Ghost Towns, Valleys of Death & Giant Trees

I’m typing this from our lovely Airbnb in Potosi, Bolivia and the connection isn’t great so you’ll have to imagine a lot of the post I think as uploading pics will be a pain!

We left Vegas and all our gluttony and excesses to go stay in a little town called Beatty which is right near Death Valley. Distances are far in the canyonlands/desert area so rather than driving for 8 hours straight we thought it better to drive shorter distances and stay in rather odd places as we have a lot of driving. Beatty was one of those.

As Vegas was excess, Beatty was incest. Ok that’s not accurate, and apologies to those living in Beatty. We got there at thunderstorm time so the desert was remarkably cooler than usual – thank goodness!
The ghost town of Rhyolite was just down the road and of course we couldn’t resist the allure. The town was prosperous in the 1800’s due to the presence of gold & other minerals in the area.  Sadly as with all boom towns the gold ran out and Rhyolite declined until it became a ghost town….

We stumbled onto the cemetery for the town that was just out there in the desert. Beautiful skies and flat desert landscape as far as the hills. Also there is the Goldwell Open Air Museum, with rather haunting sculptures.

Our GPS took us on an interesting route back to Beatty. It was one of the old mining trails which would have been fine, if we had horses, and if the road hadn’t collapsed half way. Greg managed to drive us off road in our little red sedan, so luckily we didn’t become ghosts with the rest of Rhyolite.

From there we headed out to Death Valley. If you visit I urge you to try this experiment; Stick your hand out the car as you descend into the valley. The temperature on the valley floor is around 10 degrees hotter than at the top and you can feel it changing!

It was HOT did I mention this already? The valley floor was 48ºCelsius and there is no shade. Somehow, Greg convinced me to do a walk with him to see….desert stuff.  Well, we got chased by gnats who wanted a piece of us, and learnt about crazy fish who live in the streams at Death Valley and the ‘ecosystem of the desert’ whilst waving our hands about like madmen.  I couldn’t see the fish mentioned and the water was all dried up. Wonder if they did the smart thing and got out of there?

Oddly enough we ran into loads of French tourists at the visitor centre.
Sadly and scarily, the visitor centre had a huge hand written sign to beware the danger of the heat. It said “2 Deaths since April due to Heat”.  Greg and I decided that walking any of the trails was just silly, but we managed to see the Mesquite sand dunes near the road. 
Onwards we went to stay with Richard via AirBnb in a lovely house that used to belong to a Hollywood starlet in Tehachapi. He told us stories of living in Hawaii, and his motorcycle collection, whilst we swam in his pool with a lovely Mexican dinner. Thanks Richard – definitely go stay with him if you’re in the area!

Next morning we were given a fantastic breakfast send off by Richard. As we drove I mulled about the possibility of getting watermelon (we are now back in California and fruit farms are plentiful. Greg said, ‘Only if its free’. And whaddya know, at the next gas station they had a special offer, buy gas and get a free watermelon – I’m psychic!!!

Onwards we went to Sequoia’s National Park where myself and a French couple had to tell off an stupid tourist that the barriers were there to stop you from climbing these amazing trees. Sometimes people are just unbelievable.

The Redwood trees are just amazing and gigantic. We saw the large General Sherman tree, which is 2,200 years old (not the oldest either but the largest). It weights 1.25 tonnes and has a circumference of 103 feet / 31 metres at its base.

Amazing! Then we trekked through the redwood forest to climb up to the view at Morro Rock. Wow. 
Next stop Yosemite – stay tuned.