Alas, I am blogging about our pleasure trip camping in Death Valley the weekend after Joshua Tree. Now, firstly, please let me warn: do NOT, I repeat - do NOT go camping in a place called Death Valley any later than April - for it was so hot even me with my fondness of hot desert climate - was feeling almost (not quite!) heat stroke.
So back to our adventure. Another Friday of hooky (it's nice to have someone whose travel priorities are almost as high as mine he he he) and we packed up the car again and set off.
It took us almost 7 hours to get to our first destination at sunset: Racetrack Playa. This was so great - - it is very private as it takes (once inside the National Park) over an hour on a very slow, bumpy dirt road to get there. One can only reach it by sports utility car with 4 wheel drive. With no campground, no toilets - - this separates the real campers from the tourists. Patrick and I love this kind of camping! Outside of 1 scary-looking chap in fatigues and army jeep by himself that we passed up a mile or so, we were completely alone. And when I say 'alone' - I mean pitch quiet, out-in-the-boondocks alone. Put it this way - we were so isolated that even I was slightly freaking myself out stating that if we were to break down or have a flat (a very real possibility) we might not see anyone else for days (they actually warn people of this who trek to Racetrack Playa). I also thought that this is exactly where those scary "U-Turn" movie cannibal people would live in the hills and come down and steal us in the night. (I'm not kidding, I actually had nightmares of it all night, thinking it was real).
Anyhow, we set up camp, P's new camping grill and chairs off the side of the dirt road and grilled delicious fajitas and margaritas before setting off on our moonlight trek about a mile into Racetrack Playa. P's camera equipment included several lens to take night shots and I went to stargaze. This was amazing, it was our own private Idaho, as they say. The big draw to this remote location is that the playa is a dry, cracked 'playa' of light-colored terrain with random rocks ranging from small to TV-set size that for some unknown reason slide s-l-o-w-l-y by themselves over hundreds of years and leave trails - as if they are racing each other! They move so slowly that their movements are undetectable by the human eye! It is so different, so strange and fantastic! Some people believe that aliens(!!) are responsible for the phenomenon. Shoot, if you saw this place you would be a Believer like me - it is so remote and different, I would have no doubt believing aliens land there and the government knows all about it but doesn't tell us he he he..
As P snapped away at rocks I laid back on a blanket and stared up at the stars. I am blind as a bat, but this was the best and clearest star-gazing - hands down- that I have ever experienced. I saw, quite clearly, the Big Dipper and Orion for the first time ever. It was just amazing that we had the place to ourselves! It was well-worth the long off road drive. We were both happy as cats as we retired to sleep in the back of P's Honda Element. Stay tuned for Day 2!
*photos courtesy of PatrickM Photography...
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