Death Valley - The Prequel

We have so much to post about Death Valley area, I am doing it installments.  Here is the first:

After our stay in Mojave without hookups, and anticipating going to Death Valley for a few days without hookups, we decided sidetrack to a real town where we could stock up on supplies at a real grocery store and enjoy the luxury of unlimited electricity and water. We chose Pahrump, Nevada, just over the California state line. We shopped at a nice Albertson's (similar to Publix) and they even had a Walmart! Civilization!!!

Some beautiful desert scenery with Pahrump in the valley between the Spring Mountains on the East and Nopah Range Mountains on the West. It is only 50 miles from Vegas and is a popular spot for snowbirders.

We drove northwest out of Pahrump to a small isolated corner of Death Valley National Park in the Ash Meadows Preserve in Nevada. The Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge is a unique area of the desert with wetlands from springs that pop up from the underground river and aquifer in the area. We struggled on a 15 mile dusty, rutted dirt road into the Refuge and stopped at the Visitor Center to find out about the Preserve's history and plants and animals. Luckily, the area was saved from a developer's destructive plan to build an entire city here. Our prime stop was the portion of Death Valley National Park called Devil's Hole. It is just a bottomless hole with a massive underground cave system and is home to one of the rarest creatures on the planet – Devil's Hole Pupfish, and beautiful turqoise blue fish about 1" long. Although various types of pupfish are numerous and found throughout the southwest, these particular pupfish are unique to this hole in the ground and are protected. The Supreme Court ruled that water mining (yes, it's a thing) must not exceed a certain limit to ensure the water level on a ledge in the hole is sufficient to sustain the pupfish. 

Interestingly, the water in the hole will slosh like water in a bathtub when an earthquake hits – not just here in California, but any major quake in the world! It certainly isn't much to look at, but was an interesting stop.

Yes, another miserable dirt road - Li'l Guy is filthy and not happy.

 Yes,

That slit in the rocks is the Devil's Hole.  The funnel-looking things are put there for one month in the summer and one month in the winter to measure the amount of rock debris that goes into the Hole to ensure the Pupfish have enough oxygen and to check for contaminants.

We continued west through the Funeral Mountains and down into Death Valley. I'm not sure what I expected Death Valley to be and expected the low desert valley, but I did not anticipate the fantastically shaped and colored rugged hills and mountains. Around each bend as we entered from the East, we said ooohh and wow! Be prepared for lots of photos of really big rocks.

We drove to the main headquarters of the park around Furnace Creek, about 190' below sea level, stopped at the campground to get a site, but without electricity. The only night we could get a site with electric was Tuesday and this was Sunday. Lunch, a quick nap, and a stop at the Visitor's Center. Death Valley received it's name from a pioneer whose wagon train who after climbing up into the mountains in the West, exclaimed, good bye, Death Valley!

The Inn at the Oasis complex in Furnace Creek.

The sun sets early here – around 5pm and the desert gets cold at night. We spent a chilly night, woke to a beautiful sunny day and planned out the next couple of days in Death Valley.  Stay tuned.