Okay, continuing on.
The photo above is a shack on the road from Saline Valley out toward the Sierras. Just this crazy shack still furnished and carpeted and oddly preserved and falling apart all at once.
Death Valley is full of places like that. Here’s an old mining shack off the next road I took (not technically in the park), a rocky, bumpy 4×4 route up a creek bed into the Inyo mountains. The road to this point sucked.
Then the road rolled up a sandy river bed in a ride that can be described as nothing less than four wheelin’ bliss. Hands down the most fun I had driving all week. Long, windy, sandy stretches that felt like power boating in an SUV. Awesome. Except the sage scratched the living fuck out of the sides of my rig. Dozens of scratches. Even so, it was a blast driving that stretch.
That road took me to Papoose Flat. It’s a gorgeous place with all kinds of huge strangely shaped rock formations. And that’s a view of the Sierras off the edge of the “flat”.
The pic above is the sunset view from my campsite perched in the juniper above Papoose Flat. Someone had left behind a big ol’ stack of firewood too!
So I stayed the night and drove out the next day. Check out this next pic– a cactus and the sierras in the distance! The Inyo Mountains are really pretty in spots.
So once I hit the “highway” again, my gas mileage was 68 mpg! Oh yeah, take that Prius.
Here’s a replica of a guard tower at the Manzanar prison camp on the drive down highway 395. Okay, it wasn’t technically a prison camp since the residents hadn’t been charged or convicted of crimes… but they were treated like prisoners anyway because they were of Japanese decent. But most of them were bona fide American citizens! So I’m calling it a prison camp since they were rounded up and held without being charged or convicted of any crimes. Manzanar was the largest of these forced relocation/prison camps in the US during WW II. There were 11,000 at this place at one time. And more than a 100,000 total people forced to live in similar prisons like this throughout the west.
Ironically, there’s a whole bunch of nearby military bases. Jets blast over without warning, sometimes barely a couple hundred feet over your head if you’re in a mountain pass. Their sound doesn’t quite follow them and you quickly learn if you hear a jet, look several thousand feet in front of where the sound is coming from.
I was shooting landscapes when I caught site of these jets way off in the sky. Crappy shot, I know, but at least I caught something (and at least it’s two jets). There really was NO predicting when the jets would show up and they’re too fast to capture by the time you see them unless you’re waiting, camera in hand.
So I blasted off to Lee Flat over Cerro Gordo, a really cool mountain pass with a crazy ghost town looking hotel you can book if you book in advance.
Anyway, Lee Flat has some really cool Joshua Trees.
Then off to Pantamint Springs where I saw the highest gas prices of my trip. Not bad, considering how high they have been (over $5 in that area). Lady Luck was with me too– gas prices actually DROPPED by 20 cents (!) during the week I was on the road. I ain’t complaining, but WTF?
For camping, I drove up a four wheel trail up a canyon sort of near Stovepipe Wells. It’s so beautiful at night in October. 80 degrees and breeze and amazing stars.
Stay tuned… the next installment of this journey will take you to Charlie Manson’s last hideout– and the bathroom he was caught in!
Pete Springer Photography
Posted by Pete Springer 
Posted by Pete Springer 
Posted by Pete Springer 
