We woke up around 7am and, after showering and packing, went down to Cafe Hollywood for breakfast. This time Michelle had the oatmeal with raisins, brown sugar, and milk and I had bacon, eggs, toast, etc. Headed back to the room to finish packing, checked out remotely, and got our car from the valet. One particularly nice guy worked there and he was there that morning which was nice. We hopped on to I-15 around 10:30am and left Las Vegas and its traffic behind. But not its heat.
One thing we love about traveling out in the desert West is they seem to love decorating their highways (especially overpasses) and southern Nevada was no exception. The suburbs quickly faded in the distance, giving way to wide open desert with scattered vegetation — including even quite a few Joshua trees! We turned onto US-95. There were signs from time to time warning that though this was a four lane highway that the area was open range for cattle — yikes! We rode for an hour or so and, after a pit stop, arrived in Beatty, Nevada around 12:30pm. Beatty was a fairly small and dusty town. We decided to try Smokin’ J’s Barbecue, a small barbecue restaurant with lots of Western decoration. Michelle had a pulled pork sandwich (no slaw as it had pineapple in it, blech) and French fries while I had the brisket with jalepeno mac and cheese and that odd side of two plain untoasted pieces of white bread and onions that Texas did too. The brisket was decent (a tad dry in spots) but the mac and cheese was excellent (though scattered bits of corn was very odd).
Our tummies full we headed west to the Goldwell Open Air Museum and it’s adjacent ghost town, Rhyolite. Like many “museums” in this part of the country it was more a collection of art by some odd dude (in this case a Belgian sculptor) in a small area. We went into the Goldwell Museum gift shack and bought a magnet and then toured the site. In addition to an odd Lego-like sculpture of a naked lady as well as a metal oragami swan and a prospector hanging out with a penguin (of all things! — there because the prospector felt out of place like a penguin would) there was a spiral labyrinth made of stone. There was also the signature sculptures of the artist — white sheet-like ghosts, in this case one getting on a bicycle and a group of them arranged like DaVinci’s “Last Supper”.
Rhyolite was just a short distance down the road and consisted of a few ruined buildings. It was founded in 1905 and quickly became a boomtown. One of the first two Senators from Nevada was an investor and built a home as did others. There was a large bank as well as other multi-story structures. The place was so booming that three railroads serviced it and a depot was built around 1907. Sadly, a financial crisis struck in 1907 and ended the boom. While the depot barely turned a profit in 1908 by mid-year more people were leaving the town than entering. The depot finally shuttered in 1919 but was a tourist destination (even hosting a casino and brothel where the ticketmaster used to live on the second floor) in the 1920s and 1930s before it became abandoned for good in the 1940s when fuel rationing for the war effort killed tourism in the area.
We went farther on Nevada 374 and crossed into California and Death Valley National Park around 2pm. From this entrance there were some nice views of the northern part of the valley and it wasn’t blistering hot. After paying the park fee via a kiosk we descended into the valley. First we stopped by a place called Devils Cornfield which consisted of mostly patches of Yucca with their roots exposed. As Michelle pointed out whomever named it that probably had never seen a cornfield.
Next we headed to Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes, an area with large dunes. However, due to the heat, nobody (not me, not Michelle, and not the gaggle of German tourists that had descended on Death Valley) ventured out to them. We remained content to take some photos, framing the distant dunes with vegetation and dead logs. When we got back to the car it was 117F, a reading confirmed by the Visitor Center in Furnace Creek on their thermometer (at 116F) when we arrived there around 3:30pm. We bought some postcards and magnets, toured their museum (which had a lot about mining and water, predictably), and watched a movie narrated by Donald Sutherland.
Around 4:30pm we drove to the nearly adjacent The Ranch at Death Valley in Furnace Creek, our stop for the night. After a brief bit of confusion we figured out where to park and went in to register. We were placed in room 501 and, after a quick stop to get some ice cream in a waffle cone — Michelle some chocolate and myself coffee — set off to unload our things (not wanting to leave anything in the roasting car). As there were no other restaurants in town other than the on-site ones we read the menus and reviews. The fancy one required reservations and was very expensive ($75 for a steak!) and the other, a buffet, had an eye-popping 1.5 stars (out of 5) so… yeah. I hurried to the general store on-site before it closed and bought a couple of sandwiches (ham and cheese and turkey and cheese), two bags of popcorn, some Cheerios for Michelle in case we couldn’t get breakfast, etc.
After a short rest we ate our dinner and watched some TV before going out and looking at the stars around 11:30pm. While there were more stars than could be seen in Cary and the Milky Way was visible (but faint) the nearby pool area was still lit and interfered with stargazing. Michelle and I sat on rockers outside our room before shuffling in around midnight for bed.
