Just outside of Death Valley, on the Nevada boarder, is the old town of Rhyolite. It was once a booming gold town in the early 20th century. Like most gold towns after the ore was expended so was the town. 20 years after its rise is was empty. A ghost town. Thats where we went this morning on our drive to death valley. There’s remains of a couple buildings including a bank, drug store and school. Pretty sick.
Next to the ghost town in the middle of the desert was a sculpture garden. My favorite was the naked blonde cinder block woman on here knees. WTF?! It was brutally windy and cold. The Santa Ana winds have been kicking our ass for days now. So, we didn’t spend as much time here as we would of liked. Jillian stayed in the car most of the time. As I was taking pictures I saw that the van was moving. She took it upon herself and volunteered to drive for the day. That was short lived after she backed into a couple bushes with less then 10 minutes of driving underneath her belt. In here defense it’s really hard to drive the van in reverse. You have to look at the side mirrors and side mirrors only. It takes lots of practice and not easy for “turn your head around” car drivers. Along side the sculptures was a house made of bottles. Pretty neat. There was also a couple of recent (within the past 50 years, not as old as the ghost town) vacant houses.
From here we drove in the high winds down into Death Valley, below sea level. For most of the drive we were in a dust storm. Jillian slept through it all. From there, we took the scenic route through the southern tip of Sequoia National Park but failed to see any Sequoias. What we did get to do was drive along a squiggle road that followed a rocky creek through big grassy/rocky mountains.
After 4 hours of driving we arrived at our home for the night, Bakersfield, CA. We went the closest theater and saw “Hugo” in 3D. It was a very well done. Now we are just hanging at another Walmart.
-Ricky
Next Stop: Madonna Inn