Remember that ‘wind event’ that I mentioned as I ended yesterday’s blog? Well, it’s still expected to start at 10:00 a.m. Our plans for the day called for a short hike but with the winds, we decided to take a drive instead. One of the premier drives in Death Valley is down Titus Canyon. It’s a 26-mile one-way drive through some wild backcountry, up and over 2 mountain ridge lines, down into two valleys, winding through a narrow slot canyon before ending up back in Death Valley. There are hair pin curves, blind corners, cliff edges, a slot canyon for cars AND a ghost town. High clearance and 4-wheel drive is required. Luckily it’s a one-way road, once you start, there’s no turning back. We had a great time. And, now I won’t have to file my fingernails.
Yep, that’s our road there in the picture.
No, actually it was a fun road and the views were awesome. Here’s aptly named Red Pass. Note how we’re hugging the inside. And, yes, we need to get down to the road on the right hand side of the picture.
Here are some other pictures - but remember that there is a lot of sand blowing around this area and the views are somewhat clouded by this.
And, here are some other views around the canyons. I can only imagine this 26-mile journey in a wagon pulled by mules on a road that hadn’t been maintained up steep cliffs and down into low valleys.
The Ghost town was a town called Leadfield, in the middle of the mountains in a small glen. Death Valley is covered with old mines and mining towns, most founded around 1904 and abandoned by 1933, though several were still operative in the 1940’s. Actually mining in Death Valley must have been an arduous task, merely reaching the Valley is difficult but then you need to bring in all of your supplies and find a source of water. Then, if you really strike it rich, you’ve got to guard your mine while still taking your ore to town many miles away. And, all in the oppressive deadly desert heat.
You can see some of these old mining towns and abandoned mines, some of which were bonafide strikes, some where one prospector worked all his life and died poor and some which only bilked the investors.
Leadfield was one of the latter, founded in 1926 and abandoned several months later. The promoters claimed untold wealth and 1749 town lots were sold. In the end, the only wealth went to the promoters. Today you can see mines scattered around the area, old corrugated tin buildings, an old store, a rusting car, several concrete foundations and tailings everywhere.
In the end only investor’s pockets were mined. We found Leadfield, parked and began exploring what was left of the town. Here is an obvious store with the high front for signage.
We also found many abandoned mines with tailings piled around,
One building even had an ore processing table in it.
And here is an old car (look at those fenders),
and several abandoned homes.
Interesting bit of history. We got back into the car, finished the drive which is actually a slot canyon for cars. Imagine driving on a 15’ wide dirt road down a canyon with rock sides 2000’ tall and hairpin turns and you’ve got an idea of what driving down Titus Canyon is.
At the end of Titus Canyon and back in the Valley, we ran smack dab into the wind storm which we had avoided all day. Driving the 18 or so miles back to the campground was like driving in Iowa in the winter. Below you can see the leading edge of it.
Here are some of what we saw as we drove back to the campground. It’s just like driving in an Iowa snowstorm with the wind blowing. Whiteouts with little wisps of snow blowing tendrils out onto the highway. Here it was sand blowing across the highway. We even saw the sand plow out. Sure enough, 2 guys in a plow looking for places where the sand covered the highway. And, I’m sure they found some. It was beginning to build up on the side of the road as we were driving back. We all had our lights on but at times to was difficult to see the road. Cars in the other lane would emerge from the sand like ghosts.
Back at the RV we felt as if we were under siege. We opened the blinds and looked at the window sills and the tracks through which the windows slide. Not sliding so well now and they sounded gritty. Sand piled up all along them. Check these pictures.
So much for gaskets. Though, with 70 mph winds, I can see why the gaskets had a it of trouble. Out with the vacuum cleaner and up with the masking tape. As we drove up, we had seen one of our neighbors futzing around their windows and realized that they were taping them up. After I vacuumed, Gary followed me with the tape.
Then we looked out the window to see how the campground looked. Oops, there goes a tumbling tent, one of those half circles, just tumbling along the sand. Oops, out floated the air mattress. And, then the clothes. It looked like a yard sale out there. Could we had caught them? Nope, not a chance, they were flying so fast. They’re probably across the into the next county by now. Yesterday I took a picture of the campground and today I took another. Here’s the comparison.
What is scary is that we were not here at the worst. One of our other neighbors told us that he couldn’t see his own truck parked in front of his RV the sand was swirling so much. Another neighbor told us that he had left one vent on the top of his RV open and he returned to the RV to find 1/4” of sand over everything. Luckily they had extra bedding and could clean it all out.
We saw several people taking their dogs out for a walk in the middle of the sand storm. Now, that’s dedication. I’d tie the dogs leash to the RV and tell him to make do (in more ways than one). I’d also think that the dog, with sand blasting his eyes and filling his hair would find the perfect spot in one try rather than walking all over the campground looking for the perfect spot.
Luckily we can hunker down in the RV and are self sufficient. We are also lucky (well, actually we planned it this way) that we have a vacuum cleaner built in to the RV. I don’t have a clue how others cleaned their window sills. I’m assuming they had a small hand vac. But, I think we’ll be finding sand in the tiniest nooks and crannies for a long time.
And, of course, the outside of our RV is scored by the sand also.
We could hear the wind howling all night but it stopped about 4 or 4:30 as predicted.
The lesson we have learned: don’t camp 4 miles from a huge sand dune field. Our campground is only 4 miles away from the Mesquite Sand Dune field and today is a day that the sand dunes are on the move.
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