Our second day of touring Death Valley started early as usual. We needed to gas up first thing since we would be driving A LOT!
This was the gas station that we filled up at - Area 51 Alien Center :P I didn't snap a picture of it but there was a legit brothel attached to this place. Very odd....but the workers inside were nice.
Our first adventure of the day was Titus Canyon within the park. It was VERY rough and bumpy dirt road but extremely fun to drive on! This picture gives you an idea of how long our drive was...and this was only a small portion of it!
View of that same road looking back from where we just drove from!
Along the way we made a stop and found another mine - they are literally everywhere!
The ghost town of Leadfield was also along the drive. You can read the sign for yourself about the history of the place :P
We had to stop so Ramin could take a picture of the crazy cactus growing out of the side of the rock face. He was fascinated with this thing!
We decided we needed to document some pictures of us driving through the canyon with our truck. Our truck was an integral part of our trip because without it, we literally could not have gone to the places we did. It did such a great job and we were so thankful we didn't get any flat tires along the way (although we were prepared if we did).
After we were done with Titus Canyon we headed Soutwest through the park and made our way past the sand dunes on our way through Stovepipe Wells (a little resort area within the park). These dunes were cool but they were crowded and we've seen sand before of course so we didn't stay long.
The next stop was Mosaic Canyon near Stovepipe Wells. They call it Mosaic Canyon because of all the cool rock swirls everywhere. Here I am sitting in a little seat...this canyon was carved out by water of course. It looks like a luge course or something
Ramin hiked up higher than me at this point.
We hiked the trail farther than most people did and climbed along this ridge. When we realized it wouldn't really lead us anywhere we turned around.
After Mosaic Canyon we traveled west a bit more to Panamint Springs (on the very very edge of the park) and had lunch and rested. After lunch we made our way to another trailhead and took a very peaceful hike to Darwin Falls. Who knew such a lovely place would be in Death Valley! It was one of the prettiest water falls I've been too. Another couple arrived at the falls a bit after we did and took our picture for us.
After that hike we headed outside of the park to look for a ghost town called Ballarat...we took the road to find it because it was a shortcut to the rest of the places we wanted to see that day.
Up Rose Canyon we found the charcoal kilns. You'd think these things were really old and built by Native Americans, but they weren't. They were actually built by Chinese workers during the 1920s to help with the processing of mining ore (I don't remember the exact details). They were still cool to stop and visit though!
The final stop of the night was a place called Eureka Mine. This was probably one of the largest mining operations in Death Valley and so it had a LOT of leftover structures. Of course we tried to find a way to actually get in, but of course, the main entrance was blocked. Lots of random stuff here.
I liked this car cause it had tons of bullet holes in it. :-P
Blocked mine entrance
Largest structure at the mine
The mine was essentially located within a large mountain. We hiked up the mountain because it had mining stuff all up throughout it. We took a picture of the truck all the way down there! It goes to show you how remote everything is in Death Valley. I don't recall seeing anyone on the road during this portion of our trip. It was dusk by this time of the day.
Ramin found this cyanide barrel...obviously part of the mining operation.
After this was headed back to the hotel after eating dinner.
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