In what is seeming to be an annual tradition I headed out to the desert to spend a little bit of time escaping from work and exploring the beautiful parts of Death Valley. My fiancée (and dog) decided to skip the cold weather this time and it turned into a guys trip with three friends and myself. We departed on December 28th, and all returned home on December 31st.
In all we covered around 275 miles of dirt over the 4 days we were there, so it was a quite a bit of driving covering all levels of trails that can be found in Death Valley.
Here are some of my photos from the trip, as well as a recap of the areas covered. Excuse the photos, just finally upgraded from a point-and-shoot and still have no idea what I am doing. That is especially clear when compared to the other December Death Valley thread!
Day 1
Stephen left Sacramento around 4am, with the rest of us meeting in Whittier leaving around 8am. Our first stop was Boron Air Force Base/Prison, which was a first for me. It has an interesting history and was abandoned in 2000 (although not entirely).
As is always the case when very near a paved road, the site has been quite a bit of vandalism- some being very creepy, although it did make for some cool photo ops!
We also checked out their Vehicular Component Factory, which had an extra creepy basement.
From Boron we headed towards the Trona Pinnacles outsite of Trona. It seems very much like what you would imagine the moon to feel.
From here we topped off our tanks in Trona and headed into the park taking Slate Range to our first campsite, Keystone Mine. We did get a little nervous as we found some pretty muddy sections right off the trail. Thankfully we didn’t face anything too bad while on the way to our campsite.
Our campsite for the night.
Day 2
We woke up and had a leisurely breakfast outside of the mine. I did take the opportunity to snap a few shots of my truck posing.
The view from the top of the mine.
The area does have a quite a few trams and steel cables still around. Stephen, being an engineer, took a look with his expert eye. Didn’t exactly look to be highly calculated, but it was still there!
In all we covered around 275 miles of dirt over the 4 days we were there, so it was a quite a bit of driving covering all levels of trails that can be found in Death Valley.
Here are some of my photos from the trip, as well as a recap of the areas covered. Excuse the photos, just finally upgraded from a point-and-shoot and still have no idea what I am doing. That is especially clear when compared to the other December Death Valley thread!
Day 1
Stephen left Sacramento around 4am, with the rest of us meeting in Whittier leaving around 8am. Our first stop was Boron Air Force Base/Prison, which was a first for me. It has an interesting history and was abandoned in 2000 (although not entirely).
As is always the case when very near a paved road, the site has been quite a bit of vandalism- some being very creepy, although it did make for some cool photo ops!
We also checked out their Vehicular Component Factory, which had an extra creepy basement.
From Boron we headed towards the Trona Pinnacles outsite of Trona. It seems very much like what you would imagine the moon to feel.
From here we topped off our tanks in Trona and headed into the park taking Slate Range to our first campsite, Keystone Mine. We did get a little nervous as we found some pretty muddy sections right off the trail. Thankfully we didn’t face anything too bad while on the way to our campsite.
Our campsite for the night.
Day 2
We woke up and had a leisurely breakfast outside of the mine. I did take the opportunity to snap a few shots of my truck posing.
The view from the top of the mine.
The area does have a quite a few trams and steel cables still around. Stephen, being an engineer, took a look with his expert eye. Didn’t exactly look to be highly calculated, but it was still there!
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