We left the hotel by 8 AM for the long drive to Death Valley. On the way, we stopped for some pictures of the Amargosa Hotel and Opera House at the wide spot in the road that is Death Valley Junction. The story goes that a ballerina from New York named Marta Becket happened upon this abandoned theater after a flat tire in 1967 and decided to revitalize the place with her creativity. You can find news stories on her efforts and her all consuming passion for her art that came out in the murals she painted throughout the theater and hotel and the ballet recitals she would present, sometimes to an empty theater. However, we were not able to go into the opera house because it was locked up. We had considered staying at the quirky hotel, but it is in such a state of spooky-looking disrepair, I’m glad we didn’t.
We went on to the Furnace Creek Visitor Center in Death Valley, where we learned that we didn’t have the right kind of vehicle to take the rough road to Racetrack Playa to see the mysterious moving rocks that Jeff had really wanted to visit, and that even if we did, it would be a very long wasted trip because we could not walk out on it lest we leave footprints forever in the mud from the rainstorms earlier in the week.
We continued with the rest of our plans, which included going as far north in the park as a non-AWD could take us. We had plenty of gas, having filled up in Pahrump, and a good thing, too, because gas in the park was nearly $7.00 a gallon!
Our first stop was Harmony Borax Works, a short interpretive trail detailing the borax mining that used to go on here. The stuff was all over the ground like a thin layer of snow. Informational plaques described how the old 20-Mule Team Borax brand was not stretching the truth in the name, as it literally took 20 mules to haul a shipment of the ore out of the valley. Jeff wondered about the logistics of watering all those animals in this wasteland, and I pragmatically added that, however they managed it, they probably watered the mules before the men to keep production running.
From there, we drove north about an hour to Ubehebe Crater, the remains of an ancient volcanic explosion. As we gained in elevation, I watched the temperature gauge on the car go from around 50 degrees to the upper 30s. The landscape transformed, as well, going from flat brown and red with scattered desert brush to mountainous dark gray and black, with absolutely no signs of life.
There was a surprising number of cars in the small parking lot at the crater, but the crowd was so dispersed by the sheer size of the thing as people were hiking around the rim. I could tell by looking at their hunched over frames that the wind was fierce, and the parkas, hats, and gloves I had found amusing on the heat-loving desert dwellers at lower elevations were a source of envy now as we braved getting out of the car for only a couple of minutes to snap some photos. We had bought sunscreen in anticipation of the desert sun, but we had not anticipated the windburn that brief exposure would bring. I think my face was bright red for the rest of the day!
It was about 1:00 by now, and not wanting to wait for another hour to get back to the slightly less cold lower elevations, we ate sandwiches and chips in the car and watched braver people push headlong into the wind to make the trek around the crater. This place seemed like the definition of desolation, and I imagined it was what the land might look like after Smaug the dragon had struck in The Hobbit. The isolation was almost oppressive even for an introvert, so we left as soon as we finished eating.
Not going to the Racetrack Playa had thrown off my schedule of sights to see, so I suggested to Jeff that we switch some things up and leave the rest of the park to the next day. We could start toward our hotel in Beatty, NV, before it got dark (I didn’t want to be in the literal middle of nowhere in the dark) and explore the ghost town of Rhyolite on the way.
Rhyolite grew out of a 1904 gold strike in the area that brought prospectors roaring in. It looked to be a fairly bustling town, given that there are remains of a three-story bank and a two-story school among the ruined storefronts and jail. But like so many boom towns, its prosperity was short-lived. I’m sure Jeff would have liked to go inside to explore these ruins closer, but they were roped off, most likely to deter the vandalism we have seen at other ghost towns.
Within a few hundred steps of the town is the Goldwell Open Air Museum, an outdoor art exhibit that has had sculptures since the mid-80s. Like all art, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I wasn’t too thrilled with “Lady Desert: The Venus of Nevada”, as it just seemed tacky to me, but “Sit Here!” was an interesting take on popular culture, and “The Last Supper,” the most famous of the sculptures, was creepy in a good way.
We decided to get settled into our hotel in Beatty and later go back to Rhyolite for some sunset pictures. When we first got to the hotel, though, no one was at the desk, and Jeff could get no answer on the phone. He figured we could drive around the town to see what was available for supper, and, if need be, a different room for the night. Well, there is really about only two minutes from one end of town to the other, so we didn’t see much. We discovered a Denny’s attached to a casino hotel and a gas station, but that was just about it. We went back to the hotel, and by this time, someone was there to check us in. We rested for about thirty minutes, then drove back to Rhyolite for a pretty spectacular sunset.
Then we got Denny’s to-go plates, and lucky we were to get them, as the restaurant was out of about two-thirds of their menu. They were going to have to wait another couple of days before they would be restocked, and it really made me think about how remote this part of the country is.