The Big Solo Adventure – Part One

Wow, it’s been a while since I posted. And yes, that means it’s been while since I’ve had any adventures. Adventures of the overlanding type, anyway.

I planned my first solo trip in a long time around photography. I wanted sunrise photos, and that generally means getting up long before the crack of dawn. I wanted sunset shots, which often means finding a campsite after dark.

Michael helped me load up Taco Negro. No roof-top tent on the truck this time – I’m short enough that I can sleep in the back, even with the water containers and the cooler. It felt great to be back on the road.

I have to tell you though, that during this whole trip I felt like the Undercover Overlander. I would see all these sweet overlanding rigs (trucks, vans, etc) and I had to resist the urge to wave. They wouldn’t recognize me as one of the tribe.

I left San Luis Obispo this morning at 7am. Funny how I can leave on time when it’s just me. I headed south, towards Santa Maria, and then east, passing through Tehachapi on my way.

It’s a little embarrassing to admit this, but sometime past the tiny town of Garlock I started to get nervous. Things were getting isolated. Smaller towns spaced further and further apart. No cell reception. And I only had a ½ tank of gas. I had to tell myself to stop panicking. Half a tank was plenty.

Where the road forked at Hwy 395, I saw a sign. Johannesburg 5 miles. It was the wrong way but it was only 5 miles so I took it.

Well, gas in Johannesburg was $4.09 a gallon and I was still pretty much at the ½ tank mark. A sign outside of town said Trona was less than 30 miles away so I kept on going. (Hoping that gas would be cheaper there.)

On the way to Trona I passed through some beautiful BLM land. I would have camped there, if it weren’t only 11 AM and already hella windy. Definitely a place to come back to, though. Dark skies and lots of jeep trails.

Onward to Trona. I’ve come to expect little from these isolated towns, and Trona did not disappoint. Okay, well, I found two gas stations in Trona, and the town looked like it was home to a Potash mine. But Trona also looked like the place where dreams go to die. Almost every house was boarded up or clearly vacant and abandoned. The one hotel in Trona had burned down some time ago – and left there. I got out of there as fast as I could.

And North of Trona the landscape was amazing.

I made it to Death Valley around 1pm. It was hot, sure – the thermometer outside the Visitor’s Center said 90^o – but somehow that didn’t feel awful. Was it the “Paso Effect?” (That’s volunteering at the Estrella Warbirds Museum, in Paso Robles, during the summer when it’s 100^o out. Had I actually gotten used to the heat?) Or was it that the humidity was just 19%?

Anyway. Even though I was right there I decided immediately against camping at Stovepipe Wells. I mean, sure, it was almost empty, and Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes were less than a mile away. But did I mention the wind yet? Because it was windy. And the blowing sand from the dunes made the whole sky hazy. Not great for photographs. I’ve also cooked and eaten in conditions like this, and no matter what you do, you end up eating a lot of sand. The other campground in the park that was open, Furnace Creek, was only 25 miles away.

I drove on and the sky cleared up considerably the further I got from the dunes.

And once I got to Furnace Creek (190 feet below sea level), there were still plenty of open sites. Plus, it was $16 per night to camp, and as it was still considered summer out here, reservations were not necessary. I picked a random spot on the eastern side of the campground. Honestly I was thinking more about getting out of the wind, which was still blowing pretty strong, than anything else. Still, I would later regret this decision just a bit later on.

After marking site #36 with my receipt I continued on, driving Badwater Road to see something called Artist’s Palette.

This is a rocky outcropping in the Park that shows off a really beautiful color combination in the rocks – colors caused by oxidation of different metals and minerals in the rock. The color change depending on the time of day, but afternoon seemed like a pretty good time for photographs.

By now I’d been spending a bit too much time in the truck and it was actually starting to cool off – a little. I had about two hours of daylight left so I decided to hike the 3 mile out-and-back Golden Canyon Trail, a dry wash that ends at Cathedral Rocks. Sometimes the wash seemed as wide as Badwater Road, with great views of Cathedral Rocks themselves.

There were also many side slots that were hikeable. Sometimes this trail got super narrow, though, and that was the most fun. It reminded me of the slot canyons I hiked in Utah.

The trail ended under Cathedral Rocks themselves, and turned out to be a great spot for photos too.

Sunset wasn’t much but it had been a while since I watched one in shorts and a t-shirt.

It was still pretty windy even at Furnace Creek, although the sky was clear. The timing of this trip was not a coincidence – this was Sunday, October 7^th, and new moon was going to happen on the 8^th . New moon means the darkest skies possible in a given lunar cycle… And here I was in Death Valley, home to one of the darkest skies in America.

You can’t plan for everything, though. When people take “starry night” photos, the core of the Milky Way tends to be the prominent feature. I’ve done it before…

and that’s what I wanted in Death Valley. But that image above was taken in western California (only about an hour or so from my house) in July of 2018. I don’t remember the exact time, but I’m pretty sure it was around 10pm.

So for this trip I installed the SkyView app on my phone – it uses AR to show you where planets, constellations, and galaxies are in the night sky. SkyView told me the core of the Milky Way would set in the southwestern sky around 9:30pm or so.

And that was a bit of a problem. See, Death Valley is, well, a valley. More like a big bowl, really. See, the Amargosa Mountains rise up to the east, and the Panamint Mountains take up the western side. (The Grapevine and Owlshead mountains make up the northern and southern borders.) It’s one of the reasons why Death Valley is so hot. When the air at the ground level heats up, it rises. As it meets the steep mountains on every side, this air cools and then begins to sink again. But when the air sinks, it heats up again. Death Valley is kind of like a giant convection oven!

Back to the night sky. And to the Panamint Mountain Range, to the west, the ones that meant that I wouldn’t get much chance to photograph the core of the Milky Way, even though sunset was around 7pm. By the time the sky got dark enough, most of the core would already be behind the mountains. An unexpected additional problem? Go ahead, laugh: it was other campers.

Hindsight being what it is, I know that I should have scouted the area a lot more before selecting a campsite. Or scouted somewhere else in the park to get my Milky Way photos. (I think Zabriskie Point is at a higher elevation). I also could have just gone for a walk to try and avoid their lights. But you know what? I was tired, even though it was only about 8:30 when I took that photo on the left. I did the best I could (and later on cropped out the ground lights as best I could). Of course, comparing the two photos, I definitely exposed the Death Valley shot for too long – the stars themselves are a little blurry. The lesson here (and unfortunately I’d learn it again later): edit your photos immediately. Not after you get back from the trip.

Anyway, I ended up turning in pretty early that night. Not because I was that tired, though. No, it was because I was getting up at 4:30 the next day, to make the drive back to Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes.

I was going to photograph the dunes at sunrise.