panamintcity

My wife and I drove out to Death Valley on New Years day. We had planned on doing the nighttime tour of Scotty's Castle. I had checked the Park Service Morning Report and it showed the road to Scotty's was closed from the CA side.

We arrived at Panamint Springs Resort and grabbed our room and got a bite to eat. The consensus was,we would never make it to Scotty's in time via the Nevada side, so we scratched those plans.
We decided a nice nighttime drive along Indian Ranch RD through Panamint Valley to Ballarat would be a fitting way to end the evening. The road was in great shape considering the amount of rain the mountains and valley had received during the past week. I was surprised and it was remarkable to see a 50 to 75 yard stretch of the Ballarat RD between the town and Wildrose RD was under water. We made it through fine and went back to Panamint Springs for the night.

After breakfast Sunday morning we drove east on 190. We made a brief stop at Stovepipe Wells and Continued on to Furnace Creek Ranch with a stop at Harmony Borax works while in route.
After lunch and doing the tourist thing at Furnace Creek, We drove down the Valley as far as Golden Canyon and then turned around and headed back towards Panamint Valley.

We drove up Emigrant Canyon and on up Wildrose Canyon where I had hoped on showing my wife the Charcoal Kilns. We made it to within a 1/4 mile of the Kilns but the snow was just too deep for the stock 4Runner. So we turned back and headed back to Ballarat. I wanted to talk with Rocky and see all that water that was in the Valley in the daylight.

After a short visit we headed back out over the Argus Range and on to Trona for gas. We then began the long arduous task of fighting traffic along with everyone else that went out of town for New Years.

Happy Trails.