Despite Death Valley having had flash floods we were assured by a Cal Trans road-worker that the main roads were open so we headed in! The place we booked to stay looked like a car park! So we by-passed it and headed up north towards Scotty’s Castle where we found a great camp site, Mesquite Creek, no facilities but great location and only $12 per night. Next morning we went to Scotty’s Castle – it’s brilliant and the story fascinating – click here to read about it.
We then headed south through the valley, saw some fantastic sights and camped at Furnace Creek, well named! The stars here were like nothing we have ever experienced anywhere on our travels and all the constellations were so easy to spot, especially with the ipad app! I guess anywhere you get to see the Milky Way must be good! It was seriously hot even during the night but the wind was mad and the next morning we woke to a dust storm.
Without getting showered or changed and with Lynn still lying in bed, we headed off to Dantes View which gave us a breathtaking view over Death Valley and by the time Paul had finished taking his pictures he realised Lynn had a full cowboy’s breakfast ready by the smoke signals coming from the RV ! A quick shower on the top of Dantes View and we were off again.
The way out was unfortunately blocked by flash floods so we took a different route directly into the path of a sand storm which took away most of the light and took speed down to 20mph.
Although we intended staying in the Barstow area we just kept on driving down to Yucca Valley and a lovely place called Pioneertown Village