Note to readers:  I don’t know if you are all aware that you can enlarge the photos by clicking on any of them.  I like to size them down for the blog to give the impression my ramblings are not so long.  Probably doesn’t fool anyone but I try.

We drove through Death Valley today.  So, this is your official warning that there are lots of photographs in this blog; and they are not of snow either!

We left Tonopah this morning in a biting cold wind, but it didn’t take too long before I could take off the winter jacket and put on a light one.  Thank goodness.  I was seriously getting tired of winter.  (Sorry, all you folks that are still stuck in it.)

We climbed a little pass and entered, once again, into long straight roads through scrub and sand.  However, not too far south of Tonapah Joshua Trees appeared as well, so there is a little more moisture in the ground.

The best part of the first few miles of our trip today were the clouds.  I love clouds.  They are an infinite number of shapes and colours.  Today’s clouds were waves.  Very, very cool.

The first little community we passed through was Goldfield, named, obviously for the gold mining in the area.  Goldfield was small, but spread out, with many boarded up, derelict buildings.  There were stores and other business open, so it is not a ghost town by any means.  Another very typical tiny old western mining town.

This area is home to wild burros and we saw a couple of them a few miles south of Goldfield.

It was about 93 miles from Tonopah to Beatty, one of the eastern gate-ways from Nevada into Death Valley National Park.

A few miles before we reached Beatty I checked to see if there were any near-by geo-caches.  I know we missed a lot of them on our drive to this point, but geo-caching is not the focus of this part of the trip; destination Escondido is.  A few caches found along the way just make the drive more fun.

A cache popped up a short distance ahead so John pulled over beside a chained driveway that had a much-graffiti-ed crashed airplane sitting on the other side of the cattle guard.  Notes on the cache logs said the owner of the property did not mind people crossing the chain to find the cache hidden in the airplane they just didn’t want folks wandering further up the drive.  We looked all around the airplane but couldn’t find the cache.  We did find two others as we drove through Beatty.

The drive from Beatty to the Nevada/California border and the boundary of Death Valley National Park is about 10 miles.  About half-way there is the Rhyolite Ghost Town.  It had a population of over 8,000 in 1901 and only a few ruined buildings remain.  There is a small Open Air Museum (it seemed to just be small collection of odd art pieces).  At the driveway entrance there is a ‘Shoe Tree,’ where, for whatever reason, people leave pairs of shoes.  At the base of the pole is a cache and there was another one under the concrete Gaudi-style couch behind the museum.

It is only a few miles from Rhyolite Ghost Town to the border of Death Valley National Park.  We spent a week here last year and I was very excited to be back.  Before we left home John tried to book a hotel room so we could stay overnight but there were no vacancies at Stovepipe Wells or Furnance Creek so we could only spend a short time in the park.  We are spending the night at Ridgecrest, which is about 100 miles west and south from Stovepipe Wells, which is about 1/3 of the way into the park from the eastern boundary.

Death Valley, as we all know, has the lowest elevation in the US (282 feet BELOW sea level – at Badwater Basin – and; only 15 miles away, is the highest peak in the Panamint Ridge – Mt. Telescope; at over 11,000 feet. The Valley stretches 140 miles between the Amargosa Range on the CA/NV border and the Panamint Ridge on the west.  The Park is 3.4 million acres and is a photographers dream with all the different geologic shapes and colours.

There were, near the Stovepipe Wells Junction,  two areas we had not visited last year and both of them are the site of an Earth Cache. (No physical caches are allowed in the National Parks so at various interesting places people log an Earth Cache.  To claim them you must answer some questions about the area that will prove you actually visited, and, if you choose, post a photo of yourself at the site.  There are over a dozen Earth Caches in Death Valley.  We claimed a couple last year and thought we would pick up another few today.

The first place was the Lake Manley Gravel Beds where acres and acres of small rocks to pebbles were deposited by glaciers many feet thick over a huge former lake bed.

On the way to Lake Manley we passed the turn-off for Salt Creek which was our next stop.  This was a very picturesque 1/2 mile long boardwalk loop trail so I took many, many pictures in that short time.  It was just so pretty…..

Our last stop was at the Mesquite Sand Dunes. We had been here last year not realizing there are two Earth Caches here. The dunes are right beside the road we need to take to leave the park so we stopped in again to find the information we need to get the Smileys (a smiley face will display on the map to show caches you have found.)

After we climbed a few of the sand dunes we made a brief stop at the General Store at Stovepipe Wells for a sandwich to eat on the way.  The man at the counter said a big storm was coming in and we could see clouds gathering in the mountains. The western boundary of Death Valley National Park is the Panamint Ridge.  It is a very long climb from the valley through the pass and down the other side to the Panamint Valley.  Panamint Valley is 65 miles long and 10 miles wide.  Death Valley runs in a NW-SE direction.  Panamint Valley runs due North-South and is bordered on its western side by the Amargosa Range.  The Valley is used extensively for low-level test flying by the American military.  If you are up at  Aquereberry Point high in the Panamint Ridge it is not unusual to get buzzed by a jet plane.

The ‘white’ strip in the middle of the valley bottom is a miles-long strip of compacted sand.  There had been rain recently and the sand had interesting, blotchy patterns of moist and dry.

Once we left the Panamint Valley it was a short 15-20 miles into Ridgecrest and our stop for the night.  Chock up another day of interesting sites and places.

It was freezing cold, still, when we got up this morning.  The poor staff at the hotel desk had to go buy some space heaters to deal with the cold air that kept coming in when the lobby doors opened.  The amount of snow they have now is quite normal, but the cold snap is not.  And they don’t like it.  I told the greeter at Wal-Mart (John needed some sunglasses and we stock up on our soap when in the US) that it was my fault.  We dragged it with us.  I told her to tell any of the customers that Janet is to blame.  She promised she would place all the blame on the Canadians.  For the first time on our trip all the bottles of water in the back seat of the truck froze solid overnight.  Did I mention it was cold in Winnemucca this morning?

We found our first geo-cache of the day, “Wally Rock,” under a tree (fake rock) at the far end of the Wal-Mart parking lot.   It was so cold none of the pens would write on the log paper so all that shows is some indentations with a few ink marks.

We left Winnemucca about 10:30 and drove SE on Hwy 80 to Battle Mountain.  We followed a long  stretch of straight, flat road then went up through the Golconda Pass, descending into flat valley bottom again.  After that it was straight road all the way south from Battle Mountain to Austin on Hwy 305.  There is nothing out here but sand and scrub so no need to make turns in the roads.

Most of the scenery was the same as yesterday; snow-covered trees, scrub brush, and mountain slopes.  As usual I took lots of photos of all of the above but I have weeded out a lot of them so you won’t get too bored (hopefully). I can’t help myself, it all looks so pretty!

Austin is a typical old cowboy town.  The area is billed as “The Heart of Pony Express Country.”

Immediately east of Austin we climbed through the Toiyabe Range along Hwy 50 for a few miles before turning south on Hwy 376  to Tonapah, where we are spending the night.  We drove pretty much down the middle of the middle of Nevada through the Big Smokey Valley with the Toiyabe Range on the right and the Toquima Range on the left.

Looking down on Austin and back along the flat valley we crossed. About half-way between the turn-off to Hwy 375 and Tonopah is a small community called Carvers. I turned on the data on my phone to see if there were any geo-caches in the area and spotted two not far ahead.

The first was hidden among a pile of rocks at the Nye County line and the second was at a State Heritage Marker where Tate’s Stage Station was once located. A bit further down the road was a rest stop at another State Heritage Marker about the Big Smokey Valley.  Once again it was so cold the pen wouldn’t write (after this I took a pencil for signing the logs).

There were tracks from little critters winding all around the bushes. We passed the tailings from a gigantic pit mine.  There were three or four separate multi-layer hills of them.  I commented that it must be a big pit.  We looked it up on the internet and the Big Smokey mine is an open pit heat-leech gold mine.  Between 1906 and 2006 it yielded 10,000,000 ounces of gold.  The pit is 2 1/2 km long and 1 1/2 km wide.

We found another cache at another State Heritage Marker about Manhattan Junction, a former gold mining community.   When John was looking at the geo-cache map in the hotel room last night he discovered that the area between Battle Mountain and Tonapah is positively riddled with power trails and mega-power trails. (A power trail is a series of geo-caches hidden close together along roadsides or trails.  We did four power trails containing 525 caches at Anahim Lake in the BC Caribou this summer.)  The power trails here are VERY long.  Several of them contain over 300 caches.  A group of cachers from the east coast came out here in October and found over 500 caches IN ONE DAY!  We, obviously, cannot take on any of these right now but it has been noted for a future spring or fall road trip.

We did however pick up 16 caches from the middle of the BAM series – numbers 285-300.  By then the sun was setting and we still had a 45 minute drive to get into Tonopah.  In total, we found 22 caches today.  Not bad for a traveling day.  (Observe: we left the worst of the cold behind today and you will note from the photos from the latter part of the day that we have almost left the snow behind too.  I knew we would succeed eventually.)

The snow that was falling when we returned to our hotel room last night in John Day thankfully quit not long after so we did not receive any nasty surprises this morning.

After breakfast we walked around the corner to the Chamber of Commerce building where a cache is hidden.  While I visited with two dogs out for their morning walk, John tried to find it.  No luck.  A staff person came out to see if we needed help with something and we explained why we were wandering around the front of the building.  He did not know where the cache was hidden but he sent out a lady who was a fellow geo-cacher and she told us the cache was hidden in a kettle at the base of a large rock at the edge of the frozen, snow-covered pond.  She told us we could log the find, but we don’t feel right doing that.  We just made a note to come back and actually find it one day and sign the log proper-like.  It was very nice of her to tell us to log it though.

She also told us that having as much snow on the ground as they currently do is very unusual for the area, as is the cold they are experiencing.  We did not escape the cold all day, but we had glorious sunshine for our drive.

We had two part bottles of water (now frozen) in the truck and decided to top them both up with liquid water from another bottle.  I wish I had filmed it.  The new water froze into slush on contact with the ice in the bottles.  It just piled up in a tower to the top of the bottle.  I have never seen anything like it.  Obviously the unopened water was a hairs-breadth from freezing and contact with the ice just pushed it over the edge.  A great science experiment, I think.

We drove directly south from John Day on Highway 395 to Burns, Oregon through Canyon Creek Pass.  The view from near the summit was spectacular. A few years ago the area was ravaged by a forest fire.  The contrast of the blackened trees against the white snow and blue sky was very pretty. After we came through the pass we entered the Oregon High Desert Scenic By-Way and drove for over  40 miles through a flat valley belonging to the Silvies Valley Ranch.  Silvies Ranch was established in the late 1800’s and today is owned by a Limited Company.  It owns and leases 140,000 acres and has 60 square miles of deeded land; with 6,000 acres of meadows, 14,000 acres of Ponderous Pine forest, and 20 miles of the Silvies River running through it.  They raise kids, cowboys, quarter horses and heritage beef.  They have a full conference center and will soon have golf courses and all kinds of other amenities.  Quite an operation!

As we drove through the valley we could see a white strip of fog/cloud hanging just above the hills or the horizon.  It was quite an interesting phenomenon.

We stopped for lunch at Burns and, once again, there was a geo-cache hidden in a tree in front of the Chamber of Commerce.  This one we did find.  Burns, according to the server at the restaurant doesn’t have much snow yet but they are not used to such cold temperatures.

Two ladies decided to decorate this juniper bush.  They change the decorations every month.  There is a cache hidden here but we suspected it was buried under all the snow at the base of the tree and didn’t want to disturb it.The drive through Crooked Creek Valley was flat, flat, flat with a straight-as-an-arrow road.  It is so flat that the snow drifts in and covers the road.  A crew was almost finished clearing a section that had drifted full of snow.

From Burns it is 55 miles to the Nevada border, and from the border it is 78 miles to Winnemucca and our stop for the night.  The topography changed eventually from flat valley bottom to hills but it was still cold with a wind blowing and everything is covered with pristine, glistening white snow.  We just are not far enough south yet. We’re getting there though. As we approached Winnemucca the sun was setting and cast a gorgeous pink glow onto the hills.  Mark this down as another good day.

We checked out of our hotel in Ephrata at 9:30 am.  My nice husband braved the bitingly cold wind and -10 F ( -20 C) temperature on the long walk out to the truck and drove around to pick me up at the lobby.

We wanted to find a few more caches in Washington if we could and spent most of the morning stopping now and again to try find some that were hidden close to the road.  Of the approximately eight we looked for, we found three.  We are usually pretty tenacious when looking for a cache.  Neither of us like to give up and move on.  However with the cold temperature and the colder wind we did not linger if the container was not located quickly.  Many of them were now covered with too much snow for us to locate.  I want to find at least one cache in each state.  We found three in WA as we drove along and one in OR so far.  We will see about finding a few more tomorrow.  Success will depend on the temperature, snow levels and our frost bite tolerance.The wind was blowing a thin layer of snow across the highway.

We didn’t find the cache hidden under one of these rocks, but we did try.

John stepped off the road to look inside a culvert for a cache that was supposed to be hidden there.  He didn’t find it but he did sink up to his thighs in snow!

We stopped for lunch just across the Washington – Oregon border and drove for miles through farm country.  I liked all the patterns the snow made in the fields.

My little “Sampson” dog travels with us all the time.

As we drove along, I was thinking that there would be very few photos and nothing of interest for a blog post today; and then we began driving into the mountains and the trees and bushes were completely encased in snow.  It was magical!

There is a lovely hawk at the top of the tree – looking for dinner, no doubt. We entered the Battle Mountain scenic corridor and over the next 3 1/2 miles I took almost 100 photographs of the trees and the road-side scenery.  There are not anywhere near that number in this blog but I must post some….

After we descended out of the Battle Mountain Pass we climbed up and descended four more summits: Meadow Brook, Ritter Butte, Long Creek and Beech Creek before descending into Mount Vernon. We had been driving under high clouds most of the day, but as we were driving down from Beech Creek Summit the clouds lowered to the point where the snow-covered horizon almost disappeared. I was checking the map to see how much further it was to Mt. Vernon and John said, “Church.” “Church.”  I looked up just in time to catch a pic through the front window.We arrived in John Day at about 5:30, checked into our hotel, unloaded our bags and drove two blocks to the Grubsteak Diner for dinner.  No way were we walking those two blocks in the cold wind and falling snow.

But, what I thought was going to be a pretty boring day turned into an absolutely beautiful drive.  The Lord is Creator of such majesty!

I am going to start another blog for this vacation.  I do not promise to post anything too exciting.  This trip is not like some of our others where we go somewhere for awhile and then go see some interesting sights afterward.  This is pretty much going to be a go somewhere, do a bit of stuff, and then drive home (albeit via a different route) trip.

We are driving down to Escondido, CA.  We have been there before and seen most of the tourist sights in the immediate area.  We may look up some more and we will definitely be doing some geo-caching as we had not taken up that hobby when were there previously.  We will be taking five days to drive down.  There are people that do this trip in three days – some people even do it in two! – but not us.  We like to leave about 10-10:30 and be in our hotel about 5-5:30.  And we do not drive the interstate.

Our stay at the Lawrence Welk Resort in Escondido will last four weeks and then we will be driving homeward; via the Pacific coast route.  We have some friends from the 2009 World Cruise that we plan to visit (2 couples in the LA area and one couple that lives NE of San Francisco), as well as some American cousins on the return trip.

We left the house at 10:03 this morning in good weather and driving conditions and were blessed with bare and dry roads all the way to Ephrata, Washinton where we are spending the night.

Lake Kalamalka, between Vernon and Kelowna, was frozen over and tendrils of fog were rising off the lake.  It looked pretty cool.   The city of Kelowna, BC is pretty in every season.We only stopped to find three geo-caches; two in BC and one in Washington.  Other than that I was reading my book and taking the occasional photo out the window.

When I went through my pics for the day they almost seem to be all the same, but through the viewfinder, at the time, the cloud formations or the light in the sky or the colour of the water was photo-worthy.  The ones in this post are as exciting as it gets for today.

We stopped to look for a geo-cache at the view point at Chief Joseph Dam, but I guess it is not an all-weather cache as the compass said ground zero was under a big pile of snow.                       The view was nice though.

 The sun was setting as we neared Ephrata and the light made a bright slice separating snow-covered ground from cloud-filled sky.  A nice end to a nice day.