DEATH VALLEY - 1

 

A while back I read an article by a motorcyclist who had toured Death Valley.  I was so intrigued by his story that it piqued my interest so I began doing some research.  First I contacted my son Clint to see if he was up for a spring time trip and he was.  Next I contacted a friend who is probably the most experienced and well traveled biker I know.  He was more than willing to advise us, so Clint and I met with him and he advised us on attractions as well as loaning us a book and map.  His advice changed our approach a bit as he indicated the most interesting places were off pavement.  This meant taking my little Yamaha XT250  rather than my Triumph Tiger XRx.  When another friend heard of our plans he absolutely insisted that Clint borrow his XT250.  Clint has a cargo trailer big enough for both bikes so the plan was to trailer the bikes down to Beatty, NV, and leave from there.

We left Sunday, March 13^th  a little after 7:00.  I would have preferred going a week or two later but that’s the only time we could get reservations at one of the two motels in the park.  Our first night was in Winnemucca and it was a long drive (523 miles).  Even though we took turns driving it was tiring.  Any hill of any significance required a downshift and a strain on Clint’s 2002 Ram truck with the 5.2 liter engine. We stopped only for gas and arrived in Winnemucca late afternoon.  To stretch our legs a bit we hiked around town some and picked up a couple of geocaches.  We had a fantastic barbeque dinner that was lean and very tasty at “The Little Pig”.

Breakfast was at the motel at 6:00 and we were on the road shortly thereafter.  Beatty, NV, was supposed to have been a fairly short drive but somehow my mapping was off and instead of 322 miles it was about 100 miles farther.  Part of the problem may have been my GPS and its directions because the return trip was much shorter and easier.  I had a brand new mapping program installed and it gave directions such as “turn on 1^st street and proceed 196 miles”.  As it turned out 1^st Street was Highway 95.  I thought something was wrong with my old GPS and kept fooling with it and just messed things up.  At any rate, we finally arrived in Beatty around 2:30.  At the motel we found a sign that said “Office closed from 11:30 to 3:30”.  We did find the clerk who would not relent but we were able to leave the trailer there while we proceeded on our motorcycles to the old ghost town of Rhyolite just outside of Death Valley Park.

Before relating the Rhyolite scene which we visited twice I’ll tell you what happened when we returned to the motel about  5:30.  I was informed that my reservation had been cancelled by Booking.com due to an invalid credit card number.  This seemed really strange as there had been no problems with my other reservations.  And, of course, the motel had rented our room.  Then we had to scramble around town to find a room as it was getting late.  We finally found one at the Death Valley Inn which took forever to get settled.  First the old lady clerk was extremely slow.  When we finally got to the assigned room which was supposed to have been two queens it was one king.  So I went back to the office for another try.  This time it was two queens but the room hadn’t been made up.  The third time was a charm but this took a lot of time.  It was past dark when we finally got settled.  [To be continued] M/W