More Adventures around Pahrump and Death Valley

Thursday, January 18 - Today I stayed home again while Mom and Dad went to Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, near Las Vegas.  They said it was beautiful with all different color rock formations.  They drove the 13 mile scenic drive and did some hiking, including a hike to a water fall.

These are the Calico Hills.

The rocks had lots of interesting color.

 

Friday, January 19 - Today Mom and Dad went to Fremont Street in Las Vegas.  This is the "old" strip.  Here are some of their photos. 

This is a zip line that starts from a huge slot machine.  Yes, those are people hanging off the cables.  Mom said she would follow Dad, but he didn't get in line.

Saturday, January 20 - Today Mom and Dad went to Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge.   They were greeted by this sign due to the government shutdown.

Fortunately, they were still able to drive around and see the Refuge.  They saw endangered Pupfish that live in the hot springs.  The fish are very small, so don't show up in the photos, but I enjoyed seeing the pictures of the pools.

After the Wildlife Refuge they took a tour of the Amargosa Opera House in the town of Death Valley Junction.  Sometimes they don't get very large crowds for the shows, so the owner painted an "audience" on the walls.  It looks like quite a hoot!

Sunday, January 21 - Today we leave Pahrump, but before we do, we need to update our map to show our visit to Nevada.

We moved to the Furnace Creek Campground in Death Valley National Park.  We have a paid reservation for the next 5 nights.  At the entrance to the Campground, we were greeted with this sign.

If you can't read it, the key parts are "Campground Closed" and "everyone must be out by noon on January 22 (tomorrow)".   It doesn't matter that we've paid for 5 days.  We only get one night here.  We set up quickly and then went out to see some of the park highlights.

The first stop was the salt flats at Badwater, the lowest point in North America at 282 feet below sea level.  From the Salt Flats, you can look up at the mountain and see a sign indicating sea level.  It's next to the arrow in this photo.

Next we went to an area called Artist's Palate due to the brilliant color of the rocks.  It was a nice afternoon, so we took the top off the Jeep.

Finally, we drove up on the mountain to an area known as Dante's View.  It was a stunning view over the entire valley.

Monday, January 22 - We decided that we would do a little more site seeing before leaving today.  First we went to see the ruins of the Harmony Borax Works that operated in Death Valley in the 1880's.  

Then we went up to the Keane Wonder Mine.  It was a gold mine that operated in the early 1900's.  They used a trolley system to bring the ore down to be processed.   In this photo, you can see a couple of towers that used to carry the ore buckets.

Mom and Dad decided to hike up to the towers.  Yes, it IS as steep as it looks.  Mom said that she was glad she had her hiking poles.

Eventually they made it up to the towers.  It was quite a view!!  In the 2nd picture, the arrow marks the place where the Jeep is parked.

We made it back to the campground and retrieved the motor home at noon.  While we were out, the Park Service had moved in Jersey Barriers and a fork lift to place them, as soon as the few remaining campers were out.

We are now at the Elks Lodge in Ridgecrest, California.  We've heard on the news that the Government is "open" again, but too late for this visit to Death Valley National Park.  It was a fun 24 hours and we are already talking about the things we "must see" on our next visit.

From here we are planning to cross Tehachapi Pass tomorrow on our way toward Bakersfield, California.  There, we will start our journey north on 99, eventually cutting over to I-5.  There is supposed to be snow in the Siskiyou Mountains this week, so we are looking for things to do in California for a few days.  I'm sure Mom and Dad will come up with something, but if you have suggestions of things we might stop and see on the way north from Bakersfield, drop Mom an email.  

Phoenix, Arizona to Pahrump, Nevada

Saturday, January 13 - Today we drove from Phoenix to Kingman, Arizona.   Kingman is on the old Route 66.  This afternoon Mom and Dad went to the Route 66 Museum and then went for a sample from a local brewery.  This is an old Santa Fe Steam engine that went 100 mph and was built in 1925.

 

Sunday, January 14 - Today we drove the Jeep from Kingman to Oatman, Arizona.  Oatman is an old mining town up in the mountains.  When the miners left, they turned many of their Burros loose.  The Burros wander loose all around the area, including in the town of Oatman.   I was offended that people were feeding the Burros and not feeding me, but it was still fun to see them, especially the baby Burros.

Monday, January 15 - Today we moved the motor home from Kingman to Pahrump, Nevada.  Pahrump is a small town about an hour west of Las Vegas and an hour east of Death Valley National Park.  Mom and Dad thought it would be a good place for us to base for a week.  After we got set up, Mom did some client work and Dad caught up on some things that needed fixed the steps again!  I took a Siesta.  

Later in the afternoon, they went to a local winery for some wine tasting.

Tuesday, January 16 - This morning was more work around the coach.  In the afternoon, Mom and Dad went to the Pahrump Museum to find out a little more about the town.  One of the things that they learned is that Pahrump first connected to the electrical grid in 1964.  Before that, the town had diesel generators that ran during the day, but people used oil lamps and such at night.  Pahrump connected to the electrical grid and 5 years later man landed on the moon!!  Wow, that's something to think about!!!! 

I probably shouldn't mention this, since so many of you have been suffering with cold temperatures, snow and ice, but I decided to stay home because it's so hot here.  It's been in the high 60's to mid 70's.

Wednesday, January 17 - Today Mom and Dad took a drive southwest of Pahrump.   Their first stop was the town of Shoshone.  They looked around the museum and saw some cave houses used by early settlers around 1910.  The settlers dug caves out of the side of a cliff with the doors facing north so they could stay cool in the heat of summer.  They had stoves that vented through the pipes.  Some of them had wood floors while others were dirt floors.

The settlers had a pretty nice view from their front doors, well except for the community out house.

From Shoshone, they went to Tecopa and saw natural hot springs.  The water here is naturally about 90 degrees.

After the hot springs, they drove on to a place called China Ranch Date Farm.  They tried several different varieties of dates and split a date shake.  Then they took a walk among the date palms.

They learned that unripe dates may be red or yellow.  Different varieties produce different amounts ranging from about 100 pounds to 300 pounds per tree per year.  The trees ranged from short to very tall.

 

The date farm is along the Amargosa river and Mom and Dad took a hike out into the river valley.  

As you can see mom and dad took lots of day trips, at least they came home each night to feed and walk me.  I'll tell you more adventures in Pahrump next time.

Tucson to Phoenix

Saturday, January 6 - Today we drove from Tuscon to Lost Dutchman State Park, near a town called Apache Junction.   Today Apache Junction is a suburb of Phoenix, even though it is almost 40 miles east of downtown Phoenix.  After getting set up at our campsite, Mom and Dad drove to Dad's friend Ken's house.  The humans were planning to go for a hike and at 11, I'm not really into long hikes any more.  It's too hot for me to sit in the car.  With the windows open and the fans on, I had a pleasant Siesta in the motor home.

Mom, Dad, and Ken took a hike on the Hieroglyphic Canyon Trail, which is near here.  It's a 1.5 mile hike to the Petroglyphs with an elevation change of 650 feet.  The trail also had nice views of Phoenix in the distance.  Unfortunately, the smog level was pretty high.

Mom and Dad thought that it was definitely worth the effort.  One of the best areas for Petroglyphs that they have seen.  Here are some examples.

 

After the hike, they all went back to Ken's house and got Ken's wife Judy.  Then they all went to Outback Steakhouse in Mesa for dinner.  Mom and Dad brought home a "doggy box" that smelled wonderful, but this doggy didn't get any of it 😢

Sunday, January 7 - Mom and Dad decided to check out the "Mesa Market" today.  It's a huge Flea Market with 4 rows of vendors.  I'm not sure why anyone would want to go buy fleas.  Personally, I try to avoid them.  Dad said each row is 1.25 miles long and there are about 900 vendors in all.  Apparently they sell other things besides fleas, because they came home with a new rug to put outside the RV and Dad got a new wallet.  They also went to a nearby Costco and bought me a fresh bag of kibble.  I was getting worried, cause I noticed the bucket was nearly empty.

Thought you might like to see the view from our campsite hear at Lost Dutchman State Park.  It's pretty nice.

Monday, January 8 - Mom had several business tax returns to do, so she stayed in the motor home and worked most of the day.  Dad took all their dirty clothes to the laundromat and I had a Siesta.  I'm kind of getting used to living in the south.  I like Siestas.   

When Dad got back from the laundromat, he worked on our steps.  They stopped coming out about a week ago.  It's an intermittent problem that we've had for about two years now.  Dad's always able to get them working again, but it involves crawling under the RV and disassembling the motor or something like that.  I watched him do it, but I'm still not sure what he did.

We carry a step stool and when the built in RV steps won't come out, we have to use it as our step.  I don't like the stool because it sometimes flips over on me and I go splat against the side of the motor home.  It's kind of embarrassing and it hurts, so I'm happy to report that the steps are working again!

We had a beautiful sunset tonight.

Tuesday, January 9 - Mom and Dad drove to Chandler to meet Dad's friend Jennifer for lunch.  Dad and Jennifer used to work together at Intel.  They said that they had a nice visit and a good lunch.  Afterwards they drove around part of Tempe, before coming back home to me.

You may have heard about all the heavy rain that caused flooding in California.  Well, it moved East and hit us in Arizona about bedtime on Tuesday night.  There was thunder and lightning and that scared me.  It rained almost all night.

Wednesday, January 10 - Today we took a drive known as the Apache Trail to Roosevelt Dam.  Roosevelt Dam was built on the Salt River between 1905 and 1911 to control flooding and provide a regular water supply to Phoenix.  The Apache Trail was built to get supplies to the site of the dam and was primarily traveled by mule teams.

There were lingering clouds from the rain the night before, but it was still a beautiful drive.  The road is Arizona State Route 88, so I was surprised when we got to a point where the pavement ended, but we kept going.  

The Salt River flows through a canyon and the scenery became even more spectacular the farther we went.  Here are a few pictures of the scenery along the drive.

If you look very close in this one, you can see a green car on the road ahead of us and the river in the valley.

This is what it looked like out the windshield of the Jeep.  In places the road was one lane, but there were wide spots where cars could meet.  Guardrails were infrequent.

After a while, we rounded a bend and there was the Roosevelt Dam in front of us, with the new Roosevelt Bridge behind it.  The bridge was built between 1987 and 1990 so that traffic no longer passes across the dam.

The Jeep got a little dirty.

Fortunately, there was a way home that involved a paved road.  On the way back to the motor home, we saw another wonderful sunset.

Thursday, January 11 - Today Mom and Dad took another hike.  This time they stayed in the State Park.  This time they hiked up the mountain that we can see from our campground.  The arrow over Dad's head points to our campground.

Friday, January 12 - Today we left Lost Dutchman State Park and drove about 70 miles to the west side of Phoenix where we set up at the White Tank Mountain County Park.  Mom and Dad took a hike up Waterfall Canyon.  There wasn't any water falling, but it was a pretty cool place anyway.

Later Mom and Dad met our friends John and Vicki and they all went out to dinner.  John and Vicki spend the winter in this area so they are close to their daughter and grandchildren.  It's fun to catch up with friends from home.  

Tomorrow we leave the Phoenix area and travel to Kingman, Arizona.  More Later.