Three Generations in Death Valley, Day 5

After restocking on some food supplies and gassing up, we made the trip back into the park. Since we had lost a couple of days in Bishop, I decided to alter my planned route and stick to the paved roads as much as possible so that we would not have to cut huge chunks of the part out of our visit. Not something I really wanted to do, but this particular trip was not about me. Coming back into the park from the west on Hwy 190 afforded us the opportunity to stop on the dirt road at Father Crowley Overlook for lunch. We were hoping to see a jet fighter make the “Jedi Transition” run, but it was not to be. For those not familiar with the Jedi Transition or Star Wars Canyon, a Google search is well worth your time.

The rest of the day was spent making the long climb back into the center of the park where I had made plans to camp that night. I was really excited about this camping spot and could not wait to check it out. It would be one of only two camp sites on the trip that we did not have to share with anyone else. In fact, once we turned off the main road, we never saw or heard another person until we were back out on the main road the next day. Total silence, total bliss. We finished setting up camp and had a decent amount of time before dark to do some exploring and rock hunting. I also took time to clean up a lot of broken glass around the old house area and in front of the fireplace especially. I can’t understand how some people do not take care of cool camping places like this.

This was the site of an old stone house of some type (I’ve not been able to find any information on it). It had two sets of pretty elaborate stone stair ways, a large stone patio and a large stone fireplace and chimney. The place also had electric wired at some point in its history. That evening was the first time in the park that the wind was not blowing like crazy and the temperature was warm enough not to send us to our tents early. After cooking dinner on the Camp Chef Redwood portable fire pit (all of our cooking was done on this), we build a wood fire in the old fireplace and enjoyed roasting marshmallows in it. This was also my first good opportunity to do some night time photography. When I was originally planning this trip, I was hoping the Milky Way would be visible, but the dates we were there ended up during the week of a full moon. This meant no Milky Way photos and no Star trails either. I still managed to get a decent shot of the RTTs setup (I owed @reuben of Odin Designs some good photos for loaning me the extra RTT that was on the trailer).

The adventure continues on Day 6