Sprinkles dampened Stovepipe Wells last night. We smelled green freshness this morning, and the roads to Furnace Creek glistened with patches of wet. "Maybe .o1 or .02 inches," guessed Andy, "just enough to keep the dust down on the gravel roads."
Time wise, today marks the halfway point in our trip. Our treat at 9:30 a.m.? A coyote out for breakfast, jogging right past Little Right on the road.
By 10 a.m. in Twenty-Mule Team Canyon, clouds moved in, a white cumulus cotton ball blanket underlined in grey. Pyramids of packed yellow dirt stretched gigantic Sphinx claws into the road. Around blind hairpin bends, up and down 150 feet, we guided Little Red, maneuvering slowly, avoiding soft edges, stopping on the one-way loop to climb mounds and take pictures.
"You should see from up here," called out Andy from the top. "All 360 degrees. It's all lava. That's why this peak is so high."
I climbed part way, dirt crumbling under each step. Dry clods rolled down each side. "I'm happy here," I told him.
"The rain dampened the ground just enough to settle the dust but not make it slippery," he promised.
I met him on the lower mud hilltop.
Mount Charleston peak, rimmed in white, stood out behind the Clarks as we drove toward Ash Meadows. "There's snow up there," I pointed out.
"Yup," he answered. "Recently a bristlecone pine there was identified as older than any found in the White Mountains. They were the oldest living things on earth. This one is more than 4,000 years old, and they are not telling anyone where it is," said Andy.
"Sounds like a good move, after all the senseless damage we saw in Las Vegas and San Francisco," I said.
We entered Nevada's Ash Meadows Wildlife Refuge, established in 1984. There Devil's Hole protects one of the most endangered species on earth, the Devil's Hole pupfish. In the winter fewer than 200 swim in the water of a series of underground caves, exposed only at Devil's Hole. "The government did a good job here," said Andy. Barbed wire, razor wire, sensors in the water and solar panels all protect habitat of this 2.7 centimeter-size fish that lives in one small hole in the whole world.
Not far away at King's Pool, another subspecies of endangered pupfish, the Ash Meadow Amargosa pupfish, blue males and green females, darted in and out among rocks and green algae and zipped away from a four-inch crayfish. A side-blotched lizard poked its head out from under the concrete sign post. I snapped a picture. Here native Americans ground mesquite in pit holes. In recent years farmers planted cotton and alfalfa, destroying the natural habitat, and cattle, horses and donkeys ate the native ash trees.
Now Ash Meadows, with its interpretive boardwalk and drip-irrigated landscape, recaptures the unique environment, identified by the 154-nation Ramsar Convention as one of the most special wetlands in the world.
"I'm going back through Twenty-Mule Team Canyon to check out the afternoon shadows," said Andy, turning left onto the dirt road. "That camper had better not try this road."
"It looks like mounds of chocolate." Andy described the mud hills as we headed back to Stovepipe Wells for the evening.
Not far away at King's Pool, another subspecies of endangered pupfish, the Ash Meadow Amargosa pupfish, blue males and green females, darted in and out among rocks and green algae and zipped away from a four-inch crayfish. A side-blotched lizard poked its head out from under the concrete sign post. I snapped a picture. Here native Americans ground mesquite in pit holes. In recent years farmers planted cotton and alfalfa, destroying the natural habitat, and cattle, horses and donkeys ate the native ash trees.
Now Ash Meadows, with its interpretive boardwalk and drip-irrigated landscape, recaptures the unique environment, identified by the 154-nation Ramsar Convention as one of the most special wetlands in the world.
The boardwalk at Crystal Reservoir wound among leafless screwbean mesquite trees; the beans were used by ancient Anasazi and later Paiutes to grind into bread flour.
At Crystal Spring we read that the underground water pulsing to the surface at 2,400 gallons per minute from deep in the earth seeped through the Nevada Mountains for at least 1,000 years. It emerges at 87 degrees, which explains why unique animals and plants call it home. Pupfish have adapted to survive in an inch or less of water as warm as 90 degrees.
"I'm going back through Twenty-Mule Team Canyon to check out the afternoon shadows," said Andy, turning left onto the dirt road. "That camper had better not try this road."
I agreed. The turns and drops, narrow and precarious, would not accommodate such a vehicle. Little Red handled it just fine.
Zabriskie Point, named for the owner of the borax company, offered vistas of Twenty-Mule Team Canyon behind us and the salt flats on the Death Valley floor ahead. Zabriskie's championing of tourism when the borax company declined and his construction of Furnace Creek Inn promoted Death Valley and prompted its preservation by the government. "Cheers for him!" I told Andy, as we watched the sun sink behind the badlands peaks.
Zabriskie Point, named for the owner of the borax company, offered vistas of Twenty-Mule Team Canyon behind us and the salt flats on the Death Valley floor ahead. Zabriskie's championing of tourism when the borax company declined and his construction of Furnace Creek Inn promoted Death Valley and prompted its preservation by the government. "Cheers for him!" I told Andy, as we watched the sun sink behind the badlands peaks.
"It looks like mounds of chocolate." Andy described the mud hills as we headed back to Stovepipe Wells for the evening.
"First, I thought a super mole dug super mole trenches. Now it's a moonscape," I said, as we rounded a bend on Route #190.
"No, I still see chocolate with nuts," he insisted, "and that brilliant setting sun is melting it even more."
"Sweet," I told him.
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