Ryan's Journal

"My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?" — David Mitchell

Burbank, California

Posted at 1:00 pm, March 29th, 2003

This is a bit late, but here’s the report from last Sunday in Death Valley:

Despite having been to Death Valley on many different occasions I’d never gone up to the northern part of the park, so I decided to pay a visit. One of the main attractions up there is the Ubehebe Crater, something I’d seen in black and white pictures but not in person. Had I seen color pictures I would have visited long ago — the crater is about a mile across, and the eastern wall is a myriad of bright oranges that bend and twist in a wave-like pattern. The opposite side is darker rock, but it’s layered in equally fascinating patterns.

After walking around the crater for a while I hopped in the Subaru and headed off across a 4×4 road that my map showed emptied onto the opposite side of the park. Along the way I visted the Racecourse, a completely flat lakebed that stretches for a couple of miles, and then turned at teapot junction, which is a random signpost with perhaps a dozen teapots hanging from it — truly a bizarre sight to find in the midst of a remote desert. Along the next twenty miles of “road” were several abandoned mines and rugged desert scenery.

The back roads of Death Valley are not for the faint of heart (nor for anyone without four wheel drive), and I had to crawl along fairly slowly to avoid damaging the Subaru or popping a tire. I was starting to run low on gas when I came to a barricade — the road was closed for wilderness protection, and any thought of bypassing the barricade disappeared when I saw that the road was washed out further along. Forty miles into a remote area of Death Valley with the tank hovering near empty was probably not the best of scenarios, and after turning around I was counting down how long it would take if I had to walk out. To conserve gas I traveled at thirty miles an hour over roads that I had earlier been taking at ten — a memorable experience, and I have an even greater respect now for the Subaru engineers. Luckily a fair amount of the way back was downhill, allowing me to coast without using gas, and about an hour and a half later I pulled into Stovepipe Wells with the empty light blazing. It’s a safe bet that the next time I explore remote 4×4 roads it will be done with a completely full tank 🙂

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