Quiet Day

Good morning, my friends. Except for grocery shopping, it was a stay-at-home-and-be-lazy kind of day. Before anything could happen, though, I needed to spend some time with my slow-stitching. I took the first stitches for Block #6.

From there, we headed out. Our list was relatively short, and so we were home before lunch time. After lunch and naps, I baked a Skillet Cherry Cobbler for Two. This is made from cherries from our trees, canned in simple syrup a couple of years ago.

Later in the day, we decided to make our way over to the winery associated with the RV park, Charleston Peak Winery. 

We'd heard it was possible to get a glass of wine and "snacks," but we weren't sure how that worked. And so we headed over to get the lay of the land, so to speak. They have light meals and charcuterie boards. Along the way, I took pictures of every blooming thing in their flower pots. These flowers I'm about to show you were all tiny...about the size of a nickel.

My phone tells me this is a Flaming Katy.

This is a Madagascar Periwinkle.

This one is a Texas Barometer Bush. 

And this one is an African Daisy, or Dimorphotheca ecklonis, if you want to get all technical about it.

Okay, and if you traveled with us to Alaska, you might remember the candy store we visited in Anchorage, Aurora Chocolates. They had all kinds of fancy chocolates...real works of art, inspired by the Northern Lights.

Well, the winery has some little gift boxes that reminded us of those. We might have to get some of these, but we resisted for this visit.

We wandered around a little bit, taking note of all the wine barrels in the employees-only section.

So, we've decided to head over there this evening for some wine and something else. (I'm leaning toward charcuterie, which I love.)

Back at the RV, we took advantage of our new wide-open spaces. We're at the end of a row, and the four spaces between us and the next RV are open. Feeling brave, Smitty consented to a walk lasting approximately three minutes. We saw a dog, and that put us off.

Open the door, wouldja, Sadie? I'll share my treats of valor with you.

And that was pretty much our whole afternoon. We enjoyed our cobbler with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and called it a day.

There isn't much on today's agenda. I'm thinking about doing some more sewing. Or maybe doing some more walking. I haven't made any decisions yet. We have four more days here in Pahrump before we move on to Death Valley National Park. Yesterday, I took a look at the roads between here and home. An awful lot of snow has fallen in the Eastern Sierras. We were hoping to go home that way since we're told it's a good place to see wildflowers. That's still about ten days off, however, and so maybe conditions will improve. If not, we can always head that way through Nevada. Time and weather will tell.

And speaking of weather, I hope y'all have survived the blizzard back east. Stay safe, warm, and dry, my friends.

Dublin Gulch

Good morning, my friends. For as many times as we've been to Death Valley, I didn't think there were any more surprises there for us. Yesterday, we visited Dublin Gulch, which isn't technically inside Death Valley. Instead, it's in the tiny town of Shoshone, California just to the south of the park. What an interesting place! As usual, I took too many pictures. I'll tell you what I know about it, but if you're interested, you can read more about it and see more pictures right here.

Within just a few minutes of leaving Pahrump, we left Nevada...

And crossed the state line into California.

There was almost no traffic on the road. It was a fast and straight drive to get to Shoshone.

We think the "DV" carved into the hillside here probably marks the boundary of the national park.

We parked in a large lot just to the south of this market. We went to the market when we finished our hike. I was hoping to find refrigerator magnets or a shot glass, but no dice.

Just beside the parking area is Historical Shoshone Cemetery.

I zoomed in to get a better look at what it says on the sign.

Sniff about young Ralph Modine. There's a picture of him.

Walking through, it looks like this just beyond the sign.

There were some more primitive graves to the left. Check out the sewing machine on the grave to the right.

This grave appeared to have been marked somehow with the tripod you see there. Whatever is supposed to be there is gone now.

Nevertheless, there were some coins left where the headstone might have been. I've seen this practice of leaving coins at a gravesite before, and so I inquired of The Google to see what I could learn. The Google tells me that leaving coins on military graves is a respectful tradition signaling a visitor has paid respects, with the denomination indicating their relationship to the deceased. A penny means a visit, a nickel indicates training together, a dime signifies serving together, and a quarter shows the visitor was present when the soldier died. And since there's no indication whose grave this is, I'm not sure about the coins. Maybe it's just a tradition.

Some of the graves had modern engraved headstones. This gentleman was a WWI vet.

These two...born and died the same year.

Some of the graves were marked with just a small marker like this one. I've also seen them marked with large stones. Some of the graves here had no headstones at all, but the sites were marked with stones that encircled the grave.

Okay, so having gratified my morbid fascination with old cemeteries, we walked on to where the dwellings were located. The sign has seen better days.

Here's a close-up so you can read it.

Also, we saw Joe Vollmer's grave in the cemetery, where he is buried with his wife. He outlived her by many years.

We could see the dwellings as we walked up the hill.

Here's a closer look.

This is the one with the garage.

Most were locked to prevent theft and vandalism. It was hard to see anything in the darkness inside.

My camera lens peered into the opening here.

At the far end of the bluff was this...not much room for anything. Maybe it was for storage???

There was just one outhouse...

But, take heart. It was a two-holer, for those of you who enjoy a team pee or a group poop.

We might have been able to go inside here, if we moved that board away from the door, but we did not.

Here was one we could go inside.

We walked through this tunnel.

Inside, it was barely high enough for Mike (at 6'1") to stand up straight. There were little dugout cubbies inside.

Turning directly around, there were more cubbies on the other side.

Across the way, we could see this dwelling with the fancy rock wall.

A man was there with a group who seemed to know all about this place. He told us two English brothers lived here, and they didn't believe in bathing. Their family in England sent them money to keep them from returning home. Their neighbors built their dwellings a good distance away. LOL. (I don't know if that's true, but the man told the story with conviction.) Approaching, we could see an opening to the left.

Looking inside, I had a feeling I could turn the corner at the end there and get inside the main part of the dwelling. It was a little creepier than I was willing to do, though. I took this picture and then walked on. It seemed the kind of place where you could get caught in a cave-in.

Okay, so we'd seen all we wanted to there, and we walked on up the road. 

We saw a few blooming things. This is desert chicory.

These are desert sunflowers.

They were growing in abundance.

These are creosote bushes ready to burst into bloom. If memory serves, they have a yellow flower.

This is desert holly. You can see the leaves are shaped like the holly we see at Christmas. At other times of the year, this will have red berries.

Not sure what this is. It was growing low to the ground. It might be some more of the desert poppies we've seen in other areas, but those were all growing on taller stems.

From up the hill, we had some pretty views of the colorful landscape across the valley.

In this next image, I'm hoping you can see the alluvial plain in the middle of the picture. There's a lot of green there, indicative of the amount of rain this area has seen this season.

Before heading back, we visited the market to look for a refrigerator magnet or a shot glass. I liked this sign on the side of the structure. I see a quilt here.

The highway between Pahrump and Shoshone is designated the "Charles Brown Memorial Highway," and so, of course, I inquired of The Google who he was. As it turns out, Charles "Charlie" Brown (1883–1963) was a prominent California State Senator (1938–1962), miner, and pioneering town-builder who established Shoshone as the "Gateway to Death Valley." After serving as a young sheriff in the 1900’s Greenwater Copper Boom, he partnered with his father-in-law, Ralph "Dad" Fairbanks, developing Shoshone into a key desert hub and tourist stop. (Calling it a "key desert hub" might be wishful thinking.)

When I couldn't find any refrigerator magnets or shot glasses at the market, I walked across the street to the Visitor Center and Museum. There were none there either, but I knew you'd want to see this treadle sewing machine.

Okay...time to go home to the RV. 

Heading back toward Pahrump, we had a good view of Charleston Peak. This is the mountain behind our RV.

Eventually, we left California, and returned to Nevada.

It was nice to get out and do some sight-seeing. It was sunny, but not particularly warm, which made it good hiking weather.

Today we’ll be doing some grocery shopping. We’re out of ice cream, and so you can see that it’s something of an emergency. The only thing worse than running out of ice cream is running out of cat food. Thank goodness, we have plenty of that. So…our list isn’t too long, but we’ve run out of leftovers (finally), and so I’m doing more cooking these days. When that’s finished, I’ll probably take the first stitches on Block 6 for the Snowmen & Reindeer project. I’m thinking of baking a cobbler too, which is just one more reason we need ice cream…immediately. 

Right now…pancakes. Surely pancakes will take the sting out of our impending trip to the grocery store.