A quiet night was had by all…I think a total of 8 cars went by from 5pm onward. You really could barely hear them anyway.
Early morning we headed to Ubehebe Crater. David got to watch Mali and chat with anyone who would listen. I got to do the 1.5 mile hike around the crater rim…whoopie! With that done we further explored a bit and then drove out…heading toward to Pahrump. We didn’t know where we would end up staying the night but I was hoping that it would not be Walmart in Pahrump or a casino. When we were about to give up we spotted a DOT lot…piles of gravel and a gravel road in…SOLD. This road is quiet with very few cars going by despite it being one way (but not usual) to get into DV. A hundred feet off the paved road…good enough and free!
We are staying tonight again in Mesquite Campground. This campground has the highest elevation in the park (1800 feet above sea level approximately) so it cooled down nicely last night…been enjoying the cold nights and didn’t want it to end.
Even though Mesquite campground is the furthest from everything in Death Valley, it is quiet and well worth the longer travel. Larger rv’s usually don’t frequent this campground due to some bushes coming in that may rub the rv. There is no shade so this time of year is perfect (30’s at night and 65-70 during the day with a breeze). During the day most people are gone exploring with a new crop of people coming in each afternoon or evening.
The host is a nice elderly gentlemen who likes to chat (maybe even more than David) because he doesn’t get many here who will. He will be volunteering here for 6 months (!!!) and going grocery shopping means a 2.5 hour drive to Pahrump (Walmart) and getting gas MUCH cheaper there as well. They reimburse him for propane (refrigerator and heat on the wall and hot water). He has sewer so no need to move to dump and water at his site (none of which we have…just a parking spot). AND he does NOT have to clean potties! There are actually flush toilets here…no pit toilets!
David arrived home from hiking at o’dark hundred (around 8:15pm…dark) Mali flew in the door at top speed, grabbed her dish and threw it at me. Feeding time is around 5:30 and with a full day of hiking, she was HANGRY. David enjoyed his hike…not sure about his knees. He met two really nice guys that hiked with him on his hike. They volunteered to make sure he made it out.
After a very cold night (open the cupboards to let the heat in, turn on tank heaters, and set the heat on the wall to slightly more than the lowest), we left Horton Creak around 8:30. In reality, we did not have to go that far but it took us all day and we arrived at Death Valley’s Mesquite campground around 5pm. The ride down California’s route 395 was uneventful. We stopped at Keough Hot ditch and decided it was not warm enough. A bit of food shopping in Bishop/Grocery Outlet Bargain market (nice). The ride on route 136/190 to Death Valley was up, up, up, down, down, down, up, up, up, and down, down, down to 5 feet above sea level from 4000 feet to around 5600, and down.
David took off for a longer walk than I wanted to do. I stayed back and walked around the campground and beyond. Snow in the mountains “up the hill”. Cold, windy, and dank out 42 degrees today versus 70 degrees yesterday with wasps buzzing around our rv (didn’t like that). Baking Almond Blueberry GF muffins for me and freezer. Lentil soup (it is more like stew with lots of stuff in it).
Today we drove from our boondocking spot near Mono Lake to Mammoth Lakes to go food shopping and then on to our campground for the next two nights. Blm’s Horton Creek Campground….a whopping $4 per night with the old guy pass plus $5 to dump our tanks. We are surrounded by mountain ranges and the whole campground is up on a bit of a hill. Mali thinks there is a lizard under every bush and in the piles of rocks because she saw ONE…happy hunting girl.
People streamed in to this campground at dinnertime and beyond last night. I think it is the last hooha before they close approximately 10/28. It was a lot of tents or small campers as there are only a few spaces for bigger ones. There are roughly 50 campsites here.
Temps have been in the low 20’s and day time maybe 70. We left the Lower Lee Vining campsite after having lunch there and moved to a boondocking spot (free!) just off the paved road to Virginia Lakes. We had spotted a van in it yesterday so nabbed it today with a plan B in place in case it wasn’t available. After setting up the solar panels, David and Mali took off to do another hike (Parker Lake) and I took a nap! Awesome views from our camping spot! 
We left the campground early and got some WIFI and took a walk around the Mono Lake Tuffa mounds…very interesting and a highly salinated lake…very picturesque as well…like a post card! Then we decided where to spend the night even though it was just lunchtime. Route 120 took us to Lower Lee Vining campground (on the road to Yosemite/one of the road anyway). It was the only campground on that road open at this time of year so we grabbed a site. A whopping $7 on the OLD GUY pass…we got trash! We are nestled under the ponderosa pines again…great for us but our solar panels struggle. Jeep took us on an exploratory excursion about 20 miles down route 395 to scope out our next nights lodgings…aiming for free! The ride around Virginia Lakes was extremely picturesque.
Another sunny day and have not seen one rainy day since we have been out here. David and Mali took a hike in Lundy Canyon…about 6 miles; I stayed back and got some things done around the rv without them under foot (cleaning, baking GF muffins and pizza and dug out the fire pit for tonights fire…thanks to graham for the wood). IT IS VERY dusty out here and David needs to do some more sealing to keep dust from entering RV while we are on dirt/gravel roads. It seems like there is a fine layer of dust EVERYWHERE…working on it! Quaking aspens…most of their leaves are gone but with what is left they are busy quaking! No cell service…as usual. I know David minds it more than I do.
On the way out of Bodie (me/Jeep following David/rv) there was a man working 3 sheep dogs and trying to get his sheep off our road. Meanwhile, Mali sees the sheep and has a little bark fest (she is not much of a barker but sometimes new things get her going a bit and the cattle dog in her likes to bark at livestock). Her barking gets the livestock guardian dog (great pyrennes) to come out of the flock of sheep and hunt down the rv/Mali threat. So Great Pyrennese is chasing the rv on the road and ignoring me in the jeep. When he momentarily stopped, David took off and pyrennes went back to shepherd. It was a lot of sheep.
Not far away was our next night’s lodging was in Lundy Canyon campground (yes a pay campground $16 per night) that boasted trash and pit toilets (I don’t use them). The sites were nestled among the aspens and ponderosa pines both favorites…blue sky and no where else I would rather be. Mule deer wandering around the area but not when Mali is around (smart they are).
Funny story…when I first pulled into the campground there was a lone campsite (I am in jeep scouting for sites while David is on the road) with a “piece of furniture” in it…like a cabinet. I thought “what someone dumped a piece of furniture there”. In my defense I did not do any research on this area (david did it) so YES the piece of furniture was indeed a bear box…which I realized when I saw that every site had a “cabinet”. Scenery is pretty awesome and altitude is pretty high which cuts me from much hiking; I need more oxygen. Leave that to David and Mali…. Campfire and more people than you think arrive to claim a site..it is a Tuesday….but it is California
Some traffic noise this morning but we were about 100 feet away from the road…just a little more than expected. We did 3.5 mile hike in Wilson Canyon starting that at 8am and finishing 9:45am….the were lots of ups 1600 feet and minor scrambling. Nice hike to be doing early in the day otherwise hot.
Into California we go…next stop was Bodie State Historic Park an extremely well done historic gold mining town….preserved in a state of “arrested decay”. We have been here before and wanted to return. It is also dog friendly…they even had a bowl of water out for pups. The road in was VERY washboard gravel (the last three miles)…it is paved the rest of the way. We chose to stay the night on the road going out of Bodie…a large pull off. However, when we got there, there were three rv’s there so we regrouped and went about 1mile back and found a nice spot further from the road for just us! Dinner and took a walk down the road.
