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| Moving-on day and a journey of 60 miles from Panamint to Furnace Creek on the east side of Death Valley.....part of journey is driving over the Panamint Mountain Range, elevation 4956 ft.... |
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| A slightly tense drive as we have 17 miles of downhill and our truck's brakes overheat after the first 1000 ft....only another 4000 ft to go !!......Yorkieman did a good job with the manual gears and only small amounts of braking...no doubt the high temperature had a bearing on this too.....we used some of the regular pull-outs to stop and let the brakes cool and slowly made our way down..... |
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| Dark rain clouds over the Eastern Sierras and seemed to be heading our way but by midday the sky was clear once again ... |
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| We made it !!! We are so pleased to see this sign :) |
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| From here it's plane sailing to Furnace Creek Ranch and our stay for the next 4 nights......Yorkieman is looking forward to his cold beer just like in Ice Cold In Alex !!! However today is one of those days that we all get occasionally and the beer has to wait..... cutting a very long story short after doing an excellent job of reversing into our very tight and small back-in site we discover we have a big problem as the sewer drain is 3 feet into the site behind us and our pipe doesn't reach even with our extra extension piece, crazy !!....Management of the resort don't give a fig, it's a take it or leave it we're full . The RV part of the resort is very low priority and sadly untidy and unkempt....probably the worst campsite we have ever stayed in.....a difficult evening of what shall we do but we dust ourselves down and pick ourselves up and re-hitch the next morning and manoeuvre the rig back against their fence and manage to hook up and set up a camp of sorts, at the end of the day we are here to see the sights..... |
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| We are now in sightseeing mode and first stop is 14 miles back along the main highway to Salt Creek....this is an easy half mile boardwalk trail along side of a small stream....we are really lucky to see the main attraction these little Pupfish who manage to survive despite the stream evaporating during the summer months..... |
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| Part of the stream and boardwalk... |
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| We now head back towards Furnace Creek and the site of the old Harmony Borax Mine Works.... This is one of the 20 mules team wagons, a feature of this particular mine....the borax ore was processed here, and then loaded onto the wagons and hauled 165 miles across the desert to the railroad town of Mojave.....it took about 30 days for the round trip..... |
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| This is part of the amazing salt flats at Harmony, it looks like snow but is very hard crystals.... |
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| A view from Harmony Mine back across the salt flats..... |
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| Furnace Creek Golf Course, the lowest golf course in the world at 214 ft below sea level.... |
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| A glimpse of the colourful rocks taken from the resort entrance.... |
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| Well preserved old mining equipment at the Harmony Borax Museum here at the Ranch.... |
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| Just for me... a train :) |
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| Colourful rock formations from the setting sun at Zabriskie Point a popular sunset viewing spot... |
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| It's a steep climb up an asphalt path to Zabriskie Point but the view is well worth the climb.....we shall return here another day for non sunset photos... Well we had a shaky start to our stay at Furnace Creek but settled now for another 2 days of seeing this stunning area....BTW we did also contact On Star the on board diagnostic system to check our brakes and all OK...... |
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