March 14, 2013.
Time to leave Death Valley, it has been some experience. The images will remain in our memories for many moons.
We will head back to Furnace Creek and leave the park, heading via Shoshone California to Calico California.
After just 3 days of limited amounts of vegetation of any kind, I was shocked to see, some kind of grass. (By the way, we did see quite a few wildflowers growing along side the roads when we left the park, just could not get any photos, there were no pulloffs or safe places to stop for photos.)
For lunch we stopped at Shoshone California, just a spot in the road, whose residents provide fuel (at well over $5.00 a gallon no matter what type of fuel), a bar/burger saloon, a grocery store/convenience store and a museum. I may have missed a business or two, but, you get the idea, blink while driving through and you will miss it. And, what a shame it would be to miss it, it has all that wonderfully hokey history stuff and old junk that I adore photographing! These photos, by the way , were done with the iPhone, I left Sony Too in Jolly, as I was busy with the fur kids. It was too hot to leave them in Jolly, so, they got to go into the courtyard of the saloon and rest in the shade while Man and I had lunch!
Nice flowers in the flower bed next to the building, my view during lunch. Not too hard to take, eh?
Over in front of the museum, oooo, old rusty stuff, love love love, the filing station pumps!
The car from another point of view, OK, the artist in me loves this. Per the signage, it is a 1937 Chevrolet.
This museum had the most interesting collection of rock and explanations of when it was formed, great stuff. I did not take the time to photo it all, really should have, it was very well done!
I cannot resist taking photos of the unique land forms. So many miles, so many delights!
I look out that side view mirror a lot during the day, the view can be awesome!
Vast, I say it over and over again, vast! Miles and miles of, pretty much, nothing. Gives me the creeps thinking of breaking down out in this vastness, with NO cell service!
Center of the photo, more road miles to travel before we reach our destination today.
Our home for the next few nights, Calico California.
Yep, a ghost town. Calico is now a county park/campground.
Parts of the campground are IN a canyon.
Close up of some campsites for tents, etc. No water here, and this is across the street from Tana's campsite.
Close parking, and, I do mean, CLOSE!!! Those yellow painted cement poles are the markers of the sides of your campsite. These campsites can not be much more than 13 foot wide. Tana is 12 foot wide when the slides are open and we took up ALL of our campsite, except maybe a few inches on either side. Jolly is 22 foot long, bumper to bumper, we could not park Jolly cross wise without extending into our neighbor's campsites. Everyone knew how it was, we parked Jolly cross wise for part of the weekend.
Here is the entrance side. I was careful when opening the door, it was rather close to another one of those yellow concrete poles. I knew it would not hit, that said, I felt it wise to be careful. Besides, I might be the one running INTO that pole, not the door.
Man and I had to work hard to get Tana into this parking spot. I have some additional photos of the close parking I will share with you another time. My desk window looked right at a canyon wall. The wall was only feet from the window, sorta a "reach out and touch me" sorta thing!
The weekend filled up the campground, we guided a large Motorhome into the site next to us with iPhone lights at night. Turn your iPhone on, keep it on, it puts out some great light, if you wiggle it, it sends off a flicker of light that can be seen in rear view mirrors. When someone is 4 or 5 inches from us as they are backing in, I will flicker that iPhone a lot! LOL
It was our first experience camping in a canyon, and so, we embraced the experience and had some fun with it.
We will visit the ghost town and Peggy Sue's Diner while we are here. On Sunday, we will wait for all the other rigs to leave so we can hook up and depart ourselves. Yep, it was close, and it was an experience! Not sorry for the experience. Not one bit!
.
No comments:
Post a Comment