Misdirection Trip – Desert

Saturday (Oct 18)

Finally awake at a decent hour (10:30). I need more daylight.

Since I am in the desert at a BLM campground where pretty much anything goes, and this is my fourth day since a shower, I decide to wash my hair! Right out in front of everybody – I am visible for 3-15 miles in any direction, so that’s about 2 people. This is the third time I’ve ever tried to do this (use my back door shower) in the wild, and it was the most successful by far! I actually used my shower nozzle attachment for the first time EVER! The propane was on for last night’s heat (which I didn’t need as it turns out), so I flipped the rarely-used hot water switch (three times in five years?). The water never actually got hot, but I think it was warmer than outside temperature, which made a difference when running it over my head and shoulders. I felt just so … spiffy afterwards!!!

 I puttered around the rest of the morning among other things watching a hang glider a few miles off up at least 800′ – how did she get there? Finally about 12:30 it’s time to negotiate the five huge speed bumps and coast downhill to Lone Pine. I almost always go to the funky coffee place with wifi, but I am not feeling the wifi necessity today, so I try out the Lone Pine Bakery, which has good reviews and which served me killer biscuits and gravy and a berry danish to go – woo!

There is a super deluxe Visitors Center (Eastern Sierra Interagency V. C.) at the 190 turnoff. I think if it were just the usual Federal players – the Forest Service, the Park Service and the BLM, this would not be deluxe, but since this is the Owens Valley, there is another player that controls all the marbles — the LAWA (Los Angeles Water Authority), who has money and a big need for positive public relations, since they have f—ed over this area on a daily basis year in and year out for going on a century.  Hence the fancy Visitors Center, built with Water Authority money.  The irresistible attraction for me is the epic relief map spanning the Sierras and the White Mountains east-west, and from Susanville to LA north-south. In other words, a huge humping relief map! … Donated by some big-ass oil company I think.

Such a pretty drive, pass Panamint to Stovepipe, where you park in a huge flat shadeless parking lot surrounded by mountains in the far distance. Poor man’s Burning Man, ha ha.

Two expensive beers at the bar, but how cool is it to have a National Park Pub across the street from your campsite!

Sunday

Sun woke me up at 9AM, kind of unusual for me, but is more like the schedule I oughta have for traveling … or any time really.

Coffee and yesterday’s yummy danish. Crows tried to get me, but I held ’em off.  “Short” 40 mile trip from Stovepipe to the Visitor’s Center (no wifi but good 4G bars at least). I spent an hour or so staying cool in the shade at Furnace Creek. Hidden in plain sight right in front of me was a very interesting little Borax Museum which I had never noticed in all the times I’ve hung out here staying cool for a while. Then the long 80 mile drive down the endless Badwater Valley to Shoshone to Tecopa.

Nobody at the office, so I just parked and got comfortable.

The dude (mellow, talkative kid with Dude-like long hair) found me within minutes. He returned with his clipboard and forms, and boom!  I am registered to camp for tonight at the bargain sum of $10. Turns out that previously the place was run by a concessionaire named CLM (I believe). They walked away, so for the moment, the place actually is run by Inyo County, of which the dude is an out of state employee (he lives at his parent’s sweet 5 acre place in Parumph :)

The pools are free of charge now. According to the dude, they will remain free until somebody’s proposal is accepted to be the new concessionaire. I guess that’s why camping is $10 instead $16 as before. $6 of that was the fee for soaking.

Anyway, the place is only slightly more run down than on previous visits, and the dude is a huge upgrade over the weirdos that used to inhabit the office in the CLM days. Dude says CLM quit their contract because they had been milking the place for revenue without doing any upkeep, and it finally got to the point where they were going to have to put money back into it, so time to hand it back over to the government. Another privatization success story!

Monday

Pleasant, drive to coffee, Holley’s Cuppa. Pretty awful day after that. Vegas is HUGE. Unless you’re going where the freeway goes, it takes an hour of suburban stoplight traffic to get from one side to the other no matter how you slice it.

Holley’s two coffees (a drip brew AND an Americano!) gave me enough energy to be fatally ambitious. It’s early in the day, so why not check out the BLM campground at Red Rocks that I’ve seen on the map and wondered about?  I backtrack to the beautiful Red Rocks Drive north to check it out. It was not a successful trip, but Now I Know. Things I learned:

1. Near sunset there is a 10-12 car backup at the entrance to the Red Rocks Loop. Un-clever traffic controls allow for no legal way to change your mind, drop out of line and return to the road. There is an illegal way which worked fine for me today.
2. The campground is a few miles east, NOT on that loop road, so I would not have had to learn item 1 if I had known item 2.
3. It’s a pretty big campground, but at 4PM on a random Monday night, it was full! So close to Vegas, almost in Vegas really, not surprising I guess.
4. According to the map the Red Rocks road turns into Charleston Boulevard, which cuts straight across this hellscape of a city, but my directions apps insists on directing me away from it.
5. Even more useless is that a few miles north I got on West Lake Meade Boulevard, with the intention of following it alllll the way across to where it becomes East Lake Meade Boulevard, but again, Apple maps insisted I do anything but that, helpfully directing me driving into the confluence of I-15 and I-515 rush hour. I was pretty f—ing frazzled by the time I escaped that.

This put me back on Charleston Blvd (item 4) which I followed for too long then turned north to rejoin East Lake Meade Blvd (item 5) until finally civilization ended. the Park Service entrance station came into view, the cutie in the Smokey hat checked my ID and I was on the way to relaxation!

I arrive and nail a pretty nice spot on the edge of the canyon. Nice except that two of my neighbors are running their generators. Generator noise is one of the constant features of this otherwise very pleasant campground. I am annoyed at having arrived so late. There’s just time to drink a beer and watch the end of sunset. I am too late to do the fun little canyon rim hike that starts from right outside this campsite. Oh well.

I’m kinda wired up, switching abruptly from intense rush hour driving to sitting on my ass in the dark listening to generators, so I pace and drink beer, walk out to the edge to stare at the canyon, which causes the neighbor’s dog to start a barking binge, to walking back and doing it all over again.

It’s hot enough inside to keep my door open tonight, but it’s too buggy, so I crank up the ceiling fan! It does a surprisingly good job of cooling things off.

Tuesday

Sun seems even hotter this morning than in Death Valley. That can’t be true, but it sure gets me out of the interior of the van and outdoors into the shade of the van pretty early, about 10-ish. I contemplate moving over a few sites to a big tree with shade, but it’s nice enough sitting in my chair in the shade of the van so I stick with that. I remembered last night (a day too late!) to put the chocolate in the fridge, so I don’t think there’s anything else for the heat to screw up. A covey of quail come quite close to me. That’s exciting! The heat is kind of a drag though, so I pack up relatively early and head to breakfast with the idea that I will get to Valley of Fire early in the day [good decision!].

There is absolutely nothing in the way of amenities east of here, so breakfast means backtracking, back around the bay and back up the hill to NE Vegas again. Farmer Brothers turns out to serve a good breakfast – good wifi, good service and good enough food. It validated my decision to backtrack into the hellpit for a couple of hours to start the day with a nice meal and connectivity. Northeastern Vegas is all about Nellis AFB, so there was lots of camo in the restaurant.

Yesterday I got diesel on the way into Vegas, and because I’m heading into the back country I got diesel again on the way out of Vegas. I drove ninety miles just getting around this awful place for a half day. Hit the freeway; fifty miles of I-15 gets me to the exit for Valley of Fire State Park.

The dude at the gate tells me that the second campground is nicer, less generator noise was the item that sold me. It is called Arch Campground, and I quite like it. I didn’t particularly like the site I chose, on the far side of the main loop. Close to the bathroom is a negative if you’re not using the bathroom, it just means lots of flashlights stumbling past all evening.

After the main loop is a one-way road with much more interesting sites, better privacy, more scenic, better morning shade. I’ll do better next time.