Our last full day in Death Valley, we got up pretty early and headed down to Stovepipe Wells for a meager buffet breakfast, the headed across the road for some lunch snacks. We rode back to camp to change, then headed up the Emigrant Valley road, into the Panamint Mountain range for the day. After riding up to the plateau, we took a rocky gravel road to Skidoo, an old mining settlement. It had some fun curves, sharp rocks and a narrow dead end, where we walked around to the old ore sluicer, to separate gold from iron ore.
From there we rode back down till the turn off to Augeberry Point, the summit of a mountain overlooking Death Valley. Again a fun gravel road that wasn’t too difficult.
On the way back down the mountain we stopped off at another mine / ghost town where we discovered a few old items scattered in the desert.
A few pictures later and we were on our third and final stop, at the Charcoal Kilns. On the way as we climbed elevation we noticed a heard of ‘burros’ (wild donkeys) near the road we stopped to watch.
Once we arrived, up 2miles of wash-out gravel to the Kilns we are our lunch. We could inside and all around the huge old ovens that still smelled of Pine smoke, that they were used for over 100years ago. The area was surrounded by pine trees; haven’t seen those for awhile!
We decided we still had time to see Mesquite Dunes before sunset, so got in our bikes and rode down the mountain into Death Valley to wander around the big pile of dunes, looking for animal tracks. After getting back to camp, we came to realise a large group of not-so-quiet men had completely taken over the campsite as part of some group trip. So wasn’t a quiet evening, but such is life, we’ll leave first thing tomorrow. Think we have seen plenty of DV for this trip
Zoe
First pictures looks rather dusty and dry all over the place.
Lovely picture of you two with the super background !
I love the picture with the “Nature Morte” wooden trees 🙂
Here we finally got some rain since the 1 day in May and before that since half April and with that the cold has also set in…..
Wondering which direction you’ll be taking the next days.
xxx Mum
Absolute and desolate desert wilderness, some traces of past human activity that seems to have destroyed the former natural environment.
In future maybe big chunks of our planet will bear the same ruins.
Magnificent as a landscape thanks to your photos.
Baci