The Heat is On

North America » United States » California » Death Valley National Park
October 24th 2006

Published: October 28th 2006

.
As we have been traveling south the temperatures have been getting warmer, and thankfully we haven’t seen any more snow! But today we are expecting temperatures to start getting hot! Especially as it was yet another blue sky day not a cloud to be seen - something we might be looking for at our next destination… Death Valley National Park…

Statistics

Starting Destination: Bakersfield, California
Ending Destination: Panamint Springs, California
Ending Destination GPS: N: 36° 20.461’ W: 117° 28.137’ Elev: 1943’
Miles Driven: 245.1
Distance Driven “Off-Road”: 20 miles
Medical Warning: You have been traveling in an area known to have Plague; if you get sick within a couple of days of traveling in this area, seek medical attention

Heading East

From Bakersfield we head almost due East on Highway 58, slowly heading out of the Valley and passing some interesting things along the way… The now ordinary agricultural items, but alfalfa being watered by a center pivot system?… Some mystery industrial plants, which we identified as wineries only when we got down-wind of them! And, of course, being Bakersfield there was the obligatory signs and symptoms of the oil industry—we could identify these very well. As we crossed the southern edge of the Sierra Nevadas the scenery began to change, definitely fewer signs of agriculture unless you call fields (or more accurately hillsides) of wind generators, agriculture!! We passed through Mojave, wondering why it had such a large airport with so many planes, when we were distracted by a KC10 in the process of refueling what Carl thinks were two of the new F-22 raptors… But not distracted enough for Maria to suddenly realize that if we were near Edwards Air Force base then we had missed our turn! Thankfully we didn’t have to back-track too far…

Something only a Pipeliner could understand?

Finally on the correct road and heading north we passed the Visitors’ Center for Jawbone Canyon a Recreation Area for OHV’s managed by the Bureau of Land Management. After viewing several of the exhibits and collecting some park information we talked with the attendant about the pro’s and con’s of each of the routes towards the park. We decided to take the less-traveled route that she suggested, but first we had to investigate the LA Aqueducts that pass through the canyon… There are two Aqueducts (aka pipelines) that bring water to the LA area; the first was completed in 1913 and constructed of coated riveted steel with the second one completed in 1970 - both are Huge!!! From Jawbone canyon we took route 178, and headed towards China Lake… We drove through town and parked adjacent to the Wild Horse and Burrow sanctuary for lunch; Carl thought we might get a good view of some interesting planes taking off from the Naval Air Warfare Center… No such luck, all we saw were some helicopters!! After lunch, we continued North, hearing plenty of planes but not seeing any…

The great Tufa Pinnacle Adventure!

Not far outside of Trona there is this unique rock formation—Maria thought it looked kind of like the back of one the dinosaurs, but it was really probably only a thin layer of columnar basalt that has been rotated so it is standing almost vertical. Whatever it was, a photo was in order… we turned around, got one photo and then turned around again - no big deal? Until we read the informational signs that were in the parking lot where we turned around - it seemed that those weird looking rocks across the way were not a continuation of the rock formation that we had turned around for, but Tufa Pinnacles… These strange shaped rocks were formed underwater 10,000 to 100,000 years ago, and they are just sitting there for anyone to come and visit. Well, it wasn’t exactly all that easy… We looked at the map on the informational sign and set off along the road (more like a track as it wasn’t paved), expecting for the route to be sign-posted… Well, we were definitely wrong on that score - we ended up at least 5 miles off track somewhere in the middle of Searles Lake (thankfully there was no water in it at the time), before we turned around and re-traced our steps… We finally found the correct road, it was marked; we just didn’t look hard enough to find the sign!! At this point there was almost no question about whether or not we would make the trek along the “real” road, so we bounced our way along for all 7 miles. But it was worth it, by this time of day the sun was getting low - great photography light according to Carl - so we drove around and took lots of pictures!

Back on Track

Our adventure had definitely put a kink in the schedule for the day… We consulted the “accommodation guide” for the National Park and decided that there were several options, depending upon how far we got... So we continued north until we reached the Panamint Valley, passing Salt Lakes, Borax mines and lots of that starkly beautiful scenery that only seems to develop in areas that receive minimal rainfall.

But we didn’t pass any hotels… it was beginning to get dark when we passed the turn-of for Ballarat - that was a name that Maria recognized, the town was named after the famous gold mining town in Australia… But today, unlike it’s Australian namesake, it is one of the several ghost towns in the area - and we were definitely not going to find somewhere to stay there!! But all was not lost, we made the park boundary before dark - just - and decided to investigate the Panamint Springs Resort. Thankfully, it was not as posh as it’s name implied and we had found a place to lay our heads for the night!