Day 9: Death Valley exploring
After a windy night in the tent, in which it held up just great, we headed further up Wildrose Canyon to the Charcoal Kilns. These were nifty, sturdy structures. I am not totally certain of the history here.
There were a number of washed out roads in and around the park due to some storms in the fall. This was a bit of a let down as a lot of these roads were the dirt roads and looked more interesting than the paved routes. We were a little low on gas, so we turned around at the Kilns even though we would have liked to continue on the dirt road up the mountain. The nearest gas station looked to be Stovepipe Wells, so we headed back that way via Emigrant Canyon Rd. & Route 190. There were wild burros on the side of the road, which was fun to see. I was surprised at how big some of them were. Turns out we were really low on gas, so I shut the car off and coasted downhill in neutral. My wife wasn't a fan of this idea.
After filling up at Stovepipe Wells, which was at Sea Level, we proceeded south on 190 to Badwater Road. It was definitely getting hotter too, in to the 90s, as we went lower in elevation. We drove through Artists Pallet/Artists Drive, which had an amazing array of colors, as the name would indicate.
We turned back to the main road and then chose the dirt road known as West Side Road to drive through the Valley. It was a solid 40 miles of washboard. We were cruising along pretty nicely when we noticed some sand blown over the road. We didn't slow down fast enough and hit the first pile pretty hard... and just kept going. 4WD center diff locked and momentum to make sure we didn't get stuck. We got through just fine, but there was
a lot of sand through there and I was very happy to have a good set of all-terrain tires. Once we got back to the paved Badwater Road, we continued south, but found that all routes were closed due to washed out roads. We turned around and headed north on Badwater Road, which was good since we passed right through Badwater Basin. Again, really cool area... and really hot, though I understand it is usually a lot hotter at the end of May, so we were lucky.
We proceeded east along Route 190 out of the park and ran across some wild horses grazing on the side of the road.
We drove through Ash Meadows Wildlife Refuge and didn't see much of anything there. More washboard roads and desert.
Route (roughly) up to this point
Then off to north Vegas where we got a shower, a good nights sleep at a Best Western and a great Burrito for dinner.