This is part 1 of a 4-part trip report from our week in Death Valley and our week in the Mojave National Preserve back in May.
Planning for our Death Valley – Mojave National Preserve 2018 Trip started in the fall of of 2017. I wanted to complete the Mojave Road after getting cut short in 2017 but didn’t want to travel all the way to Southern California from Boise for just 5 or 6 days in the Mojave. So I came up with a 2-week trip and included Death Valley at the start and the Mojave at the end.
Using Beatty, NV as a kick off point for Death Valley allowed us to travel from Boise to this starting point in one day.
Once those initial logistics were taken care of I put out word of the trip with other Moby 1 Trailer owners to see if anyone wanted to join us for part or the whole trip. Initially, two other couples were going to join us, but one had to pull out due to work commitments. The other, Ralph and Joene from Connecticut, were already planning a months-long trip out west and decided to join us and fit the two weeks into their plans.
We met them in Beatty, NV on Friday, April 27. We picked the Beatty RV Park where we could fill up all our water and fill up in Beatty with fuel. The Moby 1 carries 36 gallons of water, but I added 20 more gallons to that with four Jerry Cans. Our Tundra carries 38 gallons of fuel, but I added 20 more gallons to that too with four Jerry Cans.
On Saturday morning, we made breakfast and headed west towards Death Valley.
We made two short stops before entering the park. First, we stopped by Rhyolite Ghost Town.
Then we went down the road a few hundred feet to the Goldwell Open Air Museum. Both were interesting and worthy of a visit if you are driving by.
Then we headed off to the park.
Our entrance to the park was going to be via Titus Canyon. I had read a great many good things about this route and thought it would be a great way to get into the park. It was very scenic with lots of places to stop and check out the sights. Along this route is the Leadfield Ghost Town. This was a nice place to pull over for lunch and a short rest. We didn’t walk out to the old, run-down buildings. There was some signage and foundations around the pull outs for vehicles stopping.
This road is 1-way westbound only. And I think that may be for good reason. The west end of the road was spectacular. You finish the drive through a narrow slot canyon and then you come around a corner and see your first views of Death Valley through the opening in the canyon. An absolutely stunning end to this road.
After exiting Titus Canyon, we drove north to our first campsite at Mesquite Springs. We needed to pick up a 7-day park pass at the kiosk here as well. This is a nice campground. Like all of them in Death Valley, there are no amenities other than a bathroom. No water, no power, no sewer. There are very few hook-up sites in Death Valley and all are in Furnace Creek or Stove Pipe Wells.
But we were fine with this arrangement. The bathroom had a dish-washing sink and we were able to dump our gray water there, which is all we need.
Shelley and I hiked up to an overlook behind the campground and took in our first views of the valley we were in.
On our way back down to camp from this overlook, we took some photos of the moon rise coming over the hills behind us.
We were lucky on the weather. It was really mild. Not much over 90 degrees. Very comfortable. We ate dinner, hung around our fire pit with Ralph and Joene and made smores before going to bed.
On day 2, we continued north to Ubehebe Crater. This was the last of the pavement for us for a few days. We did a short hike to the crater overlook before airing down our tires and heading down Racetrack Rd to our first sightseeing stop.
This section of road isn’t all that bad, really. It had its moments of scenery, but overall it was just a nice drive down to Tea Kettle Junction.
Our first stop along Racetrack Road was Tea Kettle Junction. Just some sort of funky “thing” that was made many years ago by someone and now it’s this icon of Death Valley that one needs to get their picture taken with when they visit. We did just that.
As we continued on south we got our first look at Racetrack Playa from the roadway to the north. An interesting fact about Racetrack Playa. It is one of the flattest places on earth with just a 2″ rise/drop from one end to the other over a 2-mile distance.
First, we stopped at The Grandstand at the north end of Racetrack Playa. It’s a short walk out across the salt flat to a rock formation growing up out of the the sand.
Then further south we came to The Racetrack itself. We walked out into the salt flats to check out the rocks that appear to be racing around the Playa in some mysterious fashion. It wasn’t until just recently that scientist uncovered how these rocks move along a dry salt lake bed leaving tracks and appearing to turn simultaneously. Follow that link above to the National Park Service and the story behind the solution to the mystery. It was very cool to see and follow the track.
I really like this photo of The Racetrack with The Grandstand in the background.
By the way, this section of road between the Grandstand and the Racetrack was just absolutely horrible. Just terrible. Worst washboard I have ever seen. Three miles of just sheer hell. I guess if you can go 45 mph over it you might be okay, but you’re not doing that while towing a trailer.
Further south from the Racetrack was our camp for the next two nights. Homestake Dry Camp. Just a simple pull in spot with some fire rings and room for a dozen or so vehicles. Pretty nice views looking at the mountains to our east and the old Lippincott Mine up above us in the mountains. We would base out of here for the next two nights as we drove around the area seeing various sights.
The next day, Day 3, the four of us drove over Lippincott Road. We had wanted to take our trailers over it the next day on our way out of this area but weren’t sure if we could. So we had pre-planned on driving over Lippincott Road with just our trucks to check out how bad it would be.
It was pretty bad. Except for two spots, a trailer would be very easy to take. But there was no way we were going to risk it. It is definitely not a trailering road at our skill level with our size trailers and trucks.
At one point we had to build a portion of the road with rocks and boulders it was so washed out. This photo was taken above the area that was washed out that we had to do some building. You can see a group of vehicles stopped at that spot as they try to negotiate their way through it as well. Just as we got down to them, the last one in their group went through, so there wasn’t any waiting around for each other.
In all, it took us about 2 hours to drive over. I read a trip report from 2014 where it took that party just 30 minutes. Pretty sure the road has gotten worse since then. Maybe if you’re in a rock-crawling Jeep or small wheel-based vehicle you can do it faster. You might even be able to pull a trailer with you if it’s short and light.
Once out into Saline Valley, we headed south towards Hunter Mountain Road. Just before pulling over to take our lunch we got buzzed by a low flying F-18 headed to Star Wars Canyon (The Jedi Transition), I’m sure. I mean, right over the top of our trucks. It came from behind us, so we didn’t see it till it was past us and only then did we hear it. It couldn’t have been more than 300 feet above us as it climbed up over the ridge and dove back down again.
I jumped out of the truck hoping its wingman would be next, right behind it, but no luck. It was all by itself. My guess is its wingman was in another valley nearby.
We took our lunch not far from this spot and could hear jets all around us, but never saw another one that close. We saw four other F-15s flying in formation way above us, but that was it.
After coming out of Lippencott Road, we were greeted with great views of Saline Valley.
After lunch we continued up Hunter Mountain Road when, again, we got buzzed by a jet in the canyon. This time it was a Harrier. It was super low, less than 300 feet again, and banking over us as it rounded the corner of the canyon. And again, no wingman following behind.
It was pretty cool to have two jets buzz over us so low like that. Our own little 3 second air show.
We continued up Hunter Mountain Road till we came to the Lost Burro Mine. This was a very cool ghost mine. We found an open mine shaft and duck-walked in about five feet just to peek around the corner. It was very cool. Lots of old mining rigging and stands and a couple, fairly intact, buildings and structures. A very cool stop along this road.
Death Valley is full of old mines. Many of them have still open mine entrances, such as the one below. It went back a good distance, but we only peeked in to look around the corner. Maybe about five feet. I can see how people can get tempted to crawl down these things. They seem very cool to explore. But we both like living, you know.
Hunter Mountain Road comes out at Tea Kettle Junction and then it was back down south to Homestake Dry Camp again for the evening.
We relaxed around the camp fire watching the moon rise over the hills to our east. It was pretty spectacular watching it rise over the ridge. Shelley got a pretty good shot of it too.
On Day 4, it was off to the south end of the park. Since we couldn’t take Lippincott Road we decided to drive back north up Racetrack Road to Ubehebe crater and get back on pavement. Once there, we air’d back up and drove all the way south to what we hoped would be a good spot along West Side Road.
Even with the extra fuel I was packing, I could see we were going to run out gas. Ralph had a smaller gas tank then we did, so we detoured over to Stove Pipe Wells were I heard gas a bit cheaper than it was at Furnace Creek. It turned out to be $0.30 cheaper.
We decided to take in a nice lunch at the saloon as well. Then it was off south to the West Side Road.
On this day, the weather began to worsen as rain clouds came in and we even got some drizzle now and again. Our plan was to camp a few miles off West Side Road and base out of that campsite for two nights while we drove around the valley checking out the sights. Pretty quick, we realized that West Side Road is all washboard and the road to our campsite was even worse. We estimated we would end up being about an hour, 1-way, from pavement to our sights if we camped up at the spot we were shooting for. We didn’t want to waste two hours a day just driving back and forth from our campsite on more washboard.
We turned around and were on the verge of checking into the RV park when Shelley found Echo Canyon Road on her map. Most everything around this area is off-limits to primitive camping and we had very limited connectivity. We headed to the Visitor Center and Shelley asked a park Ranger about Echo Canyon and they said it was fine as long as we were one mile off the pavement. Great! We headed to Echo Canyon.
Just a short 3 miles off the pavement and we were set. Much better than West Side Road. We set up for, what would be a 2-night stay and settled in with dinner with Ralph and Joene.
Stay tuned for Part 2!
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