Yet another beautiful sunny day - I guess sun is pretty much a given in the desert. But, our final day in Death Valley is windy - gusts over 30 mph. Pretty much eliminates any outdoor activities. So, we stopped at the Visitor Center museum to tour their exhibits, then backtracked east a few miles to drive through the very narrow 20 Mule Team Canyon. The mule teams never could have gone through this area because of the tight turns, but the early Death Valley folks were aggressively marketing both tourism and 20 Mule Team Borax. More about the 20 Mule Teams in a later post.
The Canyon was mostly drab mud cliffs - rounded on top, but the road through was extremely narrow and twisting. There is a good reason that nothing longer than 25' are allowed to drive the dirt road - and we are 24'6". Had to carefully watch that back end as we swung around curves with rocks jutting out. Pretty drive, and mostly protected from the strong winds.
Well, we had pretty much done everything we planned in the central area of the park. I had hoped to get two hikes in, but it just didn't work out. We had also thought of renting a jeep so we could visit the "Racetrack Playa" and the magic moving rocks that we had seen in the Visitor Center Introductory Video. Huge boulders "magically" move by themselves across the desert, leaving visible trails - some move straight, others move in zig zags or circles. Theories abound, but the current favorite is that during cold, wet (meaning a small percentage of 1" of rain) spells, a thin veneer of icy mud forms as the water evaporates, and the frequent, gusty winds drive the rocks across the playa. Unfortunately, the ride is about 70 miles one way, more than 30 miles on rough dirt roads, and even with a jeep, we just weren't up to bouncing and jarring for hours.
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| Star Wars Canyon |
So, we drove west on route 190 through the park, taking us across the Valley and up into the Panamint Mountains. At the far west end of the park is a viewpoint that overlooks a canyon, unofficially called Star Wars Canyon, because the Air Force and Naval pilots use the canyon for training in tight places - think Luke Skywalker in his x-wing flying through the canyons in the Death Star. The Air Force calls the canyon "Jedi Transition." There are no schedules for when the canyon is used for fighter pilot training, and I don't know if the gusty winds kept them away, but I was really disappointed that we didn't get to see a military jet screaming through the tight turns of the canyon.
We continued west through the mountains and out of Death Valley National Park down into the Owens valley.
The Owens valley lies between the Panamint Mountains on the East and Sierra Nevadas on the west. The Sierras are rugged, mostly snow covered and we stayed in a small town called Lone Pine, situated below Mt. Whitney at 14,494'. Lone Pine is known for the filming location of hundreds of western films and tv series as well as other movies. Stars here were Roy Rogers, Tom Mix, very early silent western movie stars, and many others. They have a small, but impressive museum of all the movies shot here.
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| Early movie studio filming truck |
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| I'm too young to remember Fatty Arbuckle, but I knew the name! |
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| Tom Mix, early cowboy memorabilia |
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| Humphrey Bogart filmed here |
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| Tex Ritter |
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| Early Western star, Randolph Scott's six-shooters |
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| The area was used to simulate desert areas and India in films |
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| One of my favorite tv shows as a kid, The Lone Ranger |
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| These old tv westerns were often filmed here |
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| In this western, the good guy - Hopalong Cassidy wore a Black hat! |
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| Sierra Nevada's along Route 395 |
Next morning, I was able to get a photo of sunrise on Mt. Whitney - gorgeous.
We drove north a few miles to Manzanar National Historical Site - one of the War Relocation camps where 120,000 Japanese families were sent during WWII - about half were American citizens. The Japanese were told it was to protect them from community violence against Japanese, but when they got to the camp in the middle of nowhere, they found fencing with barbed wire on top facing in and guard towers. They were not allowed to leave. Most made the best of it and although they arrived only with what they could carry, they were allowed to order from Sears and other places to spruce up the drab army barracks. They had little privacy, cold nights, hot summer days and generally poor living conditions. The 10,000 people there eventually built gardens, they did have medical services, schools, and work, but most lost their homes and careers they left and had to start over from scratch. President Reagan officially apologized to the Japanese and arranged for compensation to survivors. The site had a couple of replica buildings as everything was torn down after the war. The site was laid out with signs and rock piles to identify where things were and we drove the 3 mile loop around the camp.
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| Showing the layout of the War Relocation camp housing 10,000 Japanese Americans. Long buildings were army barracks for the Japanese; lower left was administration and other public buildings like a post office. |
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| Manzanar Monument and cemetery |
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| Guard Tower |
We drove south about an hour to view the Trona Pinnacles - unusual calcium formations that occurred underwater when the area was a lake and springs bubbling up from the bottom of the lake created these odd pillars in the middle of the desert. Yet another horrible rutted, dusty, dirt road 5 miles to the site where we walked around a bit. The RV has suffered terribly with the dirt and mud.
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| One of the worst road we were on going to Trona Pinnacles - these ruts and many others were over a foot deep. Luckily, road was wide enough we could get around them. |
Next up was Boron - site of the largest open pit mine in California. This has the largest deposits of Borax in America and they have been mining it for 100 years. We toured the American Borax Company's small museum and had a view of the mine. They do rehabilitate the land as the move the mining pit. We got to see the 90 ton dump trucks and they had a giant tire on display. Incredible.
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| Tire truck for the enormous 190 ton dump truck |
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| Processing plant for borax and other minerals |
Drove west and made a quick 15 minute stop at Cesar Chavez National Monument. Of course, I knew he organized the farm laborers, but I was too busy being a self-involved teenager to pay much attention to details. His mountain home and office was turned into a memorial museum. I was very impressed with his list of ten principles and his dedication and I will have to get a biography to find out more.
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| Gardens and gravesite to the right of Cesar Chavez |
We moved on to Bakersfield for some much needed civilization and shopping. Our campground was in an orange grove and we could pick all the oranges we wanted. They are the sweetest oranges ever! Busy couple of days.
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