PHOTOS & VIDEOS
Well, last week was the time for the much anticipated road trip that I had been so much looking
forward to doing. Other than checking connecting back roads on Google Earth and packing up La Poderosa, I was not much concerned with anything else. My co-pilot, Kevin completed “final systems check” on LC and we headed out north. Once again getting out of the city was a bitch in particular once on I-17. LC is not built for freeway speeds (but this paid off on the dirt) so attempting to keep up with other newer vehicles 
was not very fruitful. Climbing up the upper desert to the 7,000 feet plateau of north-central Arizona was a slow but enjoyable crawl. Our first pit stop was Flagstaff…we got gas, we got
groceries and we got a little lost on trying to follow highway 89 north (which we were already on to start with) out of the city. This early navigational failure likely resulted from our visit to the Flagstaff Brewing Company where we had lunch and some chelas in this hippie-infested place. Oh how I missed our local Four Peaks…Thai chicken wings and peach ales. At nightfall, we headed 
north on 89 towards Page near the Utah border. A few miles before Page and in the middle of near-complete darkness, we turned west on 89A towards Marble Canyon.
Arriving late at night we set up camp and had some vino. I mentioned to Kevin that if my coordinates where in accordance with the map from the satellite image, then we should be in the upper plateau of the Grand Canyon and being at the bottom of the canyon, we were at the mercy of the Glenn Canyon Dam just a little distance up the Colorado River. "Desiertos, desiertos y mas desiertos..."
The next morning I was anxious to see the surroundings…listening to the roaring waters just a few hundred feet away and the echoes of Harris’ (Parabuteo unicinctus) and Red-tail hawks’ (Buteo jamaicensis) 
calls resonating on the canyon walls created much anticipation. The sight (as you can see in the images and videos) was something else…the reddish canyon bluffs displaying the many layers of time neatly compacted into their geology…the color… intense and the reflectance from its walls appeared to make the spaces in between show up as a bright and hazy blue…the sky blue as blue gets, sharply contrasted with the environment and landscape it engulfed. After coffee and breakfast we headed on up the river near the damn, saw many parties of people getting their rafts ready for their 
trip down the mighty Colorado. This is the point where many of these rafting expeditions are launched from…maybe in the future I will have to come back and look into doing one of these. 
The landscape is pretty much low-growing shrubs except for the riparian areas next to the river where there were clusters of cottonwood trees. After “baptizing” ourselves in the chilly waters of the Colorado (the water here comes from the middle of the dam's wall and it is much colder than that of the surface), we got back on the road towards Navajo Bridge. A few hours later and armed with a single 
six pack of Sam Adams, we return to the campsite to cook lunch, sit in the sun and tear down the camp. By early afternoon, we headed northwest towards the next pit stop, Pahrump, Nevada. This segment of road was contrasted greatly as we went from the Colorado Plateau at 4,000 feet, up to 8,000 in the Kaibab Range, and down to the lower Nevada desert. In 
the Kaibab, we stopped to take pictures in the snow, then on to Fredonia, AZ where we got gas and quickly got the hell out after seeing the number of guns and firepower the gas station attendant had on display...surely the ATF boys would have had a field day here. Along the way, we passed Colorado City at the Utah border where Kevin had wanted to stop for a cup of coffee and witness first-hand the almost discriminatory practices that the media claimed were occurring to outsiders in this city following the arrest of Warren Jeff and the on-going attempts by the Feds to infiltrate this closely-knit Mormon community. Being of the 
minority myself, I did not have any burning desires or urges to witness discrimination once again…and besides coffee in a Mormon town? Cruising into Utah and descending into a town called Hurricane we finally reached Interstate 15. Once on the Interstate we again had cell phone reception, which aside from reporting our whereabouts served as a guidance system to the nearest source of 
coffee...Kansas (over the phone) quickly guided us to a Starbucks in the nearest town, Mesquite, Nevada. There was a Starbucks inside the Virgin River Casino, where we ended up staying a little longer and watching the Randy Anderson Country Western Band (2 songs max…the older folks started to eye us pretty good so we cut short our stay). The duality could not have been more contrasting, going from the silence and tranquility of Marble Canyon and right into the smoke-filled casino with all its noise, lights flashing, people moving about desperately looking for an open slot machine, a waitress in her skimpy outfit frantically running drinks from the bar to an old man dragging along his oxygen 
task, and just a strange mix of people…it almost seemed like you can get people of all sorts to live peacefully side by side if they are placed in some sort of self-destroying environment. Man! 
Quite the freak show and we are merely carnival goers. After the coffee stop, we got back on I-15 south and a little later we were cruising the Strip in Sin City…the traffic and ongoing construction turned out to be a little more than anticipated…an hour or so later we got on the 160 west towards Pahrump, where we stayed for the night at my brother’s house. Pahrump is quite the city…home to the world famous Chicken Ranch…its has a mix of old homes, probably from the Golden Days of the mobster scene, new multi-million dollar housing developments and an ocean of brothels…after all this is where prostitution is legal. A night’s rest, some ass-kicking meals (brother is a chef by training), and enjoying some time with my brother’s family was definitely a highlight of the trip."Luces de bengala por doquier"
Next afternoon, we replenished our supplies (this time we packed
a 24-case of Sam Adams for Death Valley), performed final systems on LC and gas her up. We headed up north on 160 towards the 95 northwest. At night we passed a series of towns in the middle of the California-Nevada desert, and after a few hours (do not how many, nobody was keeping track of time) we turned west onto 265. 
265 was the road that connects to Death Valley some 30 miles west. The absolute darkness of the night was unbelievable…we stopped along side of the road to admire it…no cars, no light pollution, a seemingly overcast sky and no point of reference once we killed all the lights and engine on LC …it is truly a “ying-yang” of emotions…an apparently surrounding peace and internal turmoil of the senses, an absolute silence and a deafening noise, and gravity as my only 
point of reference amid the darkness. Late into the night we passed Scotty’s Castle in the eastern flank of Death Valley…the campground nearby was completely maxed out, we opted for 
another one 37 miles south at Stove Pipe Wells. Although physically worn out by the drive, the adrenaline rush of driving in complete darkness in an unknown landscape and towards a place that we did not know anything about other than what we read from the brochures we picked up at the Ranger Station, kept my senses well-tuned. Stove Pipe Wells, from a distance, was a cluster of dim lights that composed this small settlement in the middle of Death Valley. The campground there seemed full as well but there was another option, the Norman Bates-looking motel in the village.
"Searching for Saline..."
Next afternoon, we replenished our supplies (this time we packed
a 24-case of Sam Adams for Death Valley), performed final systems on LC and gas her up. We headed up north on 160 towards the 95 northwest. At night we passed a series of towns in the middle of the California-Nevada desert, and after a few hours (do not how many, nobody was keeping track of time) we turned west onto 265. 
265 was the road that connects to Death Valley some 30 miles west. The absolute darkness of the night was unbelievable…we stopped along side of the road to admire it…no cars, no light pollution, a seemingly overcast sky and no point of reference once we killed all the lights and engine on LC …it is truly a “ying-yang” of emotions…an apparently surrounding peace and internal turmoil of the senses, an absolute silence and a deafening noise, and gravity as my only 
point of reference amid the darkness. Late into the night we passed Scotty’s Castle in the eastern flank of Death Valley…the campground nearby was completely maxed out, we opted for 
another one 37 miles south at Stove Pipe Wells. Although physically worn out by the drive, the adrenaline rush of driving in complete darkness in an unknown landscape and towards a place that we did not know anything about other than what we read from the brochures we picked up at the Ranger Station, kept my senses well-tuned. Stove Pipe Wells, from a distance, was a cluster of dim lights that composed this small settlement in the middle of Death Valley. The campground there seemed full as well but there was another option, the Norman Bates-looking motel in the village."Searching for Saline..."
The next morning, Kevin was awakened by a knock on the door…there was a short, rough –looking, long-hair, toothless, dude who without any identification or uniform simply said….."Just checking…it’s policy”…then quickly vanished. The local restaurant where we tried to get some brunch was closed by 11am…did not quite catched the concept but ni modo...then we continued on with our plans. After gassing up at this location, we headed east along the 190 then north on Race Track Valley road towards the looping network of roads I saw on the satellite image. Along the way, I spotted a strange-looking object flying perpendicular with us…we desperately got all cameras out as I was trying to keep LC on the road and bring her safely to a complete stop on the side of the road. 
We got pictures and film of this and as it turns out it was a B-2 Stealth Bomber flying closely in front of a Boeing Refueling Tanker. 50 some miles later we reached Ubehebe Craters which are believed to have resulted from a series of volcanic eruptions some 300 to 10,000 years ago and dwarfs Mt. St. Helens’ eruption. In fact so violent was this eruption that the entire volcano is missing. What is left is a little hill with a very big hole. The top of the crater is nearly a half -mile across and is about 800 feet deep. Hiking along side the crater gives one a glimpse of the different strata. The empty and nearly lifeless landscape is quiet and has great views of the Valley, in particular towards the Mesquite Sand Dunes. Upon arriving at the rim of the crater, LC started to shake quite a bit…we got out and walked towards the edge of the rim and got blasted by t
he wind that originated from the center of the crater…so much was the wind that we leaned forward into it and it would simply push us back out away from the rim…check out the video for evidence ;-) We hiked to the highest point of the crater where we sat down and had some Sam Adams that Kevin packed in his backpack. Although we wanted to stay a little longer, we were really looking forward to the rest of the trip. 26 miles south from Ubehebe Craters, we arrived at the Race Track Playa…a seasonally dry lake located in the northern part of the Panamint Mountains that is famous for rocks that mysteriously move across its surface. During periods of heavy rain, water washes down from nearby mountain slopes onto the playa, forming a shallow, short-lived lake. Most of the so-called 'sailing stones' are from a nearby high hillside of dark dolomite on the south
end of the playa. Similar rock travel patterns have been recorded in several other playas in the region but the number and length of travel groves on The Racetrack are notable. Racetrack stones only move once every two or three years and most tracks last for just three or four years. We took refuge from the sun in the hatch of LC as we ate our lunch (some left over steak that my brother had packed for us) and of course some more Sam Adams. We then walked into the Playa and towards The Grand Stand (an immense conglomerate of boulders in the middle of the Race Track). There we met some film students from Los Angeles shooting around the site. This turned out to be one of my favorite places and I like to revisit at some point in the future. It is difficult to describe what my senses perceived there (besides…that is personal stuff right?) but the physical side was a beautiful, vast, intimidating and energized emptiness…other than the few scattered rocks “racing around” on the bed, the place is completely de
solate and has no evidence of any plant or animal life on the cracked surface…almost an eerie feeling of being on another planet. Strangely enough, at The Grand Stand, I saw dark-colored lizards living there which seemed to only be visible when they jumped from boulder to boulder as they quickly camouflage themselves against the black tone of the boulders. There were also small patches of grasses (poaceae) and surely whatever might have been on the lizards’ food chain and perhaps their predators as well. I took off my sandals to walk into the middle of the dry lake bed, found a place to sit…not that there are any points of references within…and sitting there listening to the wind gusts and watching a threatening weather front approaching from the north…there was a sudden loud sonic boom overhead as 2 F-16’s flew right over me. This was the second time we saw low-flying aircrafts over Death Valley but with Nellis Air Force Base in the Nevada side and China Lake Naval Weapons Range on the California side, this wouldn’t be 
unusual. It was late in the afternoon when we left the Race Track and continued south to the end of the dirt on high clearance Ubehebe Road. 8 miles south, we found a road that was to be Lippincott Mine Road, if Google was right this was to connect to Saline Valley Road and out to the 190 again. The Lippincott Mine Road is a 7-mile, low-range climb that connects the Saline Valley to the Racetrack Playa. In fact, calling it a low-range climb is an understatement. It's more accurate to say that the Lippincott Mine Road is a serious, high-pucker-factor, mountain-goat trail. Upon entering Lippy, Kevin locked the hubs and LC went into a low 4. We had hesitated a little about entering this road which made the Ubehebe Road look like a freeway. The faded sign at the entrance, we think, read something along the lines of “warning, road not maintained, vehicle travel not recommended, high clearance and experienced 4 x 4 drivers only, no services beyond this point”…well this was an open invitation for us and LC. The road quickly got very serious and there was not much of an option of turning back given the width of the road and the drops on the sides. It was all
slow and low-range work which LC handled flawlessly. The washouts were constant and there were places with only a foot or so between the outside tire and a disaster. The drops got hairy, too…hundreds of feet, not straight down, but not enough of a slope to matter…a mistake could easily be fatal. While Kevin documented the surroundings and the transverse, I had all my senses locked on safety…I can say that I became “one with LC.” The view from the top is incredible…the Nelson Range and the Tin Mountains surrounded an even bigger valley than the one we had just left on the eastern slope…we were both somewhat nervous since the landscape was vast, the rocks below LC’s tires were sharp and jagged, the road seemed to disappear at times and the connecting Saline Valley Road was nowhere to be seen from the top. Although we could see for miles and miles around, there were no plumes of dust from other cars on any potential roads…we seemed to be driving across dry river beds, across this new valley and into another range of mountains. Suddenly out of nowhere and to our relief, 
Saline Valley Road appeared perpendicular to our trail. There were no signs indicating this was the name of this new road but relying on the satellite image, I was certain it had to connect to the black top of highway 190 at 30 some miles southwest from there. Although this adventure was a bit hairy, we pulled out without any incident, LC crawled right through it, and resulted on a sweet ride from the bottom of the valley, through the Joshua Trees, on pass the Pinyons and Junipers, and even some Digger and Bristlecone pines at the top of the Nelson Range Mountains. At dusk, down to the high desert valley again, we ran into 190…headed east towards Panamint Springs village. At Panamint, we stopped at the restaurant/bar but left shortly afterwards…we felt bad for the girl at the cash register who was also, the greeter, the waitress, the bartender, the attendant and at times the assistant in the kitchen with over 30 or so patrons there, not a chance to get a beer anytime before nightfall. My condolences Panamint Springs…I’ve been in the restaurant business before. Some time and who knows how many miles later, we arrived at the starting point…a hundred and some miles and a thousand and one experiences later…here we were, back at Stove Pipe Wells (AKA the Psycho/Norman Bates Motel). 
This time we managed to get some dinner, sit down, spaced out for a while and listen to all the bullshit stories some folks were saying at the dinner table. Got food, got gas and got road ahead of us…heading east then down south for the long-haul. Heading for Lake Havasu City through the network of connecting state routes, highways, and eventually freeways, we ran into two separate sand storms…one of them cleaned up LC’s collection of bugs right off her windshield…nice! But I could only wonder what it could have done to the paint. Passing again a series of towns, Shoshone, the Dumont Dunes, and on to Baker, we got on I-15 
(now north) towards Primm, Nevada where we…once again found a Starbucks inside a casino…then on to Nipton, CA and finally south on to 95 to Lake Havasu City, AZ. We arrived at Lake Havasu at sometime around 2 or 3 in the morning…too late to set camp there…and besides Kevin had slept the whole way from Death Valley and quickly volunteered to drive and bring us back to Tempe…another 4 hours later. At the break of dawn, we found ourselves stuck in east-bound traffic from Phoenix’s west valley…again. By 7 am we arrived at home and at 8 am I was answering emails back in the office...back in the grind. Que jornada!
