Back to Pahrump… (a pump a pump pump….)

Yesterday, we found out all about Death Valley… Judy will tell you, that it gets warm and noon, and then does not relent with the heat till about 6:30 in the evening… it made it up to over 105 Deg. F. or over 40 deg. for you Cel. lovers in Canada!   Wow!  

Last night I had trouble sleeping as you just lie in bed and sweat!  

This morning we got up early at 7:00 and started to get ready to leave this natural furnace.   We were on the road at 9:00, however with a few problems… our tail lights are giving us problems again… and I noticed a loud ticking noise coming from the front drivers side wheel… not good.   We decided to head to Pahrump which was only about 1 1/2 hours away and hold up till we get some of these issues resolved!

Judy took care of laundry and groceries, while I washed up the Jeep and Burgman, and headed over to the GMC Dealership and landed an appointment for tomorrow morning at 8:00 to have the wheel looked at… sound at this point in time like we have blown a wheel bearing… will find out tomorrow for sure.

After we toured Scotty’s Castle in Death Valley, we headed over to the Ubehebe Crater, about a 15 minute drive.  This crater was formed when water below the ground was super heated by hot lava underground, and then exploded!

The crater is over 1/2 mile wide, and over 500 feet deep… you just stand in awe…

It was getting late in the day, but that did not stop us from moving on past the crater, and took a 25 mile ride on a dirt road… to see what all the talk about the “Moving Rocks” was all about…

There is no reasonable explanation for these moving rocks… so don’t ask me…   They are on a dry lake bed called the “Racetrack”.  They have been moved a long way to create the trail behind them…  this dry lake bed right now, is harder than you know what!  It would soften up when wet, so your guess is as good a mine on how this occurred!

Quite a few people made the trip out…

Check out these two rocks… can you explain it?

This guy was taking his pics on his IPhone…

Go figure…

So we have an appointment tomorrow morning to have our RV looked at and hopefully we can get our issues involved.   If parts are needed, they will be delivered the same day from Las Vegas! 

Till tomorrow…

Scotty’s Castle… Death Valley Part 2…

Today was pretty warm in Death Valley… our thermometer below tells the storey… after I took this picture, it got up to 103 Deg. F.   WOW!!!!

The middle temp. is inside the RV and the lower number is outside…

 

So we are a little behind on blogs, since we have had internet problems… the seem to be fixed now… so we will try another blog… on Monday we went up to Scotty’s Castle…  It is in the north end of Death Valley, and belonged to a Man, Mr. Johnson and his Wife from Chicago.  Death Valley Scotty was a bit of a con man, and he was selling land in Death Valley in the late 1920’s… he took a trip to Chicago to find investors and hit on Mr. Johnson…

Johnson was a multi millionaire from the Life Insurance Business…  he decided to go to Death Valley and build a “Summer Home” for him and his wife… and also a spot for Death Valley Scotty to hang out…

What you see below is 1/2 of the swimming pool!  Johnson had a natural spring, one of the very few in Death Valley, and so built his home here… the spring provide 100 lbs. of water pressure… a normal home has about 40 lbs.

In the late 1920’s… the U.S. Government sent a surveyor out, and told Mr. Johnson that his land was actually 1 1/2 miles north!  Immediately construction stopped… over 100,000 pool tiles remained in the basement… you have to see it!   It took Johnson 6 years to fight the Gov’t and finally get his land back, but by then the Great Depression set in, and he could not afford to finish the home…

Electricity was provided by hundreds of these batteries, that were charged by a water wheel that drove a generator…

This is the water wheel generator that Johnson used… he later changed it to a diesel generator…

The house was beautiful… the courtyard was amazing…

This sundial actually worked!  It is set on standard time and we confirmed the time!

Johnson bought this 1933 Packard and gave it to his Granddaughter for her birthday!

Everything inside the home is original… including their cloths in the closet!   That is our tour guide who did a great job!

The rifle collection is original…

The house if full of these…

Amazing wood work through out!

The music room has a great pipe organ that still works… amazing…

This is only part of the storey of this amazing place… you have to come… and it is only $20.00 each to tour the basement and main floors of the home… (tongue in cheek…)  We had a great time…

This blog has a set limit as I am still working on our generator… so more to come!

Till tomorrow…

Death Valley Adventure…

A quick note here, I am posting this as at Monday morning, 9:30 a.m. mountain time… we have had problems with our Hughes Net Satellite Dish, but now have it working… sorry about the delay folks… we are enjoying Death Valley… now, carrying on with the blog…

We were all packed up and out of Pahrump around 10:00 this morning… it was nice out, and we took our time getting ready, as it is only about 1 1/2 hours out to Death Valley…

It was a nice drive from Pahrump out to the Valley…

Back into the badlands…

We were heading to a little Town called Furnace Creek, but we stopped along the way at Zabriskie Point… what a stop!   Awesome for the first view of Death Valley…

You could hike into the badlands…

A view of the parking lot from the lookout… yes, the big white dot in the middle is our RV…

We had to stop and buy a $20.00 pass which is good for 7 days to get into the park at the Ranger’s Station at Furnace Creek.

They have a dry camping RV lot at Furnace Creek, where we are tonight, for $12.00 a night.  We got set up and then decided to take a ride on the Burgman down to Daunte’s Peak… remarkable!  About a 25 mile ride from the RV.

We ran into a nice couple from Oregon who took our picture… they just bought a trailer and are on a bit of a tour… no, that is now snow behind us, that is a salt flat/dry lake bed… the snow is on the top of the mountains behind us… what a spot… cannot describe this to you…

This shot looks right up Death Valley, we are at the south end… it is about 90 miles up to the top!

Had to get a picture of Judy with Her Burgman…

We left the peak and headed to the floor which is the lowest spot in North America at about 220 feet below sea level…

This was a 7 mile scenic tour we took on the bike…

The mountains are all different colours… hard to describe and pictures just don’t do it… you have to come in person to see this!

This is called a “Dip” below… rain will flow right to left right across the road during a rain storm…

The dry lake bed sticks out like a sore thumb for miles…

This whole valley used to be a lake years and years ago… the water is all gone, and all the minerals from the mountains settled on the lake bed and surrounding mountains… that is minerals you see behind me… the most common here is Borax.  They have now stopped open pit mining here, and it has been left for the Tourist!

The scenic drive was one way, as the road got very narrow… lots of minerals…

 

Stopped back at Furnace Creed for some gas in the Burgman… check out these prices… $5.40 a gallon… $5.77 for Diesel…  we took $7.00 worth and were happy!  No, we don’t have to buy any diesel here, we will have enough to get back to Arizona.  The average price for Diesel now is $3.99 a gallon.

Here is our camp site tonight, and this post will be very late, as we are having problems with our usually reliable satellite internet tonight, and need to call tomorrow for help!

Till tomorrow…

Hang on to your hat everyone…

 

This is now Monday night, about 8:30 and we just got back to the RV from being out acting as tourists all day!   What a day… cannot post any pictures tonight, as I have to shut the generator down at 9:00… Hope to be able to start posting pictures maybe tomorrow… lots of pictures being taken here…

Today we spent the day at Scotty’s Castle at the North end of Death Valley… cool… (well, no, it was darn hot!)

Also saw the Moving Rocks out on a dry lake bed, after a 25 mile Jeep Tour… and we had to take the 25 miles back… and then saw the Ubehebe Crater, hard to explain that one, but I will give it a try later…

Tomorrow is another big day planned out…

Till tomorrow…

Death Valley... hard on computers...

Hello all:

Just a short post to tell you all we are fine and living in Death Valley... we are having problems with our Hughes Net Dish... finally got it going, but having problems posting our blog with pictures... STAY TUNED! Death Valley is a must see for everyone. Will try to post later tonight!

Till then...

Yes, we got a DAY OFF!

We got to sleep in a bit this morning, after we got back home from Las Vegas last night and dropping off David and Angela at the airport…

Their flight did not leave till 11:30, the good old red eye… and it was not very busy at the “kiss and fly”…

So once we got some coffee into us this morning, we kind of decided to take life easy and enjoy a day off…  we had to go and find some groceries, so we found the Super Walmart in Pahrump and all was good again for food.

As we are in the State of Nevada, Casino’s rule… even Terribles gets in on the action here…

Check out how they managed to disguise this casino below…

We had lunch and did some RV maintenance and cleaning, then Judy headed for the dreaded laundry mat…(yuck)…  I ducked out and grabbed my Super Cub and headed for the big Dry Lake Bed, just outside Pahrump and went flying!

We are at about 2,700 feet in elevation, so it only got to 60 degrees today, but it was not bad!

Everywhere you go here, you are surrounded by mountains…

This was my flying spot for the day, in the shadows of the mountains… on an un-named dry lake bed.  It was great… a bit of wind but that just made the flying a bit more challenging… no pics of me flying the plane, as I had to camera man!

On the way home I found more mountains… lots of snow as you can tell by the white!  Great spot!

We have decided to leave Pahrump tomorrow morning and drive the RV right into Death Valley… sound pretty dramatic does it not!

Will make a couple day trips from our new base.

Till tomorrow…