Home

We arrived home late last night.

We left 6 1/2 months ago and traveled 12811 miles.  Hiked 420 miles in every type of terrain--mountains, deserts, plains.  Starting from January 2012,  after I got my foot repaired, we have hiked 1250+ miles.  We have several blog entries about hikes that will be added as time permits. 

 

We are happy to be home!

 

Mojave Desert: Copper Cove

This was one of our favorite places ever.  Rich with history and solitude.

See us?  We are the little white dot in the exact middle of the photo.  And yes, it really was that beautiful.

It wasn't easy getting there, though. We had to travel over roads that required SUVs, pickups, or 4-wheel drive vehicles.  There were several off road camping spots that we couldn't get to because, even though we have 4-wheel drive, our camper limits the amount of roughness in the road we can tolerate.

Besides the unparalleled beauty of the spot, this particular area is rich with old mining towns.  For several days we explored these, going in all directions for several miles.  Ghost towns, really, showing evidence of many years of prospecting, digging, and living.

 

There were a lot of outhouses in these small communities--one per community.  One of them had a two-seater.  I had heard of two-seaters, but had never seen one.  I guess people back then enjoyed each others' company a lot, because it's difficult to imagine sharing an outhouse with someone else.  Maybe I'm just too fastidious.  

 

We followed an old mining road one day to its end.  In contrast to most of these roads, there was no mine.  There was this old, and unusual grave site.  We tried finding out who it was, but there was no mention of him on the internet.

 

OK.  I'm sure these were left here later, but wing tips?  For those formal occasions where work boots just won't work?

 

This is sort of a famous spot--Riley's Camp.  Interesting that the sign was painted over a sign for Concrete Driveways are Best.  

Back Country Camping in Death Valley National Park: Hikes to Canyons

After several days at Mesquite Springs campground, where we dropped the camper and drove to several places for hikes, we drove a few miles up Death Valley Road to a wide spot where we could do "backcountry" camping.  We had tried to get up other roads to do this, but were unsuccessful. 

One might not think of our spot as being a good camping spot, but it actually was.  We had six or seven cars per day pass on the road, and for the rest of the time it was ours.

We stayed several days.  In that time, what we did was explore canyons that were within a mile.  It was a lot of fun because we didn't know what to expect, there were no hiking trails, and we were all by ourselves.  We had a blast.

Here is our "site:"

See us?

Here are some photos of our hikes:

Hike to a canyon in Death Valley National Park

For one of our hikes we decided to head west out of our spot in the Mesquite Springs campground and travel up to a small opening we could (barely) see in the hills.  It appeared that we might discover an interesting canyon there.

Like most hikes in Death Valley, they are more difficult than they seem they should be.  What looks to be flat desert is usually an illusion.  Instead, there are washes to climb into and out of that appear seemingly out of nowhere.  This means you are not walking in a straight line toward your goal, but are moving around a lot, and sometimes even backtracking.

We were heading for a spot in the middle of the next photo.  

 

Specifically, this spot:

 

Three and a half miles, with a lot more elevation gain than it looks like it would be. 

   

And what we found is an large opening between the hills.

 

Beyond the opening to the canyon was another valley.  We could have explored it too, but knew we had 3 1/2 miles back over rocky terrain.  It was a fun.

 

Back we went:

We create a loop hike in Death Valley

Last year we had a great time discovering a spring hidden deep within Death Valley.  We also explored the area above the spring, and found a pass through the hills to the other side.

We wanted to explore the area on the other side, but ran out of time.  It was on our definitely-to-do list for this year.

And we definitely-did-it, and in the process found a way of making a terrific loop hike out of it.  This year's loop hike is shown in the bubbles on the map.  The gray lines are last year's hikes.

And found an area we want to explore next year.

We set off across the valley floor to the opening we found last year between the hills.

After exploring behind the hills for awhile, we climbed one of them to get a look around.

We saw the beginnings of a rock-filled wash heading down, so decided to try it.

We knew, from experience, that sometimes one can get far down into one of these rocky washes and reach a dry fall that can't be climbed down or around.  When that happens, you have to painfully crawl all the way back up and find another route.  But that's the fun.

As we traveled down, it gradually dawned on us that the hills we were viewing appeared familiar.  And sure enough, we had worked our way down to Graybill Springs.  We failed last year in our attempt to find a way through the springs and onto the other side of the hills, but not this year!


At Graybill Springs:

Death Valley National Park: Unexpected problems with the Dually

Death Valley.  One of our favorite places.

We had spent a lot of time, and money, on a 4-Wheel Drive vehicle specifically for this park.  Last year we learned that there were back country camping spots on roads that required 4-wheel drive.  So, we bit the bullet and changed pickups, even though our F-250 was practically new.  You only live once, and we know that life at our age can change on a dime.  Do it now or regret it later. 

It was the right decision.

But, oddly enough, not for Death Valley.

A bit disappointing, but only a bit because it had served us extremely well in other places.

What was the problem?

Well, first, just before we arrived, it rained.  Hard.  And a lot of those back country sites are on unmaintained dirt roads.  We were going to go 8 miles up one of them our first night there, and only made it 50 feet before we came to a small lake.  It's 4-wheel drive, not a boat.

So we spent the night in one of the two large campgrounds/parking lots there.

Not much fun.  But because of the storm, the machine that processes payments wasn't working (no power), so it was free.  It's an ill wind....so to speak.

Instead of going to back country camping sites, we went to one of our favorite campgrounds in the U.S.--Mesquite Springs.

We dropped the camper, and spent a great week there.  We hiked from the campground itself, drove to other places in the park to hike, and drove around in the pickup (sans camper) to explore roads to back country camping spots.

What we found is that most of the roads to the back country sites are not even suitable for our 4-wheel drive, heavy duty pickup.  The reason?  They are too narrow for the dually.  And the problem with that is that Death Valley is really nothing but rocks, and along the sides of these narrow roads huge, sharp rocks are imbedded.

Although we thought ahead to get skid plates and off-road tires, the problem is that these rocks imbedded in the sides of the narrow roads could cut into the side walls.  A ranger told us that was the main problem on these back roads--flat tires, and mostly from people getting their side walls cut.

So what would we do if we got a flat?  We have AAA, but no cell signal to reach them.  We have a spare, and a jack, but replacing a tire under those conditions would be almost impossible, not to mention that it could tie up traffic on the road for several hours.  And in the interest of full disclosure here about my ignorance, how do you replace a rear tire on a dually?

(Note to myself the next time we take the truck in for servicing:  Find out how to replace tires on a dually.)

We did find one road where we could go and do back country camping, which is for a later blog post.  And next year, we will drop the camper in the south part of the park and drive up other roads to find more where we can go to camp and be in more isolated spots.

We had some very memorable hikes that week from this campground.