Desert Nightly February 16 - 17, 2003 when it gets into us, we drive out amongst rocks and silence

	Ubehebe Crater during a full moon

One Monday in mid-February tends to be a national holiday called Presidents' Day, a pleasant faultline in our regular workload wasteland between Christmas and summer vacations. We typically manage to fit several things into this three-day weekend.

Our Saturday was devoted to relaxing, laying around, and doing house chores. Back yard had recently thickened with lush vegetation, nourished by winter rains, and it was due for some serious wing-clipping. There's no way we could manage that on weekdays -- we still both arrive home after dark, so it must happen on weekends. Yet, I did not want to sacrifice all three days to our household, and thus I began to beg for outing, to be more precise, for a trip to a desert, to which I haven't been for a long time (in contrast with Hippo, who had a chance during a trip with his mother-in-law last fall).

	Morning silence in a desert

Consequently, we took off on Sunday morning (note: already at eight a.m.!!!) towards Death Valley. We knew we did not have much time, indeed -- we reached Death Valley National Monument checkpoint after closing. Our annual pass to national parks had expired, so we were planning to get a renewal, but as they simply did not care for our money, what could we do? Our first, intermediate target -- Ubehebe Crater -- was already engulfed by darkness when we got there, but a full moon rose up shortly. Perhaps it meant luck: before Sid unpacked his tripod, even the most reluctant tourists drove away, and we were left on our own, at an edge of a volcanic crater filled with moonlight. Visibility was excellent (tens, maybe hundreds of miles) and utter silence poured from every corner of the desert, so thick that it rang in our ears. Sid was taking pictures and growling to himself, setting controls, moving his tripod around, growling some more, and taking more pictures; I was enjoying the desert.

	A photographer I bet you'd agree that facing such landscape, one must get passionate about photography

It is only natural that we grew quite hungry after such an experience, and we turned to our maps, which were telling us that a mere thirty miles away, past Scotty's Castle, lies a locality called "Scotty's Junction". Here's where our roles first turned. Sid, my eternal guide to America, did not know that Scotty's Castle was not an euphemistic name for a complex rock formation, but a real castle. I had read about an odd man called "Death Valley Scotty" before. California Gold Rush had lured many adventurers here, twisting their fates and characters. Walter Scott was most likely a swindler by trade. He collected advances from investors for a gold mine in Death Valley -- and continued living off them like a rich man. One of his benefactors became quite suspicious of never ending troubles accompanying alleged gold mining, and embarked on a personal inspection. Scotty dragged him for several days through the desert, hoping for the sick old man to figure he wasn't ready for such an adventure, and that he would go back to Chicago and leave the "mining" in hands of "experts". Alas, mister Albert Johnson began actually feeling better, his health improved in the desert -- and so somewhere in this rough land they became friends, which lasted them for the rest of their lives. Both gentlemen had a castle built here (paid by Johnson), which soon became besieged by reporters and tourists, who yearned to personally visit a residence of the "richest prospector". Albert kept claiming that the estates were financed by Scotty's gold mine, and that it all belonged to Scotty, while he positioned himself to be his financial expert. It would seem that both conspirators had a lot of fun this way. After Johnson died, his castle went to a charity, which kept operating a hotel and visitors' tours -- and they also cared for Scotty until his death, and buried him on a hill overlooking the establishment.

	When in rains in a desert...

Scotty's Castle was closed now, at this late hour, but I don't think we missed anything. Scotty's Junction was much greater disappointment, for it consisted of about five farms and one brothel (being in Nevada, where prostitution is legal). We had no other choice but to continue on to the next center of civilization, Beatty, NV. Hoping for accommodations and food at a local casino, we were only offered a dinner. Which wasn't too bad as we had already played with the idea of spending our night camping out in the desert, somewhere near Racetrack, so that we would be there in the morning before first holiday tourists arrive.

	Racetrack Valley Playa with Grandstand are some 46 miles away

We ordered take-out sandwiches (to have something for breakfast) and started biting off of those hundred miles back to the crater. Then we had to tackle the worst section -- 28 miles of dirt "road" or rather a stripe of bulldozed desert endowed with washboard-like surface. It took us right outside National Monument boundary, where we tried to find a place to sleep so that we would not block the road and simultaneously would not ruin a pristine piece of nature either. Shortly past Racetrack, in Last Chance Ridge, we found where the bulldozer had turned back, and broke camp in the middle of the loop. A merciful full moon illuminated everything, thus our unpacking and re-arrangement inside our Wagon proceeded smoothly.

I had written on these pages several times already about my affinity to deserts. When I was crawling into my bed, I felt like a little kid on Christmas Eve. Engulfed by a frosty silence (and my downy sleeping bag), I slept like a baby, until I was waken by a sudden sunrise. I would not mind the light, but my subconsciousness kept telling me something was weird. Sid rolled over, growled something and went on sleeping; I simply had to get out.

	A coyote

Carrying my camera, I hiked up the nearest hill, but it still frustrated me for the desert remained difficult to photograph. Besides -- what pulled me out of my sleeping bag is impossible to capture in an image. A giant silence in a huge, empty landscape. With the dawn, not a single bird would chirp, no garbage trucks backing outside our bedroom, no SUVs being warmed up by our neighbors, no dogs barking, no airplanes humming overhead. Only after I kept soaking it in for a while, I overheard a car door being slammed at the other side of the hill -- and indeed -- there was a campground, with its (about eight) inhabitants beginning to move about. Sun hid behind a cloud and reminded me harshly that it was February, and I found myself in over three thousand feet altitude, wearing only shorts and a fleece jacket.

Sid kept groaning, but as I began eating breakfast near his head, he could not hold it any longer and crawled out as well. So I told him that my getting up by half past six on a holiday had a rational core -- in my previous life, I must have been a desert dweller and it is my experience that one must manage most chores in the morning, before it gets too hot.

	Teakettle Junction for this I almost smashed my bones

And I was right, of course. Not that it would get really hot, now in the winter, but it was getting late. Already from the distance of our camping spot, Racetrack looked weird, but it really hit us once we got closer. Obviously, it had been raining in the desert, and most of the playa got flooded -- covered with water -- in which a very calm morning air turned the surface into a perfect mirror. It stayed nicely that way until we were finished taking pictures, and rippled with first wind when the first holiday tourists arrived from civilization.

	Driest place on Earth

Then it was almost eleven a.m. and our minutes were ticking away, meaning we were to get back on the road home (total some six hundred miles), to be able to go to work on the following morning. I wished to stop and quickly capture Teakettle Junction, which sprouted several more kettles since last year. I guess I was too quick -- my feet got tangled somehow and during following five minutes I nibbled on surrounding pebbles and kept telling Sid that there was nothing he could do for me but wait, until my sprained ankle stops throbbing with a painful alarm. Then we found some elastic bandage and I transformed into a disabled person for the rest of the day. I still managed to hobble out of our Wagon at Ubehebe Crater, but the magic of the full moon night was gone. Clusters of snack-eating tourists drifted about, with their offspring trying hard to fill the crater by throwing rocks in it, and some rutting adolescent howled in the distance, possibly to try an echo.

In a few more minutes, we were passing again by a hut where NP Service collects an entrance fee. Approaching the checkpoint, we carefully assembled exact cash for an annual pass, but to no avail. Cashier's window had been decorated with a GONE TO LUNCH sign, and that was that. Well, at least the desert does not stop being pretty outside of nine-to-four worktime and during lunch breaks. We could not bring ourselves to feel sorry anyway, as we had only driven through the actual park area after all, and only took a picture of one coyote there.

Shortly before Trona, Sid began to fall asleep behind the wheel, so I shed my bandages and tried to step on pedals myself. It worked OK, as long as we kept taking turns a little more often than usually. Reaching home before midnight would have pleasantly surprised us, had we had any strength to even realize that we did.

Copyright © 2003-2005 by Carol & Sid Paral. All rights reserved.