OK, dinner’s over – back to the memories.
I forgot to mention one other stop that we made on our first day –
The Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes

We didn’t actually get out and climb those big ol’ dunes, but there were others who did -



They were pretty amazing!
But, back to Day Two -
Remember how this is the largest park in the lower 48? Well, we were camped close to the middle of the park, and we still had a forty mile drive to our first stop -
Scotty’s Castle

We splurged and did a “combo tour”, so we got to enjoy both an Inside Tour (along with lots of stories about the castle and its builders), and the Underground Tour, which included details on the mechanics of the castle, which was quite an engineering feat.

As you can see, it is pretty remote and in the desert after all, but it did have access to an underground spring that produced 300 gallons of water per minute, so they had that going for them. Can you see the big hole in the ground in the front of castle?
Here are some close-ups -


That was going to be the swimming pool!!!! Check out the viewing windows in the deep end – how crazy was that?

I was standing on that center bridge when I took the pictures of the deep and shallow ends. I can’t imagine how over-the-top this pool would have been (not to mention how quickly the water would have been evaporating there in the desert) had not the owner run out of money. It was a facinating tour – and I took lots of pictures. Here are just a couple -



and plenty more HERE!
Next Stop -(down a 20 mile dirt road) – The Racetrack, home of the mysterious moving rocks.

The Racetrack is a large dry lake bed called a playa. It was pretty facinating just to look at-
from a distance

and close up -

and very close up -

But what really draws people to this remote spot are these rocks

that move across the lakebed

leaving trails behind them.

I haven’t a clue how this actually happens, but I’m glad we got to see them. Quite an interesting phenomenon, don’t you think?
After the Racetrack (and back that 20 miles of dirt road), we took a quick stop at the Ubehebe Crater -

and then we were on our way back to Lizzie,

and a beautiful sunset.

Another good day in the valley!

Death Valley National Park
It wasn’t even on my “bucket list” of things I needed to do while on the West Coast. So when Gary said we were going there before we headed to Arizona, I wondered what there was to do there. I mean, with a name like Death Valley – sure didn’t seem like a very interesting place to me. Well, four jam packed days (and 700+ pictures) later, let me tell you, there is LOTS to see and do in Death Valley.
Did you know

Enough of statistics! I was expecting to see desert and desert-y thing. What I wasn’t expecting were mountains of unbelieveable colors, volcanic craters, a castle, moving rocks, and lakes of salt. I’ve pared down my pictures, and tried to be at least a little organized, so here we go – the highlights of Death Valley National Park, Conrad-style!

Titus Canyon
Now there are two ways to see Titus Canyon. One is to drive to the canyon head (about 1/2 mile) and then hike up the extraordinary canyon. OR, you can drive all the way out of the park and approach it from the other side, driving along a “high clearance, 4×4 vehicle recommended” road for about 25 miles. Can you guess which one we chose?

The road was one way (which I LOVED) and never really got too “technical”, but we did encounter something that we had rarely come across before -

TRAFFIC!
And while we tried to stay back (mostly so we wouldn’t be choaking on their dust),

We did finally end up in a traffic JAM!

Looking back while we waited for folks to start moving again….

We eventually got around the crowd (they all stopped at various POI’s along the way), and made our way into the canyon -

and after an amazing drive through the canyon,

we made it out the other side! It was a great drive – and if you’d like to see a couple more pictures of the drive and canyon, Here you go! -
Since the drive took a little longer than we expected (you know, the traffic!), we decided to take in some of the areas that were close to our campsite.
Like the Harmony Borax Works -


And the Salt Creek Interpretive Trail -




The Salt Creek is home to the Devil’s Hole pupfish – an endangered species found only (so I’m told) here in the Death Valley region.

Our final stop for the day was Mosaic Canyon - Amazing!



A couple more Mosaic Canyon pictures are HERE

And that was Day One. I think I’ll split this up into a couple of posts, so you don’t get into picture overload (like that would ever happen on one of MY posts!)
Take a break – I’m going to make us some dinner!

So we getting ready these days.
We’re getting ready to pack up and pull out. Our project here is winding down (tomorrow, Thursday, is our last day), and Gary can just about smell the road beneath the wheels. We’ve enjoyed our time here, seeing some beautiful sights and making lovely new friends, but when Gary’s ready, he’s ready! Tomorrow after work we’ll be taking care of laundry, making one last trip to Costco, fitting in a stop at the Post Office, and maybe enjoying a final In N Out burger. (OK, so it might not be our final FINAL burger, but it will at least be our final one at THIS In N Out!)
And we’re be getting ready to say good-bye to our new friends. We had a fun group this month – one couple was on their first SOWER project, and the other couple had been full-timing for about 20 years! Quite some diversity! But we all meshed together just fine, and had a grand time. The work wasn’t too hard – the guys mostly worked on painting and refinishing things, while we ladies went between cleaning pre-school classrooms (you don’t want to look at the underside of those tables, believe you me), to putting together admission packets to filling eggs for the Easter egg hunt next week.

Gotta love the diversity of a Sower Project!
Here’s our little group -

Oh, yeah, we had a fun month!

And out in the field that Joshua Tree is getting ready to finish its burst into spring.
Here it was on March 11th-

and it was popping out a little more by the 17th -

And then this week, on the 23rd -


I certainly hope I get to see more of these as we continue our travels in the desert!

And we’re getting ready to be tourists for a week, too! We’ll be traveling to Prescott, Arizona, but along the way we’ll be stopping at Death Valley National Park and then the south rim of the Grand Canyon. Can’t wait for that!

And I’m also getting ready to get some potholders in the mail. The offer is still open, just so you know.

But right now, I’m getting ready to hit the sack. Can’t be shirking on my last day on the job!
Sweet dreams!

Remember last weekend and the “no adventure” post? Well, we more than made up for it on Friday. It was lovely potpourri of hiking, driving, and learning, with even a little shopping thrown in for good measure.
Ready? Let’s go!
First the shopping.

We’d been told about a very eclectic store on the way to Devil’s Punchbowl called Charlie Browns. They said it was a store where you could find just about anything. ANYTHING might be a little too big of a word, but there certainly a wide variety of “stuff”.
You could pick up your fresh produce

and turn around and enjoy a wine tasting.

If you wander outside, you can pick out a new lawn ornament -

(Quite a bargain, too, it seems).

And if cows aren’t quite your thing, how about a bison or a zebra or a dinosaur?-

or even your knight in (not very) shining armor!

You can pick up some speciality candy

or go for the standard gift shop sweets.

You can pick up a game for your backyard BBQ,

(or play it indoors – you can, you know!),
and even try something new for throwing on the barbie!

But I confess that what really brought us into the store was this -


We needed the energy. Honest.
On to Devil’s Punchbowl

We started out with a nice little nature walk before we tackled the hike down the punch bowl.




There is a creek that runs through the bottom of the canyon – it was lovely!


But judging by some of the rock configuration, it seems that once upon a time there was a lot more water moving around here!


We’re not sure how these folks got up on the top of those rocks

but hey, they’re young. I don’t know how they are getting down, either!
We did manage to spot some interesting (to us anyway) critters along our walk.

The Red Haired Velvet Ant (though it is actually a wingless wasp).

A Common Side-blotched Lizard

And a Western Fence Lizard.
All of these are pretty common in these parts, but since we’re not from these parts, we thought we’d document their existence here!
And one thing you need to know about the hike? The map indicated it was about a mile and a half round trip hike. Let me tell you, it might have been a mile or so down, but it was easily four miles on the way up. Easily.
But, since the day was still young (and we had all that donut energy helping us along), we decided to take a drive north to the Red Rock Canyon State Park. We took a route through Edwards Air Force Base, which we discovered is pretty much in the middle of nothing.


But we did find this interesting gate sign -

Don’t know if they were keeping the tortoises in or out or warning of possible tortoise crossings/stampedes, but it certainly caught our eye!
But I digress – the Red Rocks, right?




So the rocks were pretty cool, but this is what really caught Gary’s eye -

Oh, yeah. Dirt Road. 4-Wheel Drive Dirt Road.

It started out pretty tame – some good dips over the washes, but nothing too major. But that was about to change -

That’s Gary checking out the disappearing road at the top of the hill -


OK – it started to get a little better – this is like a little “resume speed” zone here

(See the “real” road over on the left? So near, and yet so far!)
But then the “serious off-road” stretch appeared -



Really, that IS the road. Really.
We pressed on, slowly, navigating around the biggest rocks, staying away from the edges

Until we came to a less-stressful stretch

but then we turned the corner and came to this.

We checked out going left

Or maybe going right

But the answer was always the same. DEAD END.
The only way out was to turn around and go back. And I confess that going back was (to me) much worse, because we knew what was ahead. And I also knew that now I would be on the “edge” side of some of the more precarious stretches. (No pictures of that either way since my eyes were clamped shut!)
We made it without mishap, but it was a very long ride back to that blessed highway! (Kind of like that 4 mile hike back UP out of Devil’s Punchbowl.)

So, like I said, it was quite a full day! And aside from a couple of moments of absolute terror, lots of fun all around.
And maybe when California gets out of it’s budget crunch, it can make some new maps of the Red Rock Canyon.
Please.

Usually on weekends we try to spend one of our Saturdays doing chores and the other one on some type of adventure. This weekend we decided to get the chores out of the way on Saturday One (Friday), and then we would have Saturday to check out places with names like Devils’ Punchbowl or Bouquet Canyon or the Red Rock Canyon State Park (aka Little Grand Canyon of California). We were looking forward to dirt roads and great hikes and wonderful vistas. And we are still looking forward to them. The wind picked up on Saturday morning, and blew like crazy for the rest of the day. And when your house is rocking and rolling in the wind, it just doesn’t seem worth it to try to go for a drive, or find a good hike. We settled in for a quiet day around the house (well, except for that crazy wind! That wasn’t so quiet!). So, since the adventures will have to wait until next weekend, how about a little catch up on where we are, and what we’ve been doing?
First the geography -
Here’s the Big Picture -

We’re in Palmdale, which is the little red dot in the yellow square.
And if you zoom in just a little -

you can see we’re in a reasonably populated area. The area is called the Antelope Valley , is considered “high desert” (we’re at about 2500 ft.), and constitutes the westward tip of the Mohave Desert. This is a topographical map that really shows the area -

The mountains to the north are the Tehachapis, and to the south are San Gabriel Mountains.
You wanted to know all this, right?

We’re on a main connecting road about halfway between Palmdale and Lancaster, whose joint population is about 300,000 people! So you can imagine that you can find any kind of store that you might be needing. But the beauty of where we are is that this is the view from the front of the church -

(Those are the San Gabriels, by the way).
And if I step out of our house (parked in the back of the church where we’re working), I can see the Tehachapis-

Light industrial park notwithstanding, it’s quite a nice view!
See that Joshua Tree at the left edge of the picture? I took a walk out for a closer look because I thought it looked like it might be getting ready to bloom.

And I was right!

I’m going to keep tabs on that tree – and hopefully I’ll get to see it open all the way! There are lots of Joshua Trees here (in fact, they are protected. You cannot cut them down, and if they are in the way of any development, they must be moved!), so it will be fun to see them bloom as the month goes by.
Here’s our parking spot behind Crosswind Community Church-

where we’ve been busy doing general maintenance (the guys), and office work (the gals). Along with the church, it is also the location of Adventureland – Daycare through Kindergarten. Lots and lots of cute little kids ready to steal our hearts! (Oh, and give us colds!)
As you can see from our parking spot, our “morning commute” is a little more typical -

We had a good first week on the job – though the wind really slowed the guys down on some of their outside work. It was way too windy to be up on ladders or even do any outside painting, so they tried to keep busy doing inside stuff. Next week, who knows? The weather reports are encouraging – sunny and in the 70′s for most of the week. If the winds stay under 15 mph, we’ll be happy!
And one thing we are happy for every night is a beautiful sunset. One of the perks of being parked looking west!

Have a good week, everyone! And Devils’ Punchbowl – we’ll see you next weekend!