Part the Last: Going Home

Just as it got dark we arrived at the paved road that led to camp. At the intersection, Melissa was trying to pull away from the stop sign when she told me something didn't feel right, like she couldn't get Ludwig into first gear. I checked it out myself and indeed, he was stuck in second--all the flailing about of the shifter we could muster did nothing. We had neutral by depressing the clutch, but that was it. I decided we should limp back to the campground and sleep on it. In the morning I crawled underneath to see what I could see.

After calls to a couple mechanics, I realized there was nothing I could do about it where we were. Luckily, there was general agreement that while the camper was stuck in second, that driving him was not harmful, nor was it likely to change, for better or worse. That is, he was likely to stay stuck in second. The worst part was we would have to start driving home immediately and cut our stay at Death Valley short by two days. After all, Ludwig's top speed in second gear is about 35mph, and his average speed is closer to 30mph. The best part was that while Mitch has several dramatic Volkswagen stories, I had none. I was finally becoming initiated into the small circle of die hard VW fanatics. 

At Stovepipe Wells (elevation 0: see sign in background) we put a sign in the rear window and set out.

The road we'd sailed down when we'd entered the valley now lay in front of us as a 4956ft climb. At least, I thought, we'd probably only have been able to get over the pass in second gear even if nothing was wrong with the bus. But there would certainly be no stopping. Stopping in the middle of a long ascent such as this with only second gear would mean we'd have to coast back to the base to try again. Luckily, we made it up the mountain and out of the valley with no problems.

We dove down the other side into the Panamint Valley and used the 3400-foot drop as an opportunity to go as fast as we'd be able. I hit the clutch and we entered the valley at about 65mph. The Valley is occupied by another dry lake, the Panamint. It's the sandy expanse in the photo above. The roads across and through the valley are built right on top of it.

We stopped for a break in Panamint Valley, at the intersection of highways 190 and 178. In the background is Telescope Peak, a 11,049ft snow-topped pinnacle in the park. It was pretty impressive from where we were at 1600ft, but I imagine it is all the more imposing as seen from the other side (the Death Valley side) as it rises, uninterrupted, from -282ft at Badwater Basin. Maybe next time.

There is a town in California named Trona. This charming hamlet of 1900 sits on the "shore" of Searles Lake (dry, of course) and, astonishingly, ninety-eight of the 104 natural elements can be mined around the town. Nowadays they mostly mine borax. "Twenty-Mule Team" borax comes from Trona. If you can imagine what a town that is continually bathed in a chemical stew and baked in the desert sun is like, that's Trona. Melissa was quite enamored with the place; ask her about it sometime. For some reason, we didn't take any pictures of the town. The picture above is of the Trona Pinnacles, which you might recognize from the newer Planet of the Apes movie, or from Lost in Space. The things you see when you can only go 25mph and have to stay off bigger highways. Charles Kuralt was probably right.

Late in the afternoon I called a friend of mine who had just been stationed at Edwards AFB to see if we could camp in his driveway overnight. He insisted we stay in the house and take showers. We couldn't resist. Jon and his family were very accomodating, giving us food, beer and hot water. California City, where they live, must be the largest city in California (pop: 8385) without a grocery store. The next morning Jon and I rode dirtbikes in the lot across the street.

This was the order of the day for the next two hundred miles: Melissa behind the wheel, me looking at the map trying to figure out where to go to stay off freeways. I was mostly successful, but on an unavoidable stretch of the 126, we had to drive in traffic. The appropriate word would be "harrowing". (Other appropriate words would be, "Melissa had to pull off the road onto the shoulder a couple of times because she saw idiot drivers about to ram us at 75+mph and she was sure we were going to die. Then she spent a few mintues yelling and shaking her fist before she returned to the road.") You'd think other drivers would notice a bright orange VW bus driving halfway on the shoulder with its hazards flashing. This was Southern California, so you'd be wrong. We went over our final mountain range, the San Rafael Mountains on a winding road just as it began to rain. The road was washed out the next week. At about 9:30pm we pulled into the driveway and shut Ludwig off. Final tally: ~375 miles of road took 18 hours of driving over two days.

The next week I told our story to another married philosophy graduate student and his first question was, "So when did you guys start fighting?" I hadn't thought about it at the time, but we didn't once get into a fight. In fact, we didn't even listen to any music on the stereo either. I guess it must've been a lot of fun.
FINIS

Part IV: The Racetrack

The Racetrack is a roughly kidney-shaped playa, a dry lakebed that is the dead-end for a few very intermittent streams in the northern section of the park. So when it does actually rain, the water in Racetrack Valley collects at its southern end, where it is trapped in the occasional lake that is the Racetrack. The water evaporates, leaving its silt behind, resulting in the remarkably flat surface of the Racetrack: it's about 3mi long north-to-south and the northern end is a mere four inches higher than the southern end.

 Melissa from atop The Grandstand

The Grandstand is what's left of a mountain of dolomite that was gradually eroded away by the streams that feed the Racetrack. In addition to being eroded away by rain from above, stream-borne sediment buries it at its base. The picture above is from as high up as I could climb. The picture below is from the reverse perspective-me on top taken by Melissa from the playa.

 Mitch from below the Grandstand

 A racer and its path. The Grandstand is in the background at center-right, more than 2.5mi distant.

Racers are rocks that fall off the mountains that abut the southern end of the Racetrack, (and sometimes off the Grandstand at the northern end). When conditions are just right, the rocks move across the playa leaving tracks behind. Exactly what these conditions are isn't entirely clear: amazingly, no one has ever seen the rocks move. Along with strong gusty winds, it's suspected that the surface has to be saturated with water. Some scientists think a thin layer of ice has to form. In any case, the rocks move, sometimes dozens of yards all in one go. Some of the racers have had their movements tracked since the 1940s.

 Melissa interpreting racer movements

Imagining how the racers could move at all is hard enough; it's almost completely unbelievable when you see how big some of them are. They range in size from that of a small book to bigger than a television. The bigger ones weigh well in excess of 250lbs, yet even these clearly have moved and left trails to prove it. (Apparently once in a while a racer is lost to a visitor with a truck. If the road in were better, more racers would probably disappear this way; hence, the rangers like the road just how it is.)

some racers' criss-crossing paths 

Racers' tracks run in long sweeping curves, squiggles, sharp u-turns and zig-zags. I wonder how often there's a collision (probably not often).

 Lunch with Ludwig at The Racetrack. Don't let the presence of that Honda or whatever it is lead you to think I've misled you about the awfulness of the Racetrack Valley Road; earlier we saw that they sacrificed a tire to it.


All this mention of water might mislead one into thinking that Death Valley is a wet place. Not so. Though these processes are dependent upon water, water there is so rare that it makes you pause when you think how grindingly long it has taken for all this--the formation of the playa, the eroding of the Grandstand, and the creation of the racers themselves--to occur. And that though a racer might move a few dozen yards in a shot, it might not move again for decades. The world and its workings really are stranger and more magical than any story made up by people.


(next: driving home in second gear)

Part III: The Racetrack Valley Road

The road to the Racetrack is 27 miles of dust, crushed rocks, non-crushed rocks, and extreme washboards. Trust us, the pictures do not do the washboards justice. At times we thought the van would rattle completely apart. Our speed was 20mph at best. Various people in the park gave us the impression that the road is a living entity that subsists exclusively on tires. (We didn't lose any.)

 Dust

The Racetrack Valley Road (Click on the picture and you'll see rain on Ludwig's windshield. The second-driest place in the Western Hemisphere and we got sprinkled on.)

The landscape along the road (and in the park generally) is geologically interesting. The whole area is part of the Basin and Range province, a giant section of the North American Plate that is slowly being stretched apart, east to west. This makes the crust thinner, and subterreanean lava can readily bubble up.

Lava Outcropping

The road also goes through a giant Joshua Tree forest, apparently the northernmost such forest in the world.

Joshua Tree forest

I've seen Teakettle Junction on some road atlases marked as though it were a municipality. Our brief stop there shows why one can't always trust a road atlas to present accurate conditions. Apparently there was a working telephone there at one time.

Teakettle Junction, Calif. pop: 0

As we topped a hill, The Grandstand came into view, jutting up from the northern end of The Racetrack. I figured The Racetrack would be interesting; I didn't figure it would actually be magical.

The Grandstand

(next: The Racetrack)