Death Valley is WINDY! Day 2: Big Pine, CA to Death Valley, CA

Waking up next to the Owens Valley hotsprings was much friendlier in the daylight.  Turns out the Owens valley is not a hotspring but actually a 90* “warm” spring with the source feeding into a large pond with crystal clear water.  The makings for a perfect swimming hole.  We spent the morning munching oatmeal while the pond’s guppies gave us a free pedicure.

There was also a ton of crawdads in the water with a rather feisty fellow.

On the other side of the road there was a corresponding pond with a nicely placed rope swing for early morning cannonballs into 85 degree clear water.

We packed up our camp and headed south on 395 towards Lone Pine, the last stop before entering Death Valley.  The route we had chosen was a long 4x4 trail into Death Valley towards a playa called the racetrack and Nate wanted to make sure we had a full tank.  Well 40 miles of offroading and some tricky passes landed us right smack in front of our destination.

The Racetrack is so called for the mysteriously moving stones that move from year to year on the flat sureface of playa.  They are VERY cool!  On the North end of the playa there is a outcrop of black rocks that contrast with the white playa dust.  Also a really neat feature.  

Of course we couldn’t pass up the perfect backdrop without messing around with some perspective photos!

 We also did some jumping around at the edge of this big crater:

 

After the playa we rallied and rattled our way through some washboard roads until we hit pavement 15 miles later.  Silence…  And a few broken eggs.  Oh Well.  

 

Pretty crazy, just yesterday we were at almost 8,000 feet in Mammoth!

In Death Valley we stopped at The Devils Golf Course, a vast salt flat. Wait, maybe a salt not-so-flat. The large salt rocks were rock hard. After that we drove through a place called the Artist's Pallet. Our pictures don't quite so it justice but the rocks were really colorful!

We decided to skip camping in the valley of Death as the wind was a little overwhelming.   We set up camping on a turnoff with a great view and will continue on to Pahrump for fuel. Then onto Hooverdam!

And we're off! Officially roadtripping ramblers. Day 1: FromPlacerville, CA to Owens Valley Warm Springs

Our first day! With all of our belongings packed into the truck we filled our cooler and hit the road. We left Placerville toward Lake Tahoe, but not without stopping in Camino to pick some fresh blueberries for the ride.

In South Lake Tahoe we ran into the Wagon Train! They had a long road ahead of them too.

 

On our way through Tahoe, near the turnoff for highway 28 we spotted a huge bear! Neither of us had ever seen a bear in the wild so it made for a pretty exciting start to our trip.

We stopped for a few hours at Secret Harbor on the east shore of Lake Tahoe and hiked down the steep hill to the water. The beach there is gorgeous! The trail in gets a bit hairy in some spots, so it was fairly private- we saw a handful of people (mostly enjoying the privacy and declaring the area their own nude beach, but oh well). We walked a bit further and found a rocky area to hop around at, which you can see here. The water (and air so early in the morning) was a bit too cold to swim in, but it didn’t stop Nate from jumping in for a second. He can’t say no to the opportunity for an underwater picture that clear water brings.

 

 

This morning Highway 28 was full of vehement bike riders participating in a race around the lake. On our way in and on our way out we saw hundreds of people riding from teams all over the world. (I have to say I was pretty happy to be in a car going up the long hill). We cheered them on as we passed.

We left Tahoe for highway 395 to head toward Mammoth area. We took a slight detour to go through Tioga Pass, the drive is beautiful and finally open after the winter. We had lunch by the partially frozen Tioga Lake.

Further south we went to Devil’s Postpile, which is on the other side of Mammoth mountain. Driving through the Mammoth ski resort we saw how little snow is left (which is wild, because we were in Mammoth a few weeks ago and it was still covered).

Devil’s Postpile was really neat, one of nature’s wonders. We walked less than a mile on a nice trail to the bottom, you can see those pics here:

And then hiked up a staircase around to the top, and you can see those pictures here:

The top was our favorite part. The tall stones have cracked into hexagons, so the top looked like a sheet of natural pavers.

We left Mammoth and headed farther south to find some hot springs. There is a group of hot springs just outside of Mammoth off of Benton road that are fairly easy to find. We’ve been to a few before like Wild Willy’s hotspring and Hilltop hotspring, but we wanted to see some new ones so we went to look for Shepard hotspring, the ‘crab cooker’ , and the ‘hot tub’ (all are within a mile or so of each other). We planned to find one and camp there but didn’t have much luck. Shepard’s wasn’t filling up with water, and the crab cooker and hot tub were both full of people. So, we decided to go another route.

Outside of Bishop we passed these very large satellites at the Owen’s Valley Radio Observatory. Four sat out surrounded by many more small ones. If you look at the picture you can see a jeep to the left of the building that you can use for reference for the size of the satellite-these things were giant!

We found a place to camp beside Owen’s Valley hot spring, but unfortunately we found it pretty late so we set up camp and called it a night without any soaking. The camp spot was an awesome one though!