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| Sunset from the balcony of The Oasis in Furnace Creek, Death Valley National Park. |
“A man could retire right comfortable if he could find a proper deposit of borax.”---John Burk, “Death Valley Days.”
In the wake of the fun-busting Covid blight, the natives are restless. June was bustin’ out all over and so was July as wild-eyed vacationers packed up all their cares and woes and headed for the nearest beach, mountain, amusement park or kumquat festival. The marquee national parks were overwhelmed and asked barbarians at the gate to take a number. Yosemite National Park went them one better. Wisely anticipating a raid on their real estate, Yosemite insisted reservations be made several months ahead. Applicants were given a specific day to call or apply on line. The phone lines were, of course, trampled to death so it was a wait of several hours before we found out we’d made the cut. We celebrated by doing the Half Dome Highstep around the house.
We expected a long and painful line of traffic when we reached the west gate a little before noon on a Thursday. Surprise!---it was a mere 20-minute wait and we were soon wandering the winding roads of one of America’s true wonderlands. We tipped our caps as we passed Half Dome, which Bill had climbed 15 years previously, and thought about our planned hike up the Mist Trail to Vernal Falls, which is also the first phase of the Half Dome hike. In distance, the hike is moderate, but it’s a constant climb upward, often at a serious grade. And just when success seems imminent, you arrive at the 600 steps to glory. That’s right---six hundred. We passed one grade-school kid counting aloud. He was flagging at 132 so it looked like a long day for Mom and Pop. Bill was smart enough not to count.
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| Above--The view from Glacier Point, Yosemite; Bill on the rocks, Half Dome in the distance. Below--Siobhan negotiates the 600 steps of Yosemite's Mist Trail. |
The Mist Trail
Always beautiful, often tumultuous, the Merced River is no shy, retiring mountain stream. In late Spring, the melting snowfall swells the river and hikers face some challenging moments as water from the surging beast splashes far and wide, often leaving those 600 steps slippery and dangerous. Day-hikers can only wish for mere mist as they carefully negotiate the route, fumbling in their backpacks for a change of clothing.
Enormous boulders, some the size of apartment buildings, are dwarfed by the sheer faces of exfoliating granite, which rise 3000 feet from the river. The Merced, born in the High Sierra, rushes down from its source and broadens on the floor of Yosemite Valley. This is one of the few places on Earth where a complete circular rainbow can be viewed. At the top of Vernal Falls, the river traverses a shelf of granite, and hikers grateful for a brief respite often rest and sun themselves to dry off. Bill remembers that this enterprise is a mere quarter of the Half Dome conquest he achieved in 2001 and feels the physical regression time has wrought. “Siobhan,” he puffs, “we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
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| Bottom--Vernal Falls cascades along the Mist Trail. |
A River Runs Through It. Again.
Our retreat was the Yosemite View Lodge at tiny El Portal, near the southern gate of the park. The hostelry is a sprawling place consisting of half a dozen buildings, a pair of swimming pools, two restaurants and a gift store, and the joint was jumpin’. Out back just behind our balcony, the Merced rambles along, quiet and unhurried. Prices are reasonable considering where we are, but the gas is atrocious, sometimes as much as $6 a gallon.
One late afternoon, after eating at the same restaurant for three days, we decided to check out the little town of Mariposa, half-an-hour down the road. My sister, Alice (the Republican real-estate maven) owns land there for some reason. On the way, we were delayed by a pesky detour. A mammoth rockslide had completely covered a long stretch of road near Midpines and a skimpy one-lane bridge had been plunked down over the river to divert traffic. A stop light near each end of the bridge governed the vehicular swarm. Cranes on a hill overlooking the scene labored painstakingly to remove the blockage but the poor things looked like Lilliputians in Giantland, so puny was their progress. We are not educated in these matters but we couldn’t help wondering what happens if there’s another landslide. The whole thing was strangely remindful of the kiddie song, The Bear Went Over The Mountain. Ergo; “He saw another landslide, he saw another landslide, he saw another landslide, and whaddaya think he did?” Etcetera, ad infinitum. Congratulations, Alice, you now own property in rockslide country. Like Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say, it’s always something
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| Above--Bill at Olmstead Point; Below--Tenaya Lake, at 8150 feet, will perk you up. This alpine lake is located between Yosemite Valley and Tuolumne Meadows. |
Into The Valley Of Death
We’d like to tell you we motored through Death Valley National Park on one of the twenty days a year the rains came (depositing a mere 2.3 inches of water total) but the truth is the precipitation probably petered out a few miles short of the entrance. While it showered, the temperatures frolicked around in the delightful low 80s, but any hope of a continuation of such phenomena was but a desert mirage. Once inside the park, the mercury rose steadily, topping off at 118 degrees by the time we reached our Furnace Creek digs in mid-afternoon.
For those sensible people who have not partaken of Death Valley, a few facts: first, it is not a peaceful drive through flat desert full of cheery saguaro cacti and lovely sand dunes. There are hills there, big scary ones with steep grades and hairpin turns. If you don’t believe me, ask my traveling companion Siobhan when she returns from catatonia.
Next, that business about turning off your automobile air-conditioner is passe. Modern vehicle ACs can handle pretty much anything, including the boiling temps of Death Valley. There is, however, one excruciating climb of ten miles when signage pleads with you to coddle your struggling engine. You probably don’t have to, but we did.
Finally, the oases are few and far between. After you leave Lone Pine and turn east, only Panamint Springs and Stovepipe Wells offer any resemblance to relief before you reach the embracing arms of Furnace Creek. The latter offers the spectacular Oasis Resort, appearing suddenly out of nowhere as if by magic, surrounded by swaying palm trees, Hawaiian music and angels playing harps. Buford will be waiting in the parking lot, eager to open the gates and elevate your bags upstairs. You may dip in the outsized pool and have the use of your own personal golf cart to roam the acreage, visit the restaurant or even watch the runners training for the Badwater 135. Say what?
The Badwater 135
Okay, so HERE’S a good idea: take about 90 middle-aged masochists, herd them off to Badwater Basin in Death Valley in the full flush of summer and ask them to run 135 miles across the desert, often in 120-degree temperatures. Winner gets a nice belt buckle. Oh, and it costs you $989 to give it the old college try. If you’re invited.
The original concept was to run from the lowest point in the United States (Badwater at 282 feet below sea level) to the highest, the peak of Mount Whitney at 14,405 feet. As time went by, the grouchy government began requiring summit permits to climb the mountain and the course was shortened to end at Whitney Portal.
A wild and crazy guy named Al Arnold first attempted running the route before any notion of a race arose. He made it 18 miles in 1974 before severe dehydration put a stop to all the fun. After vigorous sauna training and desert acclimatization practices, Al tried it again in 1975. He made it 50 miles that time, retiring with a knee injury. Say what you will about Al, he was no quitter. In 1977, Arnold made it all the way in a mere 80 hours, then hung up his shorts and never went back again. He kept having nightmares about passing out near Stovepipe Wells and coyotes picking his bones.
In 1987, this craziness became an official, organized footrace with five deranged competitors. You could pick your own route between Badwater and Whitney Portal and the quintet attempted various shortcuts along the way. One of the competitors, Adrian Crane, even used cross-country skis to cross the salt flats at Badwater. The record time for the 135-mile course is 21 hours and 33 minutes, set by Yoshihiko Ishikawa in 2019. The average time for all runners is 40 hours. After 48 hours, a giant water truck is dispatched to hose down the laggards, who are then tossed into a dumptruck and delivered to the nearest medical facility. Did we mention it---the average age of all competitors is 49 years.
When we rolled into Furnace Creek, runners were warming up for the ordeal, jogging down the highway in pairs or small groups. They came in all shapes, sizes, sexes, ages and degrees of musculature. There was a great degree of camaraderie evident among the runners, perhaps because many of them spent time at the same trauma hospitals and asylums. A fellow named Harvey Sweetland Lewis won the race for the second time, duplicating his winning effort of 2014. Good old Sally McRae beat the other girls for her first 135 victory. Uncle Bob Becker, 76, trying to become the oldest competitor to finish the race, retired around mile 50 with “physical issues.” Surprisingly, nobody died, keeping the ultramarathon’s perfect record intact. One sour note occurred, however, when racer Randall Roffe of Micanopy, Florida was trapped in a Porta Potty at mile marker 15 and not discovered until the conclusion of the race. He was treated for moderate nasal inflammation and released.
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| Top--Bill at Badwater Basin, lowest point in the United State at 282 feet below sea level; Center--Siobhan at Zabriskie Point; Bottom, the old Harmony Borax Works at Furnace Creek. |
Exit, Stage Right
“Life is a book. Those who do not travel read only one page.”---St. Augustine
Midnight at The Oasis. Time to pack up and set a course east and south to Las Vegas. On the way is a must stop at Zabriskie Point in all its ochre-to-canary glory, then a slow passage through the very odd Nevada town of Pahrump, the Paiute name for “water rock,” so titled because of all the artesian wells in the area. So far from anywhere, Pahrump didn’t even have telephone service until the 1960s (unless you want to count that single radio transmitter located in a phone booth next to a small market) and no paved roads. The town is famous as the place where wealthy Vegas casino owner Ted Binion buried a large treasure of silver in a secret underground vault, then died under suspicious circumstances. One of the wily citizens accused of murdering Binion was apprehended while digging up the treasure.
In Las Vegas, the Mandalay Bay, right across from the airport, was home for one night. We killed a few afternoon hours shopping at the vast Caesar’s mall (net result: one fine Kemo Sabe cap), then taxied back to the MB. Our driver was the polite and professional Brook Bitosi, six months out of Ethiopia, who had followed his veterinarian brother to town. Brook arrived in a multicolored vehicle remindful of a jellybean jar and had adopted the jolly nature of his vehicle. He told us he rose at 4 a.m. and worked a minimum of 12 hours a day. We gave him a nice tip and waved farewell.
Next morning around six, we were off to McCarran International in a decidedly less spectacular vehicle. Chatting up the driver as usual, we discovered he was also from Ethiopia. Any chance he knew Brook Bitosi, after all there are only 118 million people in Ethiopia? The masked man, turned around, smiling with his big African eyes. Needless to say, it was that rascal Brook Bitosi traveling incognito in a different cab. If you’re wondering, the chances of that happening are one in 3,250, the number of taxis traveling the length and breadth of Las Vegas. There are 700,000 stories in the streets of Sin City---this has been one of them.
After a full day of flying and the usual 45-minute wait for luggage at the Orlando Airport (motto: “We aim to tease”), we made it home a little after midnight. Lila the Rottweiler briefly lifted one eyelid before plunging back to sleep and the cats merely yawned, irritated to be awakened. Thanks to all who aided and abetted, including housesitters Stuart and Mary, animal caretakers Julie and Laura and pasture mowers Gary and Sharon. We can hardly wait for next year even though we have no idea where we’re going. We’re pretty sure of one thing, though. Wherever it is, the trusty Brook Bitosi, all smiles, will be there to pick us up.
That’s all, folks….
