TG 2008 - Death Valley - Part 3

We had a 2-part agenda for Saturday (day 3): move from Stovepipe Wells to Furnace Creek and explore the Scotty's Castle area (north-east part) of the park. The first pre-requisite was to get on the road by 9am. With this mind, most everybody was up by 7am and we got the tea and eggs going. This time we remembered to make the tiny hole in each egg (easily done using the supplied pin) and the results were much better. Arjun was not a whole lot better - his face was still very red and the rash was all over his body. Just mild fever, though. We actually managed to head out by 9.15am.

We stopped at the ranger station to check road conditions and realized that we could not go to the 'Racetrack' which is one of the more unusual (& still unexplained) sights in the DV. The ranger was emphatic about us needing a 4x4 and that too with heavy duty tires since the approach road (27 miles long) had lots of sharp rocks. He could not have been more dismissive when we mentioned that one of our cars was a minivan. I was quite disappointed since this was one of the spots I was really looking forward to seeing and photographing.

We continued towards Scotty's Castle and reached there around 10.45am. There was a tour starting at 11am and Vinay bought tickets for everybody. The tour was quite interesting, especially with the guide doing his best to paint a picture of the time and the characters. The story behind the 'castle' is quite fascinating, especially when you consider that neither is it really a castle nor was it owned by Scotty. Here is link to the wikipedia entry about this place. Even though the castle was at 3000 ft elevation, the day felt quite hot. We were hoping to find lunch in the gift shop/cafe after the tour, but realized that we had very limited choices - just stuff from a vending machine. We all managed a real 'adjustment' lunch - ice cream, yogurt, bread + cheese, etc. After lunch, we decided to hike up the hill behind the castle to Scotty's grave. Since Arjun was quite tired, Malini and I took turns climbing up the hill.

About a mile or so on the approach road to Scotty's castle is the turn-off for the 'Ubehebe' crater. This is a volcanic crater that is about 550 ft deep. The whole area is covered with black volcanic rocks and soil, which made for another dramatically different landscape. This is quite typical of the DV - you get startling shifts in the terrain, vegetation (what little there is of it) and landscape as you go from one part of the park to another. Incidentally, close to the Ubehebe crater is the access road for the 'Racetrack,' which I could of course only look at rather wistfully. When we got up to the crater, we realized that we could actually hike down into it. It is a short, but steep hike, made more difficult by the loose gravel that covered the path. RD, Malini, and I headed down and after slithering down about half way we ran into a scout troop making their way up. They pointed out an easier (but longer) way to the left side that was along the wash and hence had no loose gravel. The slope was also more gentle and one could actually walk upright. Anyway, we continued our journey down and were soon at the bottom. After a couple of quick photos we started back up. RD decided to take the route up the wash, while Malini and I headed up the same way we had gone down - loose gravel and all. It was really difficult. Luckily we had our hiking poles and that helped a great deal.

It was time to head to Furnace Creek - we made no more stops and reached FC by sunset. Once again we were able to get adjoining rooms and we moved all our stuff in. The rooms were a bit smaller than Stovepipe, but nicer. RD was thrilled about the free WiFi and declared that he was done with all sightseeing. I knew people liked to surf the net, but seeing RD in action was a revelation. He used to stay up late into the night doing nothing but browsing the net on his Nokia palmtop. It is hard to tell what he is doing with all the accumulated knowledge.

After washing up, all of us headed out to check out the FC ranch - it is a fairly large area and nicely maintained. There is a swimming pool (kept at 85 deg with warm spring water), lighted tennis courts, and a kids park with a large lawn. There were several dining choices as well. Lots of folks were parked around the dining area with laptops and palmtops, browsing away. Kind of sad, really! After much debate we settled on the '49-ers' cafe for dinner - this was going to our first real 'eat-out' meal of the trip. The food was good and everybody enjoyed the meal. After dinner it was essentially the same ritual as the previous days - bath and movie for the kids and poker for the adults. There wasn't enough room for a roll-away, so the four of us managed on one of the queen beds while RD settled into the other one for a long night of browsing.