Re: birds
Posted: 2018/01/17 17:14:42 UTC
Day 01 - 2017/12/28
Flew out of BWI to Vegas/LAS about three quarters of an hour behind the 2017/12/28 11:00 schedule just after the beginning of the Eastern arctic blast stuff which would be making major news for the duration of the trip plus a some. A bit of ice on Lake Erie and everything on the continent I saw as clouds permitted until about Utah had substantial white coating.
Pilot made up lost time fairly well, picked up a Ford Fusion (hybrid) from Dollar (and had a little fun figuring out how it worked), headed for the Longstreet Hotel and Casino (about ten feet over into the casino side of the Nevada/California line) by way of Pahrump, where the light was fading fast and we stopped for dinner.
Day 02 - 2017/12/29
Rolled in the morning for Death Valley National Park and did Dante's View, a bit under 5500 feet and overlooking Badwater Basin - 282 feet below sea level. Huge white salt flat area, really spectacular. And to the WNW through a dip in the Panamint Range (on the other side of the Valley) I saw a distant snow covered range which I'm now fairly sure was topped by Mount Whitney - 14495 feet. So the highest point in the Lower 48 and the lowest point in North America in pretty much the same direction from a single viewpoint. Pretty cool. (And Telescope Peak, 11043, highest in the Panamints and Park, directly across.)
Note: Just found out that Badwater Basin is NOT the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere as I'd believed at the time and as was believed by everybody for a long time. Laguna del Carbón in Argentina is at -344 and also gets to claim the Southern Hemisphere.
Critters... White-Tailed Antelope Squirrels, my best guess, and a Rock Wren.
Down to do the Twenty Mule Team Road; Zabriskie Point; Furnace Creek - oasis, Visitor Center, birds, lunch.
Then down the Valley to Devil's Golf Course and beyond to Badwater Basin, the low point. The latter was something of a mob scene but not unpleasantly so, temperature was comfortable. Dipped a finger in the bad water of the Badwater Spring and took a taste. Wasn't all that bad. (And I never had any signs of being worse for the wear.) The impression I'd gotten from Google Earth was that there was a very gradual grade to the west down to -282 but... five miles out and the same back for bragging rights? Settled for several hundred yards out, opened up my stool, recorded the point on the flat-on-the-surface GPS - 36°13'51.1" N 116°46'24.7" W (and the altitude reading at that point, for whatever it was worth, was -287). But playing again with Google Earth I'm getting -282. So I'll happily go with that.
On the walk back I overheard someone referring to the see level mark white-painted up on the steep valley wall above the stop area and took a look. Bit of a mind-blow too see how far it would be to the surface if one had an ocean to deal with.
Back north for a spin around Artists Drive and to CA-190 and north around the Panamint Range. The Mesquite Dunes to the north a bit before Stovepipe Wells had me majorly drooling. Then back SSW to and then across the Panamint Valley to and a bit beyond Panamint Springs.
Next target was a night's lodging somewhere between Death Valley and the next base of operations - the El Segundo DoubleTree (just south of LAX). (There we'd be holed up for three nights for all the Rose Parade centered package stuff that the travel outfit had put together.) Ridgecrest looked like the best bet.
I was navigating using my Garmin 3590 and Waze on the iPhone. And the latter is little better than inert in the absence of cellular coverage - which was often the case in that neck of the country and was at the time. And I didn't have a great map of the relevant geography in my head. And when I punched in Ridgecrest I got a route which continued over the mountain jumble west of the Panamint Valley to the Owens, south out of that valley to the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station area, then back east a bit to goal. Seemed counterintuitive when considering the Panamint Valley but when I pulled over and tried all Calculation Modes - Faster Time, Shorter Distance, Less Fuel - I got the same solution.
There's a Father Crowley Point overlook pull-off on the north side of CA-190 at about 4250 feet and I took it - with the day's light just about done. Parked and switched off the nav.
Back in the car, fired up the Garmin, told it Ridgecrest, it told me to turn LEFT. Back east to the Panamint Valley for a 79 mile trip to Ridgecrest. Continuing on the previous route would've taken another 94. So I turned left and backtracked eleven miles and descended about 2670 feet to the junction of CA-190 and Panamint Valley Road.
Felt bad about having burned and pretty much wasted all that altitude climbing fuel and couldn't understand how and why Garmin had screwed me over but I think I figured it out as the drive progressed. Garmin had figured out which way I'd been headed and was assuming there was no option for turning the car around before turning the car around would've been a major stupid setback. And it recognized the Father Crowley Point pull-off / parking area but not as an option for reversing course. Fairly expensive lesson in outsmarting the gadget.
Made it to the Ridgecrest Best Western otherwise uneventfully enough and survived Trip Night 02.
Flew out of BWI to Vegas/LAS about three quarters of an hour behind the 2017/12/28 11:00 schedule just after the beginning of the Eastern arctic blast stuff which would be making major news for the duration of the trip plus a some. A bit of ice on Lake Erie and everything on the continent I saw as clouds permitted until about Utah had substantial white coating.
Pilot made up lost time fairly well, picked up a Ford Fusion (hybrid) from Dollar (and had a little fun figuring out how it worked), headed for the Longstreet Hotel and Casino (about ten feet over into the casino side of the Nevada/California line) by way of Pahrump, where the light was fading fast and we stopped for dinner.
Day 02 - 2017/12/29
Rolled in the morning for Death Valley National Park and did Dante's View, a bit under 5500 feet and overlooking Badwater Basin - 282 feet below sea level. Huge white salt flat area, really spectacular. And to the WNW through a dip in the Panamint Range (on the other side of the Valley) I saw a distant snow covered range which I'm now fairly sure was topped by Mount Whitney - 14495 feet. So the highest point in the Lower 48 and the lowest point in North America in pretty much the same direction from a single viewpoint. Pretty cool. (And Telescope Peak, 11043, highest in the Panamints and Park, directly across.)
Note: Just found out that Badwater Basin is NOT the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere as I'd believed at the time and as was believed by everybody for a long time. Laguna del Carbón in Argentina is at -344 and also gets to claim the Southern Hemisphere.
Critters... White-Tailed Antelope Squirrels, my best guess, and a Rock Wren.
Down to do the Twenty Mule Team Road; Zabriskie Point; Furnace Creek - oasis, Visitor Center, birds, lunch.
Then down the Valley to Devil's Golf Course and beyond to Badwater Basin, the low point. The latter was something of a mob scene but not unpleasantly so, temperature was comfortable. Dipped a finger in the bad water of the Badwater Spring and took a taste. Wasn't all that bad. (And I never had any signs of being worse for the wear.) The impression I'd gotten from Google Earth was that there was a very gradual grade to the west down to -282 but... five miles out and the same back for bragging rights? Settled for several hundred yards out, opened up my stool, recorded the point on the flat-on-the-surface GPS - 36°13'51.1" N 116°46'24.7" W (and the altitude reading at that point, for whatever it was worth, was -287). But playing again with Google Earth I'm getting -282. So I'll happily go with that.
On the walk back I overheard someone referring to the see level mark white-painted up on the steep valley wall above the stop area and took a look. Bit of a mind-blow too see how far it would be to the surface if one had an ocean to deal with.
Back north for a spin around Artists Drive and to CA-190 and north around the Panamint Range. The Mesquite Dunes to the north a bit before Stovepipe Wells had me majorly drooling. Then back SSW to and then across the Panamint Valley to and a bit beyond Panamint Springs.
Next target was a night's lodging somewhere between Death Valley and the next base of operations - the El Segundo DoubleTree (just south of LAX). (There we'd be holed up for three nights for all the Rose Parade centered package stuff that the travel outfit had put together.) Ridgecrest looked like the best bet.
I was navigating using my Garmin 3590 and Waze on the iPhone. And the latter is little better than inert in the absence of cellular coverage - which was often the case in that neck of the country and was at the time. And I didn't have a great map of the relevant geography in my head. And when I punched in Ridgecrest I got a route which continued over the mountain jumble west of the Panamint Valley to the Owens, south out of that valley to the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station area, then back east a bit to goal. Seemed counterintuitive when considering the Panamint Valley but when I pulled over and tried all Calculation Modes - Faster Time, Shorter Distance, Less Fuel - I got the same solution.
There's a Father Crowley Point overlook pull-off on the north side of CA-190 at about 4250 feet and I took it - with the day's light just about done. Parked and switched off the nav.
Back in the car, fired up the Garmin, told it Ridgecrest, it told me to turn LEFT. Back east to the Panamint Valley for a 79 mile trip to Ridgecrest. Continuing on the previous route would've taken another 94. So I turned left and backtracked eleven miles and descended about 2670 feet to the junction of CA-190 and Panamint Valley Road.
Felt bad about having burned and pretty much wasted all that altitude climbing fuel and couldn't understand how and why Garmin had screwed me over but I think I figured it out as the drive progressed. Garmin had figured out which way I'd been headed and was assuming there was no option for turning the car around before turning the car around would've been a major stupid setback. And it recognized the Father Crowley Point pull-off / parking area but not as an option for reversing course. Fairly expensive lesson in outsmarting the gadget.
Made it to the Ridgecrest Best Western otherwise uneventfully enough and survived Trip Night 02.