Happy New Year! I know this is the time for yearly recaps and goals – and I hope to write about both! – but I need to get our Death Valley trip down before I start any of that. So let’s make this short and sweet, shall we? (UPDATE: This post is not short. Sorry!)
The Camper Van
We like the camper van! It was definitely a tight squeeze for four basically adult-sized people, but it provided everything we needed. We changed around who slept where. First the husband and I slept on the Murphy bed, but he’s tall and couldn’t stretch out his legs down there, so he ended up sleeping in the pop-up tent bed with a different kid each night. We basically each slept with each other one time, and I was the only one who slept on the Murphy bed every night.
We cooked two meals on the little stove top and did all our dishes in the sink. We also brushed our teeth and washed our faces in the sink. We never used the propane to heat the water and we never showered in the van – our campsite was part of a resort and we had access to the pool and hot showers at the pool, so we used those. The van battery charged when we drove it, which was often because Death Valley is big, so the fridge was always cold and the lights always worked.
The design of the van was really impressive. It took us basically the whole time to learn how to effectively use the storage provided, but it was clear that if we knew what were doing – and hadn’t packed too much – it would be easy to made the space work, even for four people. It also drove really well, on highway 5 and in the park. All in all, the camper van was a positive experience.
Furnace Creek
Death Valley is a big park; it’s the biggest national park in the contiguous 48 states, and bigger than the state of Connecticut. It can be hard to get from one part to another and driving time across the park is several hours. We stayed at Fiddlers Camp at The Ranch, which is part of The Oasis at Death Valley, located in Furnace Creek (basically it IS Furnace Creek). The Ranch is a large property with a main hall area, cottages, an actual US Post Office, a restaurant, an ice cream parlor, tennis/paddle ball courts and a spring-fed pool. Camping spots were only $30 a night, but we had access to the pool and showers. It was really nice to be attached to the resort area, and have access to all it had to offer, without paying more for our camping space. Having said that, the “camp ground” was just a big gravel parking lot at the edge of the property, with no hook ups and no dumping station. We had to go to the park-run camp ground next door to empty our grey and black water before we left.
We swam at the pool twice, on the first day while the sun was still out and on the last night. I doubted the “spring-fed pool” would really be warm enough to swim in at night, but it was! The nights were chilly – 50* – but the pool stayed a warm 87* and we did hang out in the water longer than I expected. The showers were always hot, even though they were getting a lot of use. Hot showers make camping a much more enjoyable experience for the 15yo, so I appreciated them very much.
Hikes / Points of Interest
We went on a long and challenging hike the first day – 7.5 miles! – and a shorter hike the second day.
The first day we drove to Zabriskie point, then hiked Red Cathedral and the Golden Canyon, before walking along the edge of the mountains a bit and then following a dry flash flood bed back to Zabriskie point.
There were many points while hiking that we noted how much it felt like we were on an alien planet. Many parts, we said, really reminded us of Tattoine, from Star Wars. Then later, at the General Store, we saw a placard that stated that George Lucas filmed many of the Tattoine scenes in Golden Canyon, right where we were hiking! It reminded us of Star Wars because it actually was from Star Wars! We were super excited about that. Now I’ve been to two sites where Star Wars movies were filmed.*
On day two we hiked the Mosaic Canyon, which was shorter (about half as long), but gained a lot of altitude. We basically hiked up the whole way in, and then back down on the way out.
On the second day, we had just enough time to visit Badwater Basin; the lowest point in North America at 230 feet below sea level.
After the long hike on the first day we went to the pool, then we met our friends for dinner at Stovepipe Wells, a small “town” (general store, gas station, restaurant, saloon, motel, and camp ground) about 30 minutes away from Furnace Creek, which our friends had been eating at the resort buffet for a couple days. The wait at the (one) restaurant was long, both to be seated and to get our food. One member of our party was really struggling with pretty much every aspect of the experience, so it was not exactly a relaxing dinner, but it was fun to see our friends during our trip, and I’m ultimately glad we did it.
The second day we got home a lot later, after dark, but we still went swimming after dinner (which we made and ate in the van)! By the time we had all showered and walked back to the van, it was pretty late. We wanted to watch an episode of Stranger Things (on the big iPad), but somehow it ran out of battery even though no one used it, so we just went to bed early. Which was good because we had to get up early to pack up and head out.
We stopped by The Artist’s Palette before leaving the park on our last morning, because we had missed it the night before. The park is definitely huge (we only saw a tiny fraction of it), but there was a lot to do within a 30 minute drive from our spot. I’m really pleased with where we stayed.
The Drives
Death Valley is about 9 hours away from San Francisco. We drove it both ways in one day. I am used to driving that long in a day, but I found both drives hard this time. I think it was because the final 2+ hours of each drive ended up being in the dark. It was dark when we got to Death Valley, and the dark in that park is VERY DARK. We seemed to be the only ones driving in, but there were lots of cars driving out and they all seemed to have their high beams on. It was making me crazy. Google also sent us a weird way into the park, and the first half from Bakersfield to the park was narrow with lots of tight turns, which was stressful and slow to drive in the van. I kept watching the arrival time get later and later, and it was making me crazy. The same thing happened on 5 heading south, there were just lots of cars and we kept having to slow down to pass the big trucks. The drive down ended up being closer 10 hours, and I was really tired by the time we got to our camp site.
The drive back was better. It was beautiful seeing the park as we drove out of it, and we avoided the slow, curvy road to get to Bakersfield. It did start raining when we hit Bakersfield, and kept raining for the rest of the drive, but the traffic never got bad on 5. The final two hours of driving at night, in the rain, totally sucked, but I wasn’t as tired as I had been on the first drive.
I think driving such a long stint in the winter, when you can’t avoid ending the drive at night, is a real issue. If we arrive somewhere at 7pm in the summer it’s still light out, but in late December it’s been dark for over 2 hours by then. The short days also made it hard to enjoy the park in the ways we wanted to. I can see why more people try to go in the fall and spring, when it’s still temperate but the days are longer.
All in all it was a good trip. The camper van was an Experience, and I’m glad we experienced it. Death Valley is a super unique place and I’m definitely glad I’ve been. I probably won’t go back there for a long while, but it’s been on my bucket list and I’m very satisfied that now I can cross it off my list of places to visit in California.
*The other place was Tikal, Guatemala, which is where other scenes from a Star Wars: A New Hope were filmed.. I actually found a photo from that trip, in 2006!
