Today dawned bright and clear, just like yesterday. Just like a lot of days, I imagine. Yesterday we went south, to Furnace Creek and beyond. Today we would go north.
Off we went.
The two things to see in the north are Death Valley Scotty's Castle and Ubehebe Crater.
The first thing you learn about Death Valley Scotty's Castle is that is was actually Albert Johnson's vacation place and that it was actually called "Death Valley Ranch". Actually, now that I think about it, the best part of visiting Scotty's Castle is the stories. Albert was a mining engineer and insurance executive and very rich. He was also crippled and unable to father children after a train crash which killed his father. Scotty was a con man and fabulous story teller. He conned Albert out of a lot of money before they became friends. Bessie, Albert's wife, was in the first undergraduate class at Stanford, and a very conservative Christian. Eventually she would, while dressed in flowing white and red robes and wearing a tiara, preach two hour sermons to the staff in Death Valley. She also hired a former boyfriend to oversee the construction at the ranch. He, of course, spent a lot of time there and eventually got divorced. There's a lot more.
There are both an underground and above ground tour. We did both. Here's our guide for the underground tour.
Underground means just that. Leading off from the basement of the main house is a series of poured concrete tunnels.
They allowed staff to go from place to place and also provided a conduit for water pipes. There is a 200 gallon per minute spring above the house. That water flow, along with turbines to harness its power, ran everything in the buildings including the electric generator for the electric lights.
This area was a viewing room with windows that would have looked out into the pool, had the pool ever been completed. But that's another story.
The pool never was completed due to a combination of the depression and the fact that the Johnson's didn't really have title to the land on which their home was built. But Albert had all the tile. Thousands of pieces of tile of all sorts. It's all in those tunnels, and since the whole place is now under the auspices of the Park Service, that's where it's going to stay.
I mentioned the buildings were electrified. Turns out power surges were a problem, so the electricity was all pumped into a massive bank of huge storage batteries before going to the house. The batteries are still good today. Or so they say.
After the underground tour came the above ground tour. Here's the main house.
Here are some exterior details.
You see, it really was called Death Valley Ranch. But Albert let Scotty pretend it was his castle.
A few interior shots.
The tour concluded with the music room with its chandeliers and ornate ceiling.
There was a grand piano.
And, although this photo doesn't exactly show it (nor could we really see it, but we heard it), a pipe organ. A player pipe organ. It's in its own separate room behind the louvers to the left.
You see us, in the photo above, exiting through a turret with its spiral, iron staircase upon which we were not allowed to go.
From there we exited into the desert sun and the brilliant greenery that said water was here. In all Death Valley, this is the only place with trees.
Before heading for home we stopped at Ubehebe crater, the result of an explosion of superheated steam a very long time ago. It appears out of nowhere.
There was a trail to the bottom, but even if we had been inclined to take it, and I'm not sure we would have been, the wind was blowing so very strongly one could literally barely stand. Approaching the edge of the crater was scary. This raven was flying vigorously along, but going nowhere.
We headed back so as to get to the sand dunes around sun down.
It's hard to convey the size and area of the dunes. There's much more to them than appears from the road. And some of them are over a hundred feet high.
We trudged up dune and down as far as we could then sat down on the crest of one of them to await the sunset.
Others were there, but not many.
The wind was still blowing, sometimes very hard. We had sand in our eyes, hair, and mouths. I was worried about my camera, but it seems ok. There was sand in our shoes and pockets, and in my camera bag.
As the sun went down, the light changed. We watched the shadows advance.
It was lovely.
And then it was night.
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