Death Valley Off-Road Adventures

Of course not. No one is guaranteed tomorrow but many have gone before us. I put myself in the "grateful for what I have" class.

 

I’ll drink to that.

 

I'm not quite there yet but I'll certainly take the pass when I qualify. At least there's some benefits to getting old. Stay young at heart and take care of yourself and you'll have many years to enjoy it.

 

It wasn't, I have earned the geezer pass, I will gladly accept it. I have gotten an annual pass every year since I can remember, this will be nice.

 

Unfortunately Father Time is a humorless c-sucker, but I get your point.

 

How in the world did a koi pond end up out there? Surely it can't survive the summer?

 

The koi pond has been there decades if not a hundred years being fed by a natural spring. Wish I could say the location is a closely guarded secret but for better or worse, a quick Google search will show multiple videos about the place.

 

Any spots to recommend? I want to plan to take my son to Death Valley so we can use his telescope to see with minimal light pollution. I don’t do any off roading.

 

There is a spot in Panamint valley that they hold the dark sky festival every year. It’s on a well maintained dirt road north from Ballarat. Location info is in this link. https://www.easternsierraobservatory.com/california-dark-sky-festival

 

Those days are fleeting faster than you may realize. Having free access based on ones service is a good thing.

 

You need to go on a new moon phase. I did last year and you could see a lot with your naked eyes. It's really amazing. You can see the milky way with your naked eyes. We saw so many shooting stars. We camped at barker ranch which is easily accessible by most vehicles.

 

I found it a few years back without having heard of it before (though I did seek out the general location based on published info from an old-fashioned book) and was pleasantly surprised when I saw it … that’s the joy of exploring without knowing what you’ll find.

 

The Dark Sky Festival would be worth attending or even finding a local Star Party. If your son is interested in Astronomy, This guy does a lot of backyard astronomy. He also explains the Bortle Scale for help understanding sky brightness.

And here's a link to a light pollution map to help you find dark skies.

 

I was out in the desert not too far from DV this weekend with a bunch of guys from church (mens retreat). Made it to Trona Pinnacles. We were camped just S of Red Mtn and Ridgecrest.
You can just barely see telescope peak in the center of the first picture if you zoom (approx 50mi away) Also other interesting things, handmade wood burning stove on the right that are donated to our friends in Uganda (we bring over and ship the raw materials). The best chicken and potatoes I've ever had. *Cell phone pics are the best I have now.

 

Ugh don’t remind me. I feel old, and by your standards I am not.

And touché. Salute to all who have served. They earned their pass.

 

Which is the whole point of exploring things. Out of all the trails I've done on the East Side, which is most of them, I've never once gone with the intention of going somewhere. The intent is always to explore. To point my rig towards something and go check it out. No play by play bullshit for me. That's hard to do with Twatter and the Gram telling you all you need to know. Hence the reason I have zero social media other then websites.

There's nothing wrong with wanting the play by play I'm just not that type. I'll post trip reports but I hardly ever read them. Same goes for 99% of the hard wheeling trails I've done. The only info I look for is where is the start and end of the trail. The rest I'll figure out just fine. I've got buddies that watch Youtube videos of trails they haven't done. By the time they actual get tires on rocks they know every fucking obstacle and bypass on the trail. That's just not fun to me and not how I wheel.

There's a barely legible 25 year old sticker on my water bottle. It says: "Not all who wander are lost." Sums me up perfectly. lol

 

To say Barker is easily accessible by most vehicles isn't true. Coming from the west there's Golar Wash and from the east there's Mengel Pass. They also stated they don't drive off road.

 

True...definitely don't come from the Mengal Pass side. You need high clearance to make it through. But the Ballarat side is not hard and I have seen Subarus and other SUVs make it without issues. But of course, the terrain is subject to change depending on the rainy season.

 

Death Valley never disappoints! Another fun night of photography, this might be my favorite shot yet...



Early into the above set-up, I noticed one of the stars over my shoulder was moving. Yep--ISS inbound!



I'd call this a candid shot, at least to the degree possible with 30-second exposures. ISS dove into the darkness of Earth's shadow during the dark-noise integration period, so that was my one and only shot. A nice surprise for an already amazing day. And the rest of the night went pretty damn well too.

 

Sadly, we won't be alive for interstellar travel.