More Death Valley

Today's adventure took us into Death Valley. It was a long day we left at 9am and got home after 8pm but it was a great day. The desert is so picturesque and peacful. We can never seem to get enough of it. The first picture is looking down toward the last picture. In the 1st picture we are on Dante's Peak which is 5282 ft above the last picture and is 59F. In the last picture Yvonne and I are 282 ft below sea level and the temp. is 88F.

Early in the morning we toured the ghost town of Ryolite which was an old mining town that has since shut down. Spring flowers where in great abundance on the valley floor. We toured another old mining site which was the Borax mining company. For those oldies but moldies about my age, you will probably remember Boraxo. This is where it came from until it was mined in other areas where the weather was not as severe as here.

Virtualy ever kind of rock formation can be found in this 3.4 million acre park. There is lava rock, rock formations when the seas came in a left sediment , as well rocks that were scarred and left by the ice age. There is white, green, blue, red, black ,brown and many other different shades of sand and rock that is abundant here. Unfortunately a camera lens cannot capture every shade.

Death Valley has gotten its name from the many people that travelled out here during the California gold rush and many in our modern society that have gone for a short hike and did not take enough water. The hottest day on record here was July 10th 1913. 137F 52C. Oh yes it cools down at night to about 100f. In the summer the rocks are so hot you can burn yourself touching or leaning uo against them. You can actually fry eggs on these rocks. We are going to lay low tomorrow and I will post just pictures so you can see some more of this neat place.

We are here for 3 more days and then off to Vegas to meet our friend Dan and pick up some stained glass supplies. Then we will be in St. Georges touring Bryce and Zion Nat. Parks.

Take care all . Jim

YES - we both learned how to do stained glass this week. Jim did the rose and I did the hummingbird. Jim got hooked enough he's going to get all the stuff to keep going. He is a natural at it with all his soldering practice!!! The park here in Parumph gave us one one one lessons for a whopping $3 a day, including materials. We are very impressed with this park and have it on our list to come back to next year!!

We safely made the drive from Bullhead City, AZ to Parumph, NV today. There is fresh snow on the mountains all around this area. They are at about 6,000 ft and we are at 3,000 ft. At one point while we were driving over the top of a pass, there was snow on the ground in patches.
Our resort is the nicest we've come across so far. We have an outdoor pool that has been turned into an indoor one with a big bubble. There are tons of activities and craft opportunities, so we have lots to do this week. We plan to head up to Death Valley near the end of the week. The weather is supposed to warm up, so we are hoping that with the recent rain, there may be some desert blossoms there.

We had an interesting adventure to Oatman and Christmas Tree Pass. Oatman is about 20 miles southeast of Bullhead City. It is an old gold mining town that is now a tourist trap. The typical junk stores and snacks shops full of milling people. The exciting thing there, is they have wild burrows wandering around the road up there and in town. We brought carrots to feed them which thrilled Yvonne.

We then travelled northwest of Bullhead City over to Nevada to see Grapevine Canyon Petroglyphs at Christmas Tree Pass. This must be about 2 to 3,000 feet higher in elevation that Bullhead City, so we got absolutely awesome views of the Colorado River Valley. The Canyon is filled with great examples of ancient Indian petroglyphs. We just wish we knew what they were trying to tell us!!

Our excitement of the day was to return home to a front door we can't get open. Our first reaction is that someone tried to break in during our time away, but Jim assures us that the lock just happened to fail today. Lucky thing is we have the back door to get in. We still can't get the front door open, even from the inside, so we will have the locksmith out to fix it tomorrow.

We visited Grand Canyon West today. This is a new end of the Grand Canyon that visitors can come to. It is on Hualapai Indian Reservation land and is home to the becoming famous Skywalk. The Skywalk is a glass platform you can go out on that allows you to experience the feeling of being suspended 2,000 feet above the canyon floor. Yvonne didn't want to do it, so we just watched others do it.

We started out this morning at 8 AM and drove 2 hours to the southwest rim. The last part is about 10 miles on a dirt road that is a poor man's roller coaster. The drive took us through the Joshua Tree Forest (not to be confused with Joshua Tree National Park in California). Here there were even more huge Joshua Trees than in the National Park.

When we got there, they take you off on a bus that allows you to hop on and off at three locations. Our first was at the Skywalk where we took some pictures and watched the Indian Dancers.

The second stop was at Guano Point which was a really cool hike way out onto a point that is in the middle of the canyon. At the end of the Point, there's an old contraption thing that we found out was a Guano recovery system. There is a huge bat cave way down at the bottom of the canyon and in the 1940's, they "mined" the bat poop for use as fertilizer and ingredients in cosmetics - YUCK - makes "Take that Shit off your face!" to a new meaning!

The third stop was to Hualapai (pronounced Wal-a-pie) Ranch. They have gun-fights, horseback riding, a petting zoo and a dance hall. The food smelt absolutely amazing, but we already had lunch with us. We ended up going on a wagon ride with a fellow that is part of the tribe and has lived here all his life. He took us out to the rim and pointed out 1,000 year old cooking pits and a Mamoth footprint fossilized in a stone.

We ended up spending a wonderful 4 & 1/2 hours there before heading off on the 2 hour drive "home". This end of the canyon is well worth the trip. It is not as commercialized as the south rim but with all the wonderful views and the chance to learn about the culture of a people who have lived here for thousands of years.

Here's the view of Laughlin from our RV Park in Bullhead City. We are in Arizona and across the river is Nevada. We had a three hour drive along HWY 95 that follows the Colorado River. There's a whole lot of nothing here in the desert. This is the beggest city we've seen in a long time. We have lovely weather and plan to do a driving tour to the Grand Canyon tomorrow. It's about 3 & 1/2 hours away, so we'll be truckin' all day long.

The Colorado River Basin is home to some very, very rare Native Indian Intaglios. They are large images carved into the ground. They are best seen from the air, so taking a picture doesn't do it justice. The picture above is of a human form that is about 80 feet long. The Colorado River Basin left a layer of dark black rocks that once dug out leave a very pale sandy image. These date from 450 to 1000 years ago. They believe they were used as ceremonial sites, but nobody knows for sure.

Yvonne lost her first baby tooth tonight. She's had two wiggly teeth for the longest time. We've tugged on this one a few times, to no avail. Tonight, it was really bugging her, so she tried tugging it, then asked me to and ........

POP - out it came. It is now safely ensconced under her pillow awaiting the tooth fairy's arrival. How lucky can a kid get to wake up to the tooth fairy's surprize and Valentine's Day all in one!!!

A day like this makes us reminisce........here's a picture of her almost 3 years ago, at the start of this travelling journey that has turned us into - "The 3 Traveleers!!!"

Yvonne fishing on the Colorado River at Colorado Oasis RV Park.

We arrived at our resort in Ehrenberg today. The bottom picture is the view from where our lawn chairs are sitting. We can see the Colorado River and those pretty palm trees. The weather has drastically improved. It's nice and sunny and warm now. We hope to keep it just like this for the rest of our time south. Then we'll do our best to drag it home with us. We are here for a week and plan to enjoy a quiet and relaxing week. We have found out there are Native "Intaglios" here to go and see. They are huge images made in the ground. Best seen from the air, but we'll go and see what we can. Stay tuned this week for an update on that.

We drove an hour east to Wickenberg today. Henry Wickenberg struck gold in the mid-1800's and the people followed to make a town. Today, there's still mining and your typical small town farms and services to keep the place going. We are on I-60 which used to be the main route from Phoenix to Blythe, CA. Once the I-10 was built, all traffic went that way and now all the little towns on I-60 are run-down and almost non-existent. If you haven't seen Disney/Pixar's movie, "Cars", it depicts what happened to all the little towns along historic Route 66 when the big interstates were built. We are so far in the middle of nowhere, cell phones don't work and the internet is available only after working hours. The office in the RV parks turns it off from public use so they can use it during the day.

Part way, we encountered a fruit and veggie stand at the side of the road in a small town called Aguilla. What was cool about it was they had Spanish music playing and all the items were in baskets with $1 the price for anything in a basket. For $20 we filled our fridge to brimming with fruits and veggies. Actually, we have to store some of it in our outside storage bins that get to experience close to freezing temps overnight. Works great for extra fridge space.

Wickenberg had a nice museum of cowboy art, artifacts, and historical dioramas (sp?). Jim took a nice picture of one of the many hand-tooled and silver-inlaid saddle and briddle combinations. Most of the items in the museum are gifts from families that live here or have fallen in love with the area. Currently, there are about a half a dozen guest dude ranches operating in the area for city-dudes like us to go experience the ranch life.

An interesting fact is that Wickenberg is where the Bola tie originated. In our family, our great-uncle Webb Fallis was an avid collector of the western ties and I am lucky to possess a couple of them.

Mexico is a land of riches and a land of poverty. Our time spent here in Yuma, Arizona is our time to help those in need. We spend our time making quilts for the people just moments away that have no more than cardboard boxes to shield themselves from the weather. Although it is spring-like to us Canadians, to people who weather 140 plus F in the summer, 60 F is very, very cold. At night it gets very close to freezing. Can you imagine that with no insulation!! In December of each year, the people from this RV Park take 900 shoe boxes of daily essentials and 600 quilts down to the people in Mexico. They go to an old folks home, a drug rehab centre, and some of the poorest villages to ensure the donations get directly into the hands that need them. The top picture has a little stuffed animal in a bag that is one that Yvonne donated to the cause last year. It touches us that our giving is so gratefully accepted and needed. We are so fortunate to come from a country where the average child is asking for the newewst toy, not asking for just any toy - just one toy to play with. You can see the people waiting in line and holding our quilts under their arms like prized posessions. We are so proud and honoured to be a part of this wonderful project!