Homestake Dry Camp Death Valley National Park Death Valley, California

We started our day early. We had a long ride planned. We headed north to an area of the national park that we had not yet seen. Because it is a long distance, we planned to make this an overnight excursion…no RV accommodations here! The forecast was for 80 degrees and sunny in the valley. Temperatures in the mountains can be as much as 20 degrees cooler.

Our first stop was at the Ubehebe Crater.

We drove 20 miles on gravel washboard road. It was slow going. If Tim tried to go faster than 10 miles an hour…the Jeep sounded like it was rattling apart. It was a glorious day! We listened to 60’s and 70’s music . We just decided to go easy and enjoy the ride!

At around 3,000 feet of elevation we started seeing Joshua trees.

It was a very pretty ride!

This is Teakettle Junction. I’m not sure why but lots have people have tied their teakettles to the sign.

Our destination today was The Racetrack. This is a large oval dry lake. It is 2.8 miles long and 1.3 miles wide. It is the largest naturally occurring flat and level surface on earth. Any rain that falls here is short lived. The lake bed dries quickly in the hot desert sun and shrinks the mud, creating a “pattern of interlocking polygons.” This feature is in a very remote location and only 4WD vehicles can access this road.

The rock formation in the foreground is known as The Grandstand.

The cool thing about this racetrack is the “sailing stones.” For many years scientists couldn’t figure out how the stones moved across the dry lake leaving tracks in the hard dry mud surface. We set out to search for the stones!

Not this rock.

We went from one rock to another walking for about a mile before we started to see the special rocks!

In 2014, scientists finally figured out the mystery of the moving rocks. Winter rains come. When 1-2 inches of water accumulates on the lake bed, it freezes and forms ice sheets. When the ice begins to break apart, the wind blows the ice sheets along, carrying the rocks along the surface of the dry lake, leaving a trail behind.

We had hoped that we might travel through Lippincott Pass. This sign was a little intimidating as was the beginning of the very rough trail! A ranger had warned us that once you get down the trail, you might not be able to get back up…even with 4WD.

We made our camp at Homestake Dry Camp. This was the site of an old mine and is an old mining camp. You can imagine old miners camping out here. We were in such a remote location and excited to stay here! We had been wanting to do an overnight like this earlier in our trip and found several places that would also have been very neat camping spots. Until now, the weather has just been too chilly!

We saw lots of dark little lizards moving like shadows among the vegetation and rock…this guy posed for a picture!

Home for the night.

Dinner was a berry spinach salad with goat cheese, grilled asparagus, and grilled shrimp.

The sun went down behind our hillside fairly early but it cast this amazing glow on the opposite mountains.

We sat by a fire, drinking hot chocolate with amaretto and watching the stars pop out! It was a terrific day!