: WAAAAY more about plants than I can remember, and that deerflies are my mortal enemies.
Tuesday March 24
Morning has broken! This morning was kind of laid back; the SJSU group goes to Death Valley Elementary School once per year and this was the morning; since DVE was literally ten yards away from our campground, we could take it easy. Dawn was beautiful, and in DV I'm not so resistant to getting up early to see it.
DV Elem is for kids in fourth grade and under: children of rangers, workers anywhere in the park, Timbisha Shoshone kids, and there was even one girl whose family are the caretakers at Ryan, the mining town on the way to Dante's View. Last year there were evidently two kids, so having seven this time was a big class. They go from September to June, and school starts at 7 am so they're out by the hottest part of the day when it matters.

Each of us introduced ourselves, said where we were from and what we did for a living; then the kids introduced themselves, as did the teacher. Then Bob started pulling science books, toys and games out of a box; they were gifts to the class. These are the pictures of our visit there.

The other nice thing was, after this visit, when some of the women asked if they could use the school bathrooms, the teacher got the janitors to leave them open at night for the rest of the week; this helped IMMENSELY, since the ones up the hill were pretty awful, and there was usually a line in the trailer.

After we got back from DV Elem, we all piled into cars and vans and drove to Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, and Bob the Biologist took us around and showed us all kinds of things. We started at Jackrabbit Spring, where there are pupfish (and we saw pupfish in four different places on this trip, all different kinds of pupfish.) Bob is leaning on the fence post above.
And by the way, I'm walking with a thorn in my toe; I was stupidly wearing sandals that day, thinking we would be on paths and boardwalks (which is what it was like the last time I was at Ash Meadows), and getting out of the truck I stuck my foot right in a big ol' bush with huge long thorns, one of which went into my toe; it hurt like crazy for about an hour, then subsided and I was fine for the rest of the week with a band-aid over it. Friday night I pulled a half-inch (no joke) thorn out of there...
Pupfish! They're about an inch long, this is way zoomed in. And the spring lake was deep, twenty feet or so, although the water was very clear. Now we're walking back past the cars to look for a plant that Rod the Biologist wants us to see...
So we walked around...Rod said they were low to the ground, and would look like a lump of dirt. And we looked... And...wait a minute! here they are! The Ash Meadows Milkvetch. Found nowhere else. Ash Meadows has a couple of dozen species of animals, plants and insects that are endemic.
A cool looking tree, and some corkscrew mesquite seeds.
We went to the Point of Rocks boardwalk/info/picnic site, had some lunch and spent an hour or so walking around the boardwalk. This sign made me hopeful but I didn't see any. But I did see... This cute little guy! a side=blotched lizard. These telescopes were at the end of the boardwalk, and the kids who were along on the trip started looking through them; the mountains in the distance are big-horned sheep habitat.
Then they found a jumping spider, and Jack went over to see what it was...you can see him getting his amazing camera into place... and here it is. OMG what a cutie! Here is Jack's page of nature photos from this trip, they are gorgeous. The mountains where there were supposed to be big horn sheep; I never saw one, but Ben (who had very sharp eyes) did. Jim saw a bunny!
Then we went to the Devil's Hole Pupfish Habitat...it's almost impossible to take pictures of, it's just a tiny crack in the rocks that goes WAAAY down. when some imprudent divers (in the 1960s) broke in and went down into the water, they got sucked under and their bodies were never found. It goes hundreds of feet down and joins other aquifers extremely far away; they get water movement from seismic events in Mexico. The Devil's Hole Pupfish (all 35 or so of them) live in shallow water above a bench of rock that projects into the pool.
Another side-blotched lizard, but Jim got a good shot of his adorable face. Black and white landscape. A beautiful flower, looks like a rayless daisy.
On the way back to the cars we sidetracked for some beautiful flowering beavertail cactus!

Then we drove out to Crystal Lake, which is a man-made lake. Developers were going to turn this area into another Vegas, and built this lake and had big plans...until the Devil's Hole Pupfish were discovered, and they were kicked out, and it was made a wildlife refuge. Now at the Ash Meadows Wildlife Refuge they have thirty or forty species of animals, plants and insects that are only in that area, and are protected.
So we're at the lake, and Bob and Stan are talking about schistomatosis and skin parasites (which the lake is full of) and how they are brought here by ducks and snails and what they do to people so we shouldn't go in the water... And then we all look over there, and Ben is in the water! He said he wasn't worried, they don't actually do anything to people, just burrow under your skin and then die and come out; there's a section missing from their life cycle that humans can't provide. But we were all very amused! David and Grace The group at the lake
I'm pretty sure this is a wolf spider. Beautiful scenery. The new museum and nature center! they weren't here the last time I was at Ash Meadows in November 2013. A rock (in a wall) that Robbie the Geologist was very excited about, and I can't for the life of me remember what she said...
Three displays from the museum, all pretty self explanatory. Notice the two views of Devil's Hole, it's wide one way but very narrow the other.

The crayfish had been in Jackrabbit Spring, but I never got a pic of one. They're bright red and very cute, given that they're an invasive species.
Then I went out and walked around the boardwalk; the spring out behind the museum puts out 200 gallons of water a minute, and there's all kinds of wildlife living around it, including yet another kind of pupfish. The third picture is about the city that didn't get built because of the Devil's Hole pupfish.
Looking back at the museum/nature center.

Sunray flower.

Yes, that's a FedEx truck, delivering to the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. (It had just left the museum.)

And then we all piled back in our vehicles to go to Travertine Point. Jim and I were talking and laughing so much that when the convoy stopped, we looked around and said, where the heck are we?
We figured it out soon enough, we were on the 190 just inside the park boundaries. Robbie wanted to show us Travertine Point, which is in a canyon the SJSU people called Liberty Canyon. I had hiked it before, and my hiking books call it Pyramid Canyon (for Pyramid Peak, which is over it.) I asked three different rangers, none of whom had heard of any of the three names, although we did find Travertine Point on a hiking map. Go figure. I'm still calling it Pyramid Canyon. It's the one with the old car in it, which is kind of a landmark.
Here is the canyon... And what's that under that big rock? WOO HOO! It's a CHUCKWALLA! my favorite lizard. This guy is about 18 inches long, and Jim is the one who saw it. The full frontal face pic is Jim's, the other is mine. Dang, he was cute.
Apricot mallow Lesser Mojavea Wild canterbury bells Looks like a coreopsis with some kind of insect on it.
This is the travertine that Travertine Point is named for. Pretty canyon wall. This car is a landmark, someone was kind enough to take my pic. Not bad! This is a serial number that was on it, I just liked the look of it.
There was also quite a lot of blooming cactus in this canyon! here's some beavertail, the center pic of the three is Jim's, the other two are mine. Ben is exploring...
California barrel cactus Me, Ben and Bob in the background Blooming desert trumpet (the flowers are tiny, about 1/4 inch, and the wind was blowing; this was as well focused as I could get them.) I think this is rock ivesia.
Tiny Mojave Mound cactus. Dick, Bob and Jim heading back to the cars. Really pretty rocks.
Another blooming beavertail cactus. Bigelow's Monkeyflower, my favorite! Panamint Daisies. Not a flower at all! A very handsome lizard!
A fishhook cactus with a tiny fruit. The cactus was about 4 inches tall, really adorable.

Back at camp, I'm mugging, and about to give Dick one of my Lagunitas IPAs just because he's so cool.
What I Learned on Tuesday: Never wear sandals in the desert unless you know where you are walking is safe for them. Corollary: LOOK WHERE YOU PUT YOUR FEET.
Wednesday March 25
I had crates with camping equipment and food; we put all the open stuff in ziplocks, but the apples were just in the crates. Evidently one of the birds (I think the mourning doves) figured out how to get some noms by pecking through the crate! I just cut it off and ate the apple. A BEAUTIFUL morning. The group was doing a bunch of stuff, and Jim and I joined them for a while, then split off. Artist's Palette. Robbie the geologist is telling us about how the rocks got to be these colors. And it is awfully pretty!
although I think the colors are best in the evening, with the full sun on them... We stopped in a place on the road out of Artists Palette, where Robbie talked more about geology...but we all wanted to climb up to the chair rock. And everyone took pictures of everyone else sitting in it! Jim caught Lalou...
and me! Here's a hill that everyone referred to as 'Mars', right where Artists Drive joins back on the main road. We all got out and walked around looking at the landscape features, pretty cool!
Then we all went to the Devil's Golf Course, and everyone wandered around. These are bumpy mud rocks with ice crystals growing out of them...they look like snow, but they are hard and sharp. Walking across them can cut hiking boots to ribbons (no joke) and if you fall on them (as one student did) you get a nasty set of parallel cuts.
After the Devil's Golf Course, Jim and I took off. We stopped at Badwater for restrooms, checked our maps, and went south to find Willow and Sidewinder Canyons, a double hike that I'd had on my list for a long time. They are about 40 miles south of Badwater, on the same highway, and the description in the hiking book of how to find them was not very good; we went too far, realized it and turned around, then coming back slowly found the road leading to the trailhead, about two miles before the guidebook said to look for it.
Bye, Boudika! See you later...we hope! So this is the first hike- the parking area is a strip of paved road, and the two canyon trails lead from each end of it. See the trail winding in and out of the right edge of this picture? that's the way we went. See the huge wash that fills the left side of the picture? That's the way we SHOULD have gone... Jim and I are going up a wash, as we should be... and the wash goes into a canyon...okay...we're looking for Willow Canyon, so this is fine...
But then it got narrower and narrower, and looked like it was just going to end. Jim climbed up one of the sides of the canyon. It ends just ahead, he said. So I climbed up too.
Sure enough, the canyon ended. This is not what we expected...we walked across the top of the mesa...and there was a dark wall across a huge wash. That must be it, I said, and I guess we were supposed to follow that wash instead of the trail that looked like the right way...but there was no way to climb down from where we were. So we turned back, had gorgeous views of the valley,
Rock daisy and...down the canyon... back out of the wash... and back to the truck for lunch.
It's a beautiful day. As soon as we got back, we saw where we had turned wrong...we'll be more careful with the next hike, we said. So we start up the trail from the other end of the parking area. There were two other cars there, btw, although we hadn't seen anyone all morning. So Sidewinder Canyon starts out as a wash and ends up as a steep canyon with other slot canyons entering into it. This pic is where we almost turned into the wrong canyon AGAIN...but I brought the guidebook and the description didn't sound like this...plus right where Jim is, there's a HUGE arrow made out of rocks pointing at the trail to the west...so we took that. An interesting bit of tree.
And we are indeed in the right place! It's narrowing down...here's Josie Looking Sexy On Rock (part of a series) and Jim is checking out one of the slot canyons.
This was a beautiful hike, I would so do it again. But it was taking a long time; We got about 1/4 mile from the end, were at a pretty steep part, looked at our watches, realized that it would take about 2 1/2 hours to get back to camp and get showers and dinner, took a selfie and turned back. Oh, and here's what Merav told me is a brown beetle.
Seriously, she said, it's a boring name but that's what it is. And we saw pretty rocks and canyon walls, some desert rocknettle, and we're almost back at the truck, hot and very tired.
Some of the beautiful melty ice cream hills on the way back. Which gave us an idea, and we stopped for ice cream at Furnace Creek! yum. We were the first ones back to the campground; I chilled while Jim went and took a shower (I had tried them on Monday, they were awful- swimming pool showers, expensive and crowded.) And here is, I think, the culprit who had been eating our apples.
What I Learned on Wednesday: Read the guidebook VERY CAREFULLY or you may get on the wrong trail...
Thursday March 26
Jack was walking around with a scorpion in a plastic bucket for everyone to see; after oooh and aaahs he let it loose. The Timbisha Shoshone are the native people who have always lived in Death Valley; during the summers, they'd go up in the canyons, many of which have year-round springs (as you'll see when you get to the other set of pictures from this trip!) We visited their headquarters and a lady who was one of the group of decision-makers for the tribe spent an hour telling us about the past and present of this group. They're one of the few Native American tribes who are still on their own tribal lands, although they don't have access to all the places they used to go; they have reservation land in five seperate places in California and Nevada that the US government has agreed to return to them, and there are negotiations happening all the time. Interestingly enough, she said the tribe did talk about opening a casino but there aren't enough visitors...whew. That's a scary thought, really. On the other hand, several of us agreed that a nice campground might be just the thing...it'll be interesting to see if they do anything like that. These baskets were on display in their administration building. Then we all went off to the Mesquite Sand Dunes.
A chrysalis on a mesquite tree. Animal tracks on the sand- a pocket mouse, some kind of beetle, and lizards.
Party time! everyone was walking here! Creosote seed pods. They went from blooming to fruiting in the week I was there. Up close, really beautiful. Sand ripples. I like the patterns.
Beetle tracks. The mud playa that the sand dunes are piled on; the mesquite trees send their roots down through the dunes to find water that collects on top of this stuff whenever it rains. It was a gorgeous day, although pretty hot, probably got up near 100 degrees at noon...I left the group and went wandering off on my own.
And who is this beauty? Bob the biologist told me afterwards that this is a Desert Crested Lizard. I took one look at her eyes and immediately dubbed her Elizardbeth Taylor. The other group saw one too. Tracks crossing by a burrow...
These are Jim's shots of animal tracks and also the Desert Crested Lizard the rest of the group saw. I don't know how Jim always manages to get such great expressions on lizards...
Two more Jim lizards; I love the second one! We had moved on to Mosaic Canyon; I'm not sure where he saw these two lizards. It's a really beautiful day! Yay for hiking! Jack's pic of a bunch of us coming up the canyon...
and it's lunch time! Yay! we all found shade and had what we had brought, then spent the next hour hiking around the canyon.
Lovely rocks and a Desert Trumpet. Dick and I hiked a ways up the canyon together...for the first time, I went on the trail on the ridge to the right, and there's a WHOLE OTHER TINY CANYON there; I'll have to go down in it next time. Here's the new (to me) canyon. And here's Dick, hiking along with me. He was so much fun!
Mosaic Canyon. An augen, an eye shaped formation in metamorphic rock. Thanks for the new word, Robbie! Lalou and Merav having lunch. Did I mention what a beautiful day it was? hot and lovely. I am pining for it as I type this...
Then most of the caravan stopped at the general store at Stovepipe Wells (where I was going to move the next night, into the motel complex there) for cold drinks and ice cream. Turns out they have TAKEN OUT THE COOLER WITH THE BLUE BUNNY ICE CREAM BARS that they used to have, damn them! all they had was soft-serve ice cream that the guy behind the counter was saying was only made from the best ingredients...tasted awful to me. Give me Blue Bunny any day. I had a cold orange juice...and I saw several people in the group drinking cold beer...now, you all know I like beer as well as the next two or three people, but even the thought of drinking alcohol in that heat (it was over a hundred that day) just made me shudder. After we had all had cold stuff and found the bathrooms, we went on to Salt Creek.

Salt Creek is a seasonal creek; winter rains make it fill with water, and a whole ecosystem with migrating birds, frogs, and pupfish (yes, more pupfish) springs into life for a couple of months; the rest of the time it's just a few soggy pools and dry vegetation. Since it had rained about three weeks before, Salt Creek was full of water and boy fish chasing girl fish.
The road to the creek; looking ahead, you really wouldn't think there'd be running water and fish coming up, would you? Here it is, and there's a boardwalk to keep people from damaging the wetlands. A pupfish! This is a male, about an inch long, brightly colored, and they were swimming around like crazy. They mate, lay their eggs in the mud and die; the next rain makes the eggs hatch and it starts all over again. Jack taking his amazing pictures.
Another pupfish, not colored, so maybe a female. The light on the water was pretty too. The SJSU group coming down the boardwalk... and everyone started looking in this hole...
yes, this hole, which has...wait for it... a lovely sidewinder in it, trying to sleep while we all peeked in at him. This is Jim's awesome picture showing his face and horns. You can just see him saying, Go away, can't you see I'm trying to nap here? Jim's pupfish picture. So then we were walking back to the cars, and there were not only deerflies (remember, they think I'm yummy) but ginormous HORSEFLIES. And Jack and Jim were about 10 feet behind me and were laughing their heads off because the horseflies would pass them up to land on me and start chewing. And they kept saying, there's one on your back now! to see me flap my hat at it. And Jack took a picture of it. Thanks, guys. You'll get yours.
Back at camp. Here is a Ralph in the tree; there weren't as many Ralphs as we usually see in Death Valley; I don't know if it was because there were fewer, or because we came earlier when there was still enough food around that they didn't have to beg from the tourists. Anyway, always glad to see him.
So back at the camp, I went to Stan. There's a washer and dryer in the trailer, I said, and I have six more days here; can I do a load of laundry or do I have to go to Furnace Creek and use their laundromat? Hm, said Stan, you know who you should ask? Talk to Dan, he's the incoming president of the DV Natural History Asso, and they own the trailer.

Okay. So I went over to Dan, same question.

Dan: You should ask Stan.
Me: I did, he told me to ask you.
Dan: um...
Me: Can I bribe you with a beer?
Dan: Make it two and you've got a deal!
Me: Done!

And I ponied up, then trotted off and did a load of laundry very happily.
This was my last evening with the group...they were all staying til Saturday morning, but Friday night I was moving over to Stovepipe Wells. So we all had dinner, and talked, and there was birthday cake for Alison, who turned six that day. And Alison had brought story dice, a set of nine dice with pictures that you roll, then tell a story about the pictures. And we had so much fun with that! first a few of us, then a few more, til there were about a dozen people sitting in a circle passing them around and telling stories. Then Dick joined us at the last, and instead of telling some kind of fanciful made up story, he used the dice to tell us about him and his wife hiking the Santiago de Compostela trail in Spain. It was a lovely evening, and I was sorry to see it end.
What I Learned on Thursday: Even going places you've gone a dozen times is fun and interesting with good people, especially if you find out new things when you do it.

ALSO: The barter system. It works.

Friday March 27
On Friday, the SJSU group planned to go to the ghost town of Rhyolite in the morning, hang out there a while, then take the drive through Titus Canyon; I have done both of those many times, and Titus Canyon, although beautiful, takes hours. I was going to meet my family at the Stovepipe Wells Village around 4 pm, and I needed to go to Pahrump for supplies.

So I decided that I'd go to Rhyolite and check it out, then leave from there and take the 95 to Pahrump, get there around noon, and back to Stovepipe Wells around 3 pm.

The last time I was in Rhyolite was in 2012, and it was pretty sad looking- there was orange plastic fencing everywhere, the bottle house was uncared for, and the beautiful mosaic couch was coming apart and had holes in it. I was hesitant to go back, fearing that the general dilapidation would have continued...but I was pleasantly surprised. The BLM had done a lot of work to make Rhyolite look good. The plastic fencing had been replaced by barbed wire, better looking but still keeping people out of the unsafe buildings; a couple of the buildings had been left open for people to poke through; the bottle house had been restored, as had the beautiful couch. It was a very nice visit, and we all walked from the top to the bottom, meeting up again at the Goldwell Open-Air Art Museum.

Rhyolite, by the way, was a boom town that hit its peak of 10,000 people in 1910, went bust soon after that and was pretty much deserted by the '20s. It's a whole lot of fun to walk through, from the train station all the way down to the bottle house. The Goldwell Art Museum is at the end of town, as is a really nice cemetery (the Bullfrog-Rhyolite cemetery) which I didn't visit this time.
Daylight Pass Road to Beatty, and some views as I walked up through town (I parked at the bottom by the art museum, walked up and met the group as they arrived, and we all walked down at our own pace.)
More buildings, a blooming Joshua tree, and Robbie the geologist walking off to look at rocks.
Flowers! More Devil's Lettuce, another Desert Dandelion, more beautiful scenery with abandoned buildings, and yet more Desert Dandelions. They were really beautiful.
Lots more buildings, and a couple of pictures of Gracie and David wandering around in them.
A ruined wall with beautiful rocks A grating near the bottle house A section of the bottle house itself This is the garden/village that one of the bottle house caretakers built for his daughters; it's made of found objects and glass from the deserted town.
A closeup of some of the beautiful glass that's in the village the caretaker made. The rest of this row is found objects that are on display around the bottle hosue.
A wonderful old derelict pickup truck.

There was a pile of burned lumber, and some of the sides had this great shiny mosaic-looking pattern.

I have no clue what this is...maybe chinchweed? but I don't think so.

Then we were at the Goldwell open-air art museum, and of course the couch drew us like a magnet. Someone was kind enough to take my picture on it.
And more of the artworks; I loved this buckyball with ceramic and rock faces around it.
A new ghost! Very nice. Some of the SJSU crowd hanging out talking. A shoe tree! and an actual sign for the museum.
People milling about the town And another reptile friend has come to say Hi! A Great Basin Whiptail. Guys looking at the sculpture.
And then it was after 10 am...and time for me to leave for Pahrump, which was 90 minutes away. I hugged everyone goodbye, and Stan said I was family and had to come back and join them again. And I will.

It was so hard to get in my car and drive away...

But wait! you may be asking. I haven't seen any pictures of Jim from Friday. What happened to him?

He, Ann and Dan, Sherry and Gary (I am not making those names up, they are actual married couples, and very nice people too) rented a jeep from Farrabee's and went off to explore Warm Spring Canyon. Here are some of his pics from that trip; I did my shopping, met my family, then came back to Cow Creek at 4 to pick him up and bring him to the motel which had SHOWERS and A REAL RESTAURANT. And he and Doug sat out for three hours talking about stuff and drinking whiskey. And there were real beds that night. It was lovely.

But I still miss my SJSU family.
 
The Death Valley Adventure of 2015 continues on The Family Trip page!