3/1 - 3/15/08 Snowbird Journal - Part 2

3/13/08, Death Valley - Another warm afternoon here in DV, close to 90° for the 3rd straight day. Our little swamp cooler is helping us to stay comfortable inside. We arrived Sunday, the end of the first week of our odyssey back to Oregon. Our first stop on the road home was at the Salt River Recreation Area, just north of Mesa, AZ. Next we stayed 3 days at Burro Creek BLM Campground north of Wickenburg.

We had hoped to bring back some of the well known Burro Creek purple agate from the area, but were unable to locate the primary dig after wandering the mountainous back roads for a couple of hours. Giving up on the purple, we located the Bagdad agate site to the south & brought out a bucketful of white & pastel stone. We also drove through the town of Bagdad, expecting a ghost town, but instead finding a thriving copper mining community tucked back in the mountains. We also hiked around the campground, picking up a few Apache tears & some mixed agates from the stream bed.

Next stop Bullhead City for 2 nights so we could catch up on laundry before pushing on. We set up at Davis Camp, down along the shore of the Colorado River. Next morning as we were loading up for the day’s chores, an old school bus & a mixed bag of vans, trucks & trailers pulled in & began disgorging mountains of camping gear. Slogans & signs identified them as belonging to "The Longest Walk 2." They were the advance/support party for a group of mostly Native Americans walking from Alcatraz to Washington DC. The walkers arrived later in the afternoon & we were soon surrounded by dozens of pop-up tents of every color. To go along with the festive nature of the occasion, we plugged in our outside speakers & cranked up the stereo with some appropriate tunes. Several of the group commented on our solar powered setup. In the photo that's us to the right of center in the palm trees.

Here at DV we are camped at Texas Springs Campground, about a mile from and looking down on Furnace Creek. This campground is rather small & about half tents. We're on the left end of the campground in the photo. No generators allowed, which suites us fine. We've been dry camping since we left Roper & with plentiful sun, we've had no power shortages. The Furnace Creek main campground looks like a huge RV parking lot... no thanks.

We had originally planned to push on today from DV, but the weather report for the Barstow area, our next destination, is for strong winds with gusts to 60 mph, lasting at least through tomorrow. We don’t like the idea of driving in those conditions & we darn sure wouldn’t be rockhounding in them as planned, so we are holing up here for a couple of extra days. If the winds there don’t calm down, we’ll bypass the rocks & just drive on through when we feel it will be safe.

Meantime we have visited several of the DV sights & enjoyed several hikes. I wish I’d made it here 3 years ago during the once-a-century wildflower season, but it was still worth the wait. The bloom is decent this year & this is a spectacular place regardless.

 

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