We saw there was a ranger talk at Badwater just south of Furnace Creek, so we went down and were thouroughly entertained by Ranger Jay and his lovely lizard impersonation. He acted out a lizard sitting there in the valley, when suddenly the surrounding mountains raised up by about 20 feet in 3 seconds.
The salt formations here are very beautiful.
The basin is saturated with water. Ranger Jay pointed out where people had dug down to find water, only a few inches below the surface. By the way, they don't want you to do this! We just found this one here the way it was.
Next, we stopped at the Devil's Golf Course. Imagine losing your golf ball in here. We don't play golf, but still we could relate.
We hiked out into the devil's golf course looking for a water hole that is evaporating and forming the crazy mineral formations found here. We didn't find it, though.
The next day, we decided to drive down Titus canyon by going towards Beatty and then coming down from there (Beatty was a great place to get gas cheaper than in the park.) We stopped at the ghost town there, Rhyolite. It was interesting to see these buildings just falling down where they were left, it's an American version of the parthenon.
The next stop was at another ghost town, Leadfield. This too, was interesting in different ways. These were the buildings left behind by miners. They were all covered with metal siding.
We found petroglyphs, the kids stopped and investigated, trying to decide what the meanings were.
At the end of the canyon, the road winds between these realy close walls. What a fun drive.
We came out onto the road to Scotty's Castle, so off we went. We learned that Scotty was actually a local personality. We took the tour which was very much worth it. I absolutely loved the "castle" from the kitchen to the music room. What a wonderful place.
Our next stop was Ubehebe crater. We hiked up to the smaller crater beyond the big one. It was windy with a chill, but it was worth the effort of climbing up to the top.
On our way back that afternoon, we stopped at the sand dunes. The moon in the background here was just rising in the east and was almost a full moon.
We immediately found some bird tracks in the sand. They were probably those of a raven, they were everywhere.
More tracks. We thought they were a lizard, but perhaps they were those of a kangaroo rat.
The next day we visited the borax works where the borax was refined and then loaded onto a twenty mule team to take to the train about 60 miles away.
That afternoon the dust kicked up something awful. We were so worried that it was going to be really bad in Mosaic Canyon where we planned to hike.
It turned out to be just fine in the canyon and we enjoyed our hike. The Canyon was made up of an interesting mosaic of stones, both round river and rectangular sandstone. There was also a beautiful marble layer at the bottom.
The wind eventually kicked up in the canyon and drove us back to the car where we decided to go for a drive higher up toward Telescope Peak, the highest peak in the park over 11,000 ft high. We stopped at the charcoal kilns. They were huge and incredible to look at and go inside.
That night, the wind wasn't too bad, so we went on another ranger talk, this time a moonlit stroll in the dunes. We brought our flashlights, and the ranger told us what tracks we could expect to find. Mainly beetle and kangaroo rat, but there can be sidewinder, coyote, and kit fox as well.
The next morning we had to check out and go home. We stopped on the way out to hike to Darwin Falls, a mile one way. It was cold again, and the path was lined with wild burro scat, although we saw no burros on the entire trip. The falls were pretty and it was a good hike to get us going that morning.
