“It’s not an adventure until something goes wrong.” – Yvon Chouinard We woke up at Wildrose campground and had coffee (hot chocolate for Allison) and our traditional family camping breakfast, warm Mountain House granola with blueberries and milk. It was our last day in Death Valley and it was nice to not have as many […]

We woke up at Homestake Camp around 0700 and reluctantly dragged our sorry carcasses out of our warm sleeping bags. As usual, Allison had slept like a log all night long but Carrie and I each had to brave the freezing cold to go use the toxic outhouse in the middle of the night. Sliding […]

The western border of Death Valley National Park is not, it turns out, even in Death Valley. It’s in Panamint Valley, which is basically the next valley to the west of Death Valley. It was there that we reached the large Welcome to Death Valley monument/sign and stopped for a touristy photo op. From there […]

My plan for Death Valley, after doing my trip planning (which will be detailed later), was pretty simple. On Tuesday we’d leave home at a very reasonable hour of about 9am and make the 290-mile drive to Ridgecrest, where we’d stay in a hotel for the night. The next day we’d get up earlier and […]