Monday, August 9,
1982
Curt and Martha
went off to work at 8:00, allowing us to shower and prepare for the day. I
tried calling Margaret M H, but no answer. We left at 9:30 with
Kathy driving. Continued south on I-280 and circled around up Interstate 680 before
heading eastward (probably on CA 120). The hills got hillier and there were
more trees as we approached the Sierra Nevada. We passed the Don Pedro Lake
area before arriving at Yosemite
National Park.
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| Don Pedro Lake |
We paid an entrance fee of $3 and drove along a winding heavily-forested hilly road, with bare mountains rearing above.
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| Park fee receipt |
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| Yosemite National Park |
Entered Yosemite Valley and had a great view of a waterfall way up on a cliff; Bridal Veil Falls.
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| Yosemite Valley |
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| Bridal Veil Falls |
Across from it was a mass of rock called El Capitan.
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| El Capitan |
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| Bridal Veil Falls |
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| Granite Peak |
We followed a muddy little stream through the trees while sheer granite cliffs towered on both sides. All along you could see the Yosemite Upper Falls.
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| Yosemite Upper Falls |
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| Yosemite Upper Falls |
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| Yosemite Upper Falls |
We stopped at a viewpoint where you could see both the Upper and Lower Falls, a tall slender picture between evergreen trees.
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| Yosemite Upper and Lower Falls |
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| Yosemite Upper and Lower Falls |
At times the wind would blow the Upper Falls awry. Saw several squirrels running around.
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| Mountain stream |
I took over driving as we backtracked down the valley to Tioga Road to cross over the top of Yosemite Park. We twisted and turned most of the way; the trees were more stunted and the mountains rockier.
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| Stunted windblown trees |
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| Granite Mountain |
At one outlook we found a friendly group of Marmota flaviventris /Yellow-bellied Marmots. Some people were feeding them so we could take close-up pictures, but… One startled me by coming up to my toes.
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| Marmota flaviventris /Yellow-bellied Marmots |
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| Marmot |
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| Marmot |
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| Marmot by KC |
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| Yosemite National Park |
We drove past the wide open Tuolumne Meadows, then left the park, but not the beautiful scenery.
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| Crowley Lake |
We took US 395 south and pretty late, at about 21:00 we stopped for dinner at Burger King in Bishop. CA. Also bought film at a discount drugstore.
We continued in the dark towards Death Valley, turning left on CA 136. It was mountainous and the road twisted and turned. CA 136 merged with CA 190 that took us into Death Valley National Park. In the town of Panamint Springs, which was only a hotel, we hoped to get a room. In the office we could see a couple figures watching TV. As we came to the door, they got up and all the lights went out!
So we kept driving. We couldn’t see much alongside the road, just some brushy shrubs and occasionally the silhouette of a saguaro cactus. Little animals ran across the road (they had long thin tails, desert mice?) and I saw a couple Lepus californicus/Black-tailed Jackrabbits. As we passed a sign saying we entered Death Valley, we began to see bats.
Once in the Yosemite Park mountains, the hot temperature light came on in the car, and we read the car manual and only had to high idle for a couple minutes to cool off the engine. It happened once again in Death Valley.
Tuesday, August 10, 1982
At about 00:15, we arrived in Stovepipe Wells in Death Valley, which had a general store and a motel. We went to the motel where a sign said to go to the general store. If the store was closed, which it was, we were to use the pay phone to call Stovepipe #1. The pay phone was Stovepipe #2! Kathy picked up the receiver and asked the operator for #1. She had to plead with the operator to let it continue ringing. We could hear the phone in the motel office ringing! It was stifling hot and there were a few bats flying around.
Finally a lady answered and she directed us to her house behind the motel. We paid $24 for a huge room that turned out to be hot! We turned on the air conditioner which hardly put a dent in the heat. We went out to the ice machine to get a half bucket full, and to get drinking water, since you weren’t supposed to drink the tap water. The water from the drinking water faucet was hot! Inside our room, the cold water for washing our hands and dishes (whoops!) was hot. The toilet seat was hot! The bed was hot! We ended up cooling our pillows in front of the air conditioner and then sleeping on the floor in front of the air conditioner! Later in the night it was bearable enough to sleep on the beds.
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| Stovepipe Wells Motel |
We got up at 6:30 and it wasn’t quite so hot outside. We stocked up on ice. Kathy thought she saw a road runner by the Road Runner building of the motel. We were in the 49ers building.
We took a look at the surrounding huge and craggy mountains, the sparse brush around us, and the low sand dunes in between.
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| Stovepipe Wells sign |
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| Death Valley |
We left about 7:00, backtracking along CA 190.
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| Death Valley highway |
Saw a small rodent speed off with a white tail folded along his back; a
Ammospermophilus leucurus /Whitetail Antelope Squirrel.
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| Dry lake |
We headed into the rocky mountains that looked as if they would easily crumble.
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| Kathy looking for lizards? |
We passed a lot of horse-type droppings. Kathy had read that they mined borax out of Death Valley and used 20-mule teams. Then ahead we saw a mule and stopped to take a photograph.
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| Mule |
The mule came right up to the window and Kathy rolled up her window at the last second, and I carefully drove off. Rounding one hill, we saw a group of mules way up on the hilltop.
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| Mules |
Below the hill was a green tree-filled oasis without any wildlife!
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| Death Valley mountains |
We passed a probable mine entrance, and in the outer parts of Death Valley we saw evidence of working mines, for iron ore.
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| Mine entrance? |
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| Disappearing road |
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| Death Valley |
As we drove through Death Valley, we kept seeing a helicopter flying overhead, Very comforting! We also saw strange pools of water with white salt near them and no plant life around them.
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| Salt pools |
We headed south on Panamint Valley Road, and after passing a couple dry lakebeds, we came out at the town of Trona and filled up with gas. The locals were complaining about the military and pointed to a plume of smoke over the area of the Naval Weapons Center. It smelled like sulfur in Trona, a company mining town.
The road became CA 178 and shortly past Ridgecrest we joined US 395 to head south. We thought we saw Edwards Air Force Base air tower, a golf ball on a tall building, but it turned out to be part of Boron Federal Prison! We only knew that the base would be to our right. Later we saw two jets zipping across the sky in tight formation, then they broke off to circle around to land one-two, probably at George Air Force Base on our left.
We noticed the plants that we thought were saguaro silhouettes were actually short trees with only a couple limbs formed by lily-like leaves that folded down and died, like on a palm tree; the
Yucca brevifolia/Joshua Tree. We stopped to get a picture of a cactus, and Kathy was startled by a movement. It was only a lizard.
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Kathy and a Opuntia bigelovii/Cholla cactus
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| Yucca brevifolia/Joshua Tree |
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| Datura Wrightii |
We joined
Interstate 15 and entered
San Bernardino
National Forest. The sparse forest appeared to be made up of enlarged
shrubs!
A truck going the
other direction somehow slung a small stone at us and it hit the windshield
with a resounding crack. I thought I had been shot! It left a tiny nick in the
glass with some honeycomb radiating cracks, but they did not come all the way.
We have been keeping an eye on it to make sure it stays stable.
We drove all the
way to Riverside, CA, headed east on CA 91 and got off at 14th Street. We found ourselves at City Hall where we parked and I found a telephone
to call Karen C. It was 101 degrees F!
Behind City Hall we took
University Avenue west to Ottawa Street, turned right to go a few blocks to 12th Street, turned left and we saw Karen waiting outside. She had us use
our car key to get in the gate, which led to a nice courtyard with a couple
palm trees. Upstairs at #10 was a rather nice apartment full of hand-me-down
furniture. It had a large kitchen, living room, two bedrooms and a bathroom.
Karen said she would sleep in Margaret’s room, which had two twin beds, and
Kathy could sleep in Karen’s double bed. I would sleep on the couch.
Next: California Resort Parks.
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