CuRVWander

  The winter season is high season for Death Valley.  Temperatures are comfortable, great in fact for vigorous hiking.  The park is at peak attendance and the campground is sold out almost every night.  We are wearing jackets and light gloves when doing our 7:00am rounds.  But when the sun gets above the ridgeline of the Funeral Mountains it warms quickly to very comfortable temperatures. Cyndee and I have done a number of scenic drives together.  Her knees just won't let her do much walking on uneven ground.  She's averaging about 4 miles a day doing rounds in the campground but thankfully that is on dead flat surfaces.  My daily step count runs a little higher as I take on extra assignments and do camper assist requests (help change flat tires, jump dead batteries, pound in tent stakes in concrete-hard desert crust, etc). One day in December was a particularly busy day. Most days are just 6 or 7 miles. After our son took me on a couple of hikes ...

  Flashback!  October 24, 2024 Flat on my back getting a great night's sleep when suddenly I am jolted awake.  There are all kinds of sound, low frequency rumbles, bangs and rattles and accompanying all that, the bed was shaking, hard! Totally startled and fully awake in an instant I try to get my feet on the floor to go see what was happening but the shaking bed had other plans.  Like a turtle on its back I rolled around with my legs and arms flailing in the air.  Then just as quickly as it started, it was over. Looking at my phone it tells me that an earthquake had just occurred with its epicenter less than eight miles from us.  It was being called a "moderate" strength at a magnitude 4.7.  Nothing felt "moderate" about it but in the grand scheme of things I guess it was.  Other than a bottle shaken off a shelf at The Ranch there was no reported damage, except for maybe my underwear. Later in the day news stories were emerging talking about an e...

The Park Service has added a third set of hosts to our campground.  The affect on us is that now, on our third day of our three-day shift, we have what is called a "project day".  So instead of making our regular rounds doing audits and inventory of campsites and compliance notifications we now do a variety of things such as simple maintenance projects, cleaning fire pits, recycling of propane canisters and my favorite, park patrol. Our first project day we opted to do park patrol.  It's the holiday period encompassing Thanksgiving, Christmas and the New Year and the campground is packed solid with holiday vacationers.  There is very little chance to get access to a campsite to do any maintenance so on patrol we go. So far the exploring of the park with Cyndee and I together has been pretty minimal.  Between work, dust storms, grocery runs, and house chores we have only done things that could be done quickly.  The canyon hiking that I have written abou...

  The above picture is the main attraction of Death Valley, Badwater Basin.  It's the lowest and hottest place in the National Park at 282 feet below sea level with temperatures exceeding 130 degrees in the summer.  Fortunately those temperatures abate significantly in the winter.  We have been having daytime highs of mid-60s to low-70's for a few weeks now.  Morning lows have even dipped below 40 degrees.  We're actually running heat the first couple of hours after rising at 6:00am.  It has been a very welcomed change in weather patterns compared to our first couple of weeks after arrival where night time temps didn't get below 90 degrees. I previously wrote about a hike to Natural Bridge and posted a good number of photos.  For this post I have a few more shots from that hike that don't have anything to do with the bridge.  Rather these are shots of "secondary" attractions or unadvertised visual delights. First up is a canyon wall just past...