Note the roadmap above misses the part between Big Pine (on the left) to the White Peak (via White Mountain Rd) and then to the city of Oasis. I forgot to start the tracker at the beginning of the trip and only remembered in Oasis 🙁
So the first part of the trip was pretty nice
, through a small road full of twisties and ups and downs (first time I saw the DIP traffic sign, which means the road is just plunging down and going up again, like a mini-valley). The White Mountain Rd going to the peak was beautiful, full of mountain twisties, but the more I was climibing it (it reaches 3000m for the note), the more I was seeing some fog coming my way and when I reached the top of the road (not the peak though), I had a stressful sensation I’d rather go down pretty quickly – although slowly too – because the temperature was falling down quite fast and a light rain was starting to pour and I really didn’t want to feel how it is to drive on ice…
Back to the normal road, I continued toward I-95, crossing beautiful deserts and amazing landscapes… Due to the permanent risk of rain, I had finally packed my duffle bag in a waterproof cover. Orange or yellow, still pretty visible 🙂
It’s amazing some gravel road seem to go to the infinite (and beyond, yes Buzz…). But I didn’t really go off-road that day, plus I had absolutely no idea where that road was going, it was not on the GPS (which kind of lacks many gravel/dirt roads, this said).
The vegetation was, for the note, getting more and more simple and typical of deserts, as were the mountains.
After a quick lunch at Subway in Beatty – a mini-city with a few Casino-resorts – I headed to the entrance of the Death Valley, with the sun starting to go down and the objective to reach the Stovepipe Wells motel or campground.
Campgound was close to the sand dunes, but I’d check them the following day. Motel was fully booked, so I opted for a tent site with no wifi, no electricity, but washrooms and potable water still (in the desert, yes, impressive!). Night would be hot in my arctic-proof (-30ºC) sleeping bag…
For tomorrow, the dunes and going back to the Furnace Creek part of Death Valley, in the south.
