Out West Adventure: Part 2--Death Valley, Bakersfield and near Sequoia

Thu. May 23: We had some frustrations Thursday morning trying to get out of town, which made us feel like we weren’t going to have much luck finding a campsite near Sequoia National Park for Memorial Day Weekend, about an hour and a half beyond Bakersfield. The whole area was agricultural with dairy farms, orchards, vineyards and lush oleander everywhere. But the roadsides and hillsides beyond were brown and parched attesting to the irrigation that is fueling what opened into the San Joachim Valley farms. Marv had studied the literature and hoped to get a spot at Horse Creek Campground, an Army Corps of Engineers park on the shores of Lake Kaweah, a reservoir behind a large dam. When we arrived about 11:00 we saw a nearly empty campground and thought we were golden. Then we talked to the ranger and found out that it was 95% reserved for the weekend. But we did manage to find the last site on which we could fit the camper. What a relief to be so nicely situated about 8 miles from Sequoia for the whole weekend! After setting up and eating lunch we drove to nearby Visalia to get some groceries, do some banking, and buy fresh, local strawberries and cherries. Before returning to the campground we stopped at the small but nicely done Lake Kaweah Visitors Center that told the story of the dam and why it was needed. The volunteer warmed to us as she saw we were genuinely interested and gave us a lot of information on the area. She explained that the reservoir is extremely low because it was a light snow pack this winter and said that usually most of the campground we’re in is underwater until July or so, when they are releasing 3 feet of water per day from the reservoir. The farmers down in the valley are having to dig deeper and deeper wells and the situation is becoming pretty dire. When we did get back we found that a few campers had joined us but our high campsite has us well removed from others. We are just a few yards down the hill from the road but the traffic on it became lighter and lighter as it got later. And the site is full of datura (aka moon flower or angel’s trumpet). The temperature which had been in the low eighties dropped into the fifties as the nearly full moon rose. 

Marv's View

View of Marv

Campsite

Sunset over the reservoir

Full moonrise behind us

Wed. May 22: We had a good night’s sleep in the silent campground where the temperature only got down to the low sixties. We packed up and got on the road heading to Bakersfield, only about an hour and a half from Red Rock Canyon. We needed to get the truck’s tires rotated and oil changed so wanted a big enough city to do that. We quickly descended from the Mohave desert with Joshua Trees in bloom or with fruit pods, past the largest area of wind turbines we had seen yet, into lush, artificially green agricultural land. The roads were soon lined with oleander in shades of red and pink and white. As we neared Bakersfield it occurred to me that Jamie Slater might live here. I checked Facebook and was soon in contact with her to meet for dinner. We found the River Run RV Park, which turned out to be a very nice private park, across the dry bed of the Kern River from the Bakersfield Bike Path. Marv spent several hours getting the truck taken care of while I used the excellent WiFi connection to get caught up on the Blog. Then we rode our bikes for 7+ miles on the bike path before meeting Jamie and her fiancé, Aaron at one of the Lengthwise Brewery restaurants in town. We had a delightful evening of catching up with Jamie and getting to know Aaron. The RV Park had filled up some since the afternoon but it was completely quiet as we went to bed.

Just a few of the wind turbines east of Bakersfield

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Peggy, Marv, Jamie and Aaron

Tue. May 21: After an amazing night’s sleep, where the temperature only got down to about 65° and a single sheet was plenty to stay cozy, we lingered a bit in our campsite. The sun started warming the camper about 5:45 and Marv started the coffee a little earlier than usual because we were awake anyway. Yogurt and coffee were enjoyed sitting in our chairs, entertained by the local wildlife including several friendly chipmunks, a packrat, a jack rabbit, a lizard, a hummingbird, and assorted little birds of other kinds. Without hurrying we had the camper put away and were on the road before 10:00. Taking 215 and then 95 took us north of the Las Vegas traffic, though we could clearly see the now familiar skyline of The Strip. After driving the rest of the morning, stopping only for gas, we got to Death Valley National Park by about 1:00. Coming from the east we stopped at Zabriskie Point and climbed up a steep path about 100 yards to overlook the Badlands of Twenty Mule Team Canyon. Although they only used the mule teams for taking Borax out of the canyon for six years, they remain an iconic symbol for Death Valley. As the temperature climbed to 100° we were happy to get back in the car and drop, first to Sea Level and then below, and arrive at the Furnace Creek Visitor Center. We stamped our passbook, watched their film, and went through the excellent displays about Death Valley, learning that the Timbisha Shoshone jointly manage the sacred, ancestral lands they call Tumpisa with the Park Service.  There was a picnic table in the shade that a group of French visitors were just vacating to eat our picnic lunch. We settled on a route through and out of the park, mutually agreeing that it was too hot to take any trails. Hiking isn’t recommended between May and September. Besides, the landscape is quite bleak in years, like this one, when there isn’t enough rain for wildflowers. As we drove, the temperature rose to 105° for a bit and then settled in about 102° while the GPS showed us at 235 feet below sea level. We passed north beside the salt flats and turned west past the sand dunes and then climbed steeply over 3000ft. with the truck really struggling and getting about 5.7mpg. We rose over the pass and then descended just as steeply into the Panamint Valley, which isn’t quite as low nor quite as bleak but was just as hot as we drove out of the Park. There were many more miles of the same bleak countryside. We stopped at a “Drive Inn” (no curbside service) that had been there since 1958 for ice cream and found a bus load of French travelers and heard the bus driver tell the girls at the counter that they would be seeing him again this summer until October because he loved to bring his people there and always would. Although we had heard at the Park that all this land was BLM land and we could camp anywhere, it was very clear that one wouldn’t want to a)pull off the paved road onto the gravelly, loose sides or b)camp in 102° with no shade in sight. So we kept on driving. I found that we could probably make it to a California State Park called Red Rock Canyon and Marv had seen it earlier and thought it looked promising so we made it our destination. There were some exciting short cuts and then we drove north on 14 and entered a sloping, smooth canyon and found the park. There are many campsites lined up along the edge of formations of loose, crumbly sandstone with only a handful of campers. The office is only open on weekends so we found a campsite much like the night before, tucked in beside what look like drip sand castles, where we can’t see any other campsites. As we set up the camper the sun went behind the rock hillside, the temperature dropped and the wind blew so it was very comfortable. To get a little more exercise after our many hours in the truck, we walked our registration about a half mile back down to the entrance to put in the kiosk. I made big chicken salads for dinner and we relaxed and planned for the coming days as the desert sky turned inky and the half moon shone brightly down.