Back in Civilization!

Hey y'all! Did you miss me? I sure missed you guys. And, man, I can barely live without internet access these days. Maybe you've noticed I'm a very curious person. I can't tell you how many unanswered questions I have roaming around my skull right now. I'm always Googling this, that, or the other thing, to find out more about it. Not possible for the past week, and so you can only imagine how many questions I've asked without being able to access an answer. You can only imagine how many times Mike and I have disagreed on some fact or story, and there's been no way to resolve our disagreement by out-Googling one another. It's a travesty of first world order, I'm telling you. Well. I think our no-internet days might be over for this trip at least. 

Kitties are fat and happy, as you might guess. They had full sun for their time in Death Valley.

We had mostly good weather, but chillier and windier than we usually find in Death Valley. We had a couple of excursions while we were there, and I'll have to do a some time traveling posts to catch up on that. For now, I'll back up to the final sunset from our last night in Death Valley.

Sunsets are big in Death Valley, and what you'll see depends on which direction you're looking.

We did some star-gazing the first night there, but the Dark Sky Festival of the past weekend was probably a bust since there were high clouds obscuring any starlight. We were glad to have gotten there early.

This morning's sunrise was beautiful as well, and this is really what we love about Death Valley. The colors and ripples in the rugged hillsides are stunningly beautiful in their simplicity.

As we drove out of the park this morning, we got a last glimpse of Corkscrew Peak. I'm going to tell you more about the landscape in my time traveling posts.

We had excursions through Titus Canyon, the associated Leadfield ghost town, and the Goldwell Open Air Museum. In our drive through Titus Canyon we learned about the volcanic origin of much of the Nevada landscape. It's hard to imagine, but this stuff is so old, the volcanoes have eroded away into oblivion. Still, knowing that, we appreciated more of what we were seeing. We were well out of the park when I snapped this image below of two cinder cones, no longer active.

We're spending the next two nights in Hawthorne, Nevada, a place we've stayed as we passed through before. We're about 225 miles north of Death Valley now. The history of Nevada is filled with boom  and bust stories, like this one we read about at a historic rest area along our way. You can read a little more about Millers, Nevada, right here. I can't begin to tell you how many stories about Death Valley and the surrounding areas began with a mineral discovery. People came full of their dreams and built them up into a good-sized towns. Then, within a few years, the railroad came through. And then, the towns went bust when the minerals ran dry or else turned out to be of lesser quality than expected. Here's the story of the historic rest area we saw today:

Looking overhead from where I read the sign, I noticed these leafless trees.

We're on our way home now. Ordinarily, we head north paralleling the Sierra Nevada range. Looking at the forecast ahead, our usual stopping places have very cold temperatures and snow in the forecast, and so we're heading home by a different route. We could see the snow-covered mountains to the west of us.

We're spending two nights in Hawthorne so that we can visit the Marietta Wild Burro Range tomorrow. I've already checked the BLM website to be certain there will be no surprises. We have about an hour's drive to reach the "range." Hopefully, we'll see some of the wild burros and wild horses that live there. We've visited Hawthorne once before in our travels. Hawthorne is notable for being home to the largest munitions depot in the world. You can see some pictures and read a little more about the area in a series of old blog posts here and right here.

Okay, so we have some catching up to do. For now, I'll stop and pick up again once I've gathered myself and my thoughts (no easy task). I'll be back here later this evening or tomorrow to tell you what we've been up to. I hope you're all well and warm. Things have fallen apart in Europe while we've been away. If you're one of my European readers, know that you've been in my thoughts, and I'm wishing for a return to peace in the region.