Wednesday, October 22
Spent the morning traveling from Jawbone Canyon to "the pads" a few miles to the SE of DVNP's eastern entrance near Furnace Creek Visitor Center.
Next time, I'll come in from the south, coming in from the west involved a long hard slog for the VRRV up and down two mountain passes and MPG suffered accordingly.
At one point Uma could barely hold 35 miles an hour on the steep slopes!
Another note for future travel, if you're going to get gas within the National Park get it at the Stove Pipes visitor center not the Furnace Creek visitor center, it's a buck cheaper! I paid a dollar more buy cruising past the first visitor center, damn it. $6/gallon.
The pads were not crowded at all I think they were six other rigs here before mine. I got a spot away from all the others at the northern edge of the pads.
Close to 1pm as I type this, it is 89°, sunny with a slight wind coming from the east I think. The altitude of the pads is 2999 ft, surprisingly to me. I thought it would be closer to the sea level. I did traverse the sea level locations as I crossed the valley on US 190 so there's that.
Lots of flies here at the pads, originally it seems they are not dividing kind just annoying as they fly around one's ears, eyes and nostrils.
A bunch of rigs showed up in the late evening/early night. The number of brakes grew from 5 to about 15 or so. But they were all gone but 5 by mid-morning so all good.
Thursday, October 23
Around 8:30 I drove the CRV into the park to check out the lighting at Dante's View. I elected not to take Yagi my TW200 as it was a bit cool and about 16 miles away.
Not very many people at that hour, so it was a pleasant viewing of the valley floor:
Next was a drive to Zabrieski Point. It's probably, in my opinion, the best viewpoint on the eastern side of the park. It also has a couple of dumpsters next to the pit toilet building so I was able to get rid of RV trash.
Then it was a quick drive to the Furnace Creek visitor center to get a map and the check out all the road closures:
As you can see, damn near all the interesting roads that are dirt are closed due to flood damage! I think it will basically curtail my stay here at the park and have me moving on earlier than I figured.
The best trail is of course 20 Mule Canyon, but it was closed to traffic so no go on that. Instead you will have to be happy with pictures I took of the periphery when I stopped at points where I could actually get something worthy of a pic.
Here's a link to my last visit to this National Park, back in December of 2018, before all the flood damage that has closed the roads that are most interesting.
I return to the campsite before noon, had lunch, and just rested the rest of the afternoon away. I did take Yagi out for a short ride in the trails nearby but nothing much to see or take pictures of.
There were much less flies today around the campsite, the stiff breeze that was blowing probably kept their numbers down and kept things cool in terms of temperature while in the shade.
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