Death Valley Ho!

I awoke to taps on my shoulder and a voice, “It’s time to go to Las Vegas.” I muttered that I needed more z-time. It was dark. I was warm. But I was awake. Because, “… time to go to Las Vegas,” meant both the promise of great times with Maureen’s grade school and high school girlfriends, but also a long-awaited trip back to Death Valley.

We did not plan our first trip to Death Valley. I was happily driving away from Las Vegas –  Maureen’s beautiful German Shepherd show dog Rosie having gotten dumped by a judge at a show there – and I was just settling into cruise control. 

Rosie left, Raven and a younger me.

I saw Maureen’s head whip to the right at the sight of a road sign, followed by her rustling around with a map. I had a feeling. “Have you ever been to Death Valley,” she asked. I panicked and tried to fabricate. “Oh, sure,” I said, blood pounding in my ears for committing such a sin, “When I was a kid.” The California state map rustle again and Maureen, thumb and forefinger separated by an inch, said, “It’s only this far. Let’s go.”

We went. We, with Rosie and our first German Shepherd Raven (who’d survived a record-breaking drive to Vegas with Maureen before I flew in to meet them), danced on dunes, marveled at the expanse, and took roads that should have shattered the suspension of our first Dodge Caravan, RGSHEPS. We stopped on the way out, overlooking from on high the expanse of 3 million square miles of “fucking desolation,” as Maureen tends to refer to deserts, including the Mojave. Desert Valley itself is 3,000 square miles. We stopped at an overlook on the way out call our cat-sitter about being off our schedule. Our shoe-box sized cellular phone got through. Then Maureen fell asleep. I drove. And drove. She took over when we returned to Bakersfield, a relative civilization, and to the Interstate. God love President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

This time, Death Valley was part of the itinerary. Through the magic that is Google, I found a place called Stovepipe Wells, inside the national park and at the edge of the valley of death itself, where we could stop on our way to Sin City. The garage door closed at 8 a.m. as we began our journey. 

We stopped in Wesley, just a few miles on Interstate 5 South, the dreaded I-5, for our customary McBreakfast. 

It is another throwback to our years of traversing up and down California to drag Rosie and Bogie to dog shows. I-5 through the Central Valley is not quite as boring as driving through West Texas, but it is damned close and without the dead armadillos. Unofficial roadside signs announce the farms that produce most of the country’s citrus, grapes and raisins, and almonds is actually a dustbowl created by Congress. Sure, there are stretches of Twilight Zone tumbleweed piles. But those sit between horizon-to-horizon orchards, vineyards and cotton fields. Cattle and sheep dot the Central Range foothill landscape.

We made a left turn at Bakersfield and, soon after, began the second half of the trip that we’d negotiate on two-lane roads. We’d talked the day before, when stuck in traffic in San Francisco taking Merlin and Annie to Pet Camp, about how joyous we would be on the open road. And we were without much traveling company, even the few times I had to reimagine the thrill of gauging whether or not we’d pass a slower car before being smeared all over the highway by oncoming traffic. Miles and hours went by. I got hungry as we approached Ridgecrest, the last real city before the beginning of Nowheresville. As Maureen says, “When Carol gets hungry, she must be fed.” Denny’s happened and I was all better. Death Valley was not that far ahead.

Half-way or so to our stay-over destination, we stopped at the Ballarat mining camp ghost town (est. 1897, post office closing in 1917). Its biggest claim to fame is that the monstrous Manson Family owned a ranch near there. 

Truck allegedly used by the Manson Family.

Now it appears to have become a hangout for biker gangs and mini-Burning Man meet-ups. The sole resident, George “Rocky” Novak was interesting in his own right. Enough so that Maureen bought each of us the T-shirt documenting our visit. We stopped by the graveyard and, after wandering around a bit, Maureen wondered, “Why bother burying someone if you don’t put up a marker?” 

One dead resident did have a marker. Prospector Charles “Seldom Seen Slim” Ferge, (1889 – 1968). His epitaph, a quote from Slim himself, “Me Lonely Hell No! I’m Half Coyote and Half Wild Burrow.”

I took photos, of course. I always take photos. I love taking photos and sometimes doctoring them up as I did the truck used by Charles Manson, et. al., (above) and a vistas, leaving the scenic views enhanced only slightly.

Fortunately, we did not have to drive over 11,000-foot Telescope Peak, but we did have to negotiate our way across the Paniment Range, Death Valley’s eastern border (to the east, the Amargosa Range, with the Sylvania and Owlshead Mountains being its northern and southern boundaries). That part reminded both of us of driving in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains… without the trees. 

Then, as happens, we came over a rise in the road to have Death Valley below us.

An entrepreneur named Bob Eichmann opened Stovepipe Wells in 1926, having completed the first road to access Death Valley from the west. He envisioned a grander resort but we found the rustic accommodations quite comfortable.

We learned that the 300 or so staff people of various ilk live onsite in dormitories behind the hotel. The young man in the General Store from whom we learned that hails from Oklahoma but, returning from “overseas,” decided he needed a change in scenery. I asked if he was military (the haircut and demeanor gave it away) and he replied that he’d served in Iraq. He smiled when I offered my hand and thanked him. 

We paid for a “deluxe” room so Maureen could watch television but, without the DVR, she could find nothing to watch. So we did the next best thing. We moseyed over to the saloon to whet our whistles. Ten hours on the road caught up with us. We zonked out in our room, one of 83 in all of Stovepipe Wells (which is no more than the motel, saloon, and General Store operating as a National Park Service).


Good night, Death Vally.