Day 16

Leaving Las Vegas, on no sleep

With no sleep last night, we left Las Vegas to press on toward California. Continued out The Strip passing the biggies—The Sands, Circus Circus, MGM, Stardust, and Caesar’s Palace. Started to drive out of the city but we were both disoriented and, it turns out, heading south. We knew something was wrong when we passed by the McCarran International Airport, one of the landmarks in the atlas.

We got gas and directions and got out of this town. By the way, every little business here has slot machines in it. The gas station had slots and people were playing them. Every motel has gambling, you could be out in the middle of nowhere and there are bright lights and flashing arrows pointing to the grandiose doors of these places and the gambling inside. Unbelievable!

We finally found our way out of town on US 95. This road passes mountains that look as though they have been worn by erosion. They have very gradual slopes and many alluvial fans at their base.

There are only two towns that we would pass through in Nevada after Las Vegas. One, Indian Springs, is about 40 miles to the northwest, and the other, Amargosa Valley, is another 45 miles—perhaps due to the proximity of the nuclear testing site nearby. It is very dry and mountainous out here.

Death Valley

We turned on NV 373 south and passed through the Amargosa Desert and the Funeral Mountains. At this point we were in California on CA 127. At the town of Death Valley Junction, we headed west on CA 190 into Death Valley National Monument (now a National Park).

It was a hot, crystal clear morning. Andy was sleeping pretty hard by now. There were no rangers working. All the visitor centers were closed. We passed by many interesting things here. There were a few fellow tourists but not many. We traveled on roads that passed through salt flats, roads that overlooked valleys of salt deposits, sand dunes, and signs warning: “Turn off A/C for the next 20 miles to avoid overheating.”

Also there was a resort complete with golf course and pools at 106 feet below sea level. Is this absurd? Who would want to play golf in the heat of Death Valley?

This park has a wide range of elevation from Telescope Peak, at 11,329 feet, to the lowest point in North America of 282 feet below sea level. This region only gets two inches of rain a year and there’s no McDonald’s to get a coke either.

CA 190 took us below the -200 feet level and up to 5,000 feet plus elevations. There is very little vegetation in the park and sometimes no ground cover at all. A lot of desert pavement—when sand blows away to leave a rocky surface. We ascended out of the valley up thousands of feet over many miles. Along the route was radiator water every couple miles. Luckily, we did not need it. The car took the hills slowly, they were long. Finally, we were over the Cottonwood Mountains, out of the park, and into the Panamint Valley. Sounds plush, right? It was a tad better than Death Valley, but not by much.

Owens Valley

Soon we came to CA 136 which we took around Owens Lake. Things were looking greener now. Because there’s no crossing over the Sierra Nevada Mountains near here, our options were to go south and then north to Sequoia National Park or to go north and cross in Yosemite National Park. We chose door number two.

We took CA 136 to US 395 north. This area is the site of many movie locations. Lone Pine, the first town we passed through, has been the host of so many movies, every year they have a film festival, running some of the movies shot here as well as giving guided tours of all the local movie sets. This road goes through Owens Valley and has the Inyo National Forest on both sides. Passed through other towns like Independence, Big Pine, Bishop, Toms Place, and Lee Vining, where Mono Lake is (I slept through most of these). We got gas at the turnoff into the park ($1.59 a gallon!) and took a rest.

Yosemite passage

By now it was about 2 or 3 in the afternoon and I was getting anxious to get somewhere to settle down. We made our way into Yosemite and through the Cathedral Range with peaks over 10,000 feet. Some of these peaks had snow on their summits, the first snow I’d seen on this trip. Drove on Tioga Road and through the Tioga Pass, which is at an elevation of 9,945 feet. We stopped at the Tuolumne Meadows Visitor Center to see about our camping options.

We found out that we had none in the park tonight. This part of the park is just spread out wilderness. There are lakes, huge summits of rock, canyons, valleys, and rivers—and everywhere else: green meadows. No more arid desert or orange sandstone. Now there’s mountains of gray granite, pine trees, wildflowers, moss, and yes, water.

This park is filled with trails, including the Pacific version of the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail, stretching from the Mexican border to the Canadian border. This part of the park is closed in winter which I would imagine is most of the year.

Turned on Big Oak Flat Road which goes into the Yosemite Valley, the treasure of the park. We weren’t especially interested in sightseeing now, we would do that tomorrow. We just wanted to find a place to sleep. We found Wawona Road (apparently Wawona means big tree to the Miwok Peoples), which would lead us out of the park at the South Entrance.

Hopefully, we will find a campground for the night close to the park. This road was very curvy and descended in elevation out of the high Sierras. One RV and you’re finished on these roads. It was a long trip out of the park but we finally made it, over two hours after entering it.

Just outside the south end of the park is the town of Fish Camp on CA 41. This was a tiny town which probably flourished solely on tourists. I didn’t see any evidence that would point to the meaning of the name. I wouldn’t want to live in a place called Fish Camp, I can tell ya.

Anyway, we continued down the road behind the Winnebagos and buses to a place called Bass Lake arriving around 5:30 in the afternoon. This is all in the Sierra National Forest and we stayed at a campground that overlooked Bass Lake, where boats, fishing, and swimming are the main attraction.

The lake is at 3,400 feet and it is still nice and cool, it doesn’t get too hot up here. Talked to Lois who said she had one space left for us. We didn’t care about the looks of the site too much at this point, we got the last site in the campground and were happy to have gotten it. It could have been next to a dumpster and we still would have taken it. Luckily, it wasn’t.

We set up the tent and were contemplating eating out, but decided to just cook our own food. There was a family next to us with young kids; make that young, whiny kids. We cooked dinner, did the dishes, and went to bed. I think we even went to bed before it was dark! It was a long drive (11:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. the next day), but I think it was worth it.