Day 31 Mon, Oct 28

Mon, Oct 28

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.
It was a crawl up pulling over to stop a couple of time to let transmission cool down. It was a slow slog down in lowest gear to not burn out the breaks. Scenic though. We did stop at Stovepipe wells campground and it was nothing more than a parking lot so we passed on that campground. Mesquite campground ($7. With old guy pass) fit our needs nicely as it was out of the way, a small 40? campsites and maybe 10 max campers here. Mali was very glad to get out of the box/rv and was pretty crazy after all day in the rv with only sniffy breaks. It was dark and she was still bouncing around and wanting to play ball.