A sad piece of history

In 1942, over 100,000 Japanese immigrants and US citizens of Japanese descent were ordered to 10 interment camps, where most of them would stay for the duration of World War II. One of the first and largest of these camps, Manzanar, was located just north of Lone Pine.  Over 10,000 people were herded here and during their imprisonment, they built a community as best they could.  Initially housed in hastily-assembled barracks of wood and tar paper, the people built gardens, grew vegetables, made tofu and soy sauce by the barrel full, built beautiful furniture from fruit crates--essentially did what you would expect the Japanese people to do when forced to fend for themselves. We visited the Manzanar site, now a national historic landmark, and listened to the dozens of personal histories and accounts recorded over the last several years. This was a very moving and unique experience.

Not called a concentration camp, the barbed wire and guard towers must have made Manzanar feel like one.

A very sad time in our history.

The buildings having been sold for surplus during the housing shortage after WWII, nothing much remains but the signs showing the location of the hundreds of barracks, each of which housed 24 people in three 20 x 20 rooms.

A sad and ironic story.

Remains of a baseball field, popular with the residents.

"Pleasure Park"

Remnants of the Japanese garden created by the inmates, over 400 of which were landscape gardeners by trade.

Monument at the small cemetery

God's country

The views of the sky and mountains from the Alabama Hills has been an ever-changing display of amazitude.  We have seen sunsets, cloud patterns and lighting on the mountains that cannot be described!

 

  

Alabama Hills

If you have ever seen a western movie from the 40's, 50's or 60's, then you've seen the Alabama Hills.  This area has been a favorite of Hollywood since the 20's, when Hopalong Cassidy rode the dusty trails on his trusty horse. Over 400 movies and countless TV shows and  commercials have been filmed here because of the fantastic shapes of the rocks and the scenic backdrop of the Sierra Nevada mountains.  From Gunga Din and How the West Was Won to the Lone Ranger tv series and more recently Django Unchained and Iron Man, so many films used this unique place to represent the West.

This is BLM land (Bureau of Land Management) and they allow what is called "dispersed camping" here.  This means you can find a spot you like and drop anchor for up to 14 days for free.  We took advantage of this and found ourselves a place in paradise for five nights.  This is truly one of the most magnificent places we have ever had the privilege to camp.

 

The rocks here are amazing.  They are about the same age as the nearby Sierras, but are composed of sedimentary rock instead of the granite of the Sierras. They were subject to chemical erosion that carved them into the rounded and cracked forms we see today.  Climbing around on the boulders is so much fun.

 

Ubehebe Crater

About 2,000 years ago, some hot magma rising from beneath the surface of the earth met some groundwater and exploded, sending rock and debris flying for miles and creating a 500-foot-deep crater in what is now the northern section of Death Valley National Park.  We hiked around the crater and got some great views of this very recent geologic formation.  Some people hiked the steep trail to the bottom.

If you look closely, you can see a couple hikers on their way to the floor of the crater

Little Ubehebe Crater nearby

The start of the road to the Racetrack dry lake, 23 grueling miles away

A unique Death Valley camping experience

For our last few nights in Death Valley, we decided to leave the parking lots of Furnace Creek and Stovepipe Wells and go to one of the more remote campgrounds in the northern end of the park--about an hour's drive.  Mesquite Springs is a very primitive campground with no development, no stores, nothing...except some of the darkest skies in the country, and it will be a new moon (i.e. NO moon) when we are there.  After we set up, we notice that our neighbors are amateur astronomers and have their telescopes set up to observe the skies.  We got to look through the 16-inch reflector that Jim brought and saw some amazing views of star clusters, nebulae, Jupiter and Mars.  I woke up around 4 AM the next night and got to use our binoculars on the summer constellations that contain the best deep sky objects around the center of our milky way galaxy.  It was fantastic!

Our campsite at Mesquite Spring overlooking a wash

A view of our campground from the bluff behind us.  If you look real close at the center of the photo, you can see our trailer with it's dark rear window. This place was truly in the middle of nowhere.

Golden Canyon and the Red Cathedral hike

Another highlight on our visit to Death Valley was the hike up Golden Canyon to the Red Cathedral (don't you just love the names they give these places?).  This was a vigorous 4-mile loop with a lot of climbing, but the 70-degree weather made it very pleasant.

Approaching the Red Cathedral

End of the trail

Looking back out of the canyon

Red Pass and Titus Canyon

This all-day outing was one of our favorite parts of our stay in Death Valley.  You can drive out of the park to the east into Nevada, then turn west on a one-way dirt road that travels 26 miles over the Red Pass and through Titus Canyon back into the valley below.  That 26 miles takes about 3 hours to drive!  It is a unique opportunity to travel the length of a Death Valley canyon from end to end in a car (or more likely, a 4WD truck like we did).  The road was awful, and there were times going over the pass that one wished it had guardrails!

Looking back from Red Pass at part of the road we have traveled

Typical terrain around Red Pass

Approaching Titus Canyon

After navigating the pass, the road narrows and the canyon walls start to get higher and closer.  For the last 6 miles or so, the road snakes between sheer walls of amazing color and variety.

 

Here is a short video of part of the drive through Titus Canyon:

 

Finally, the canyon opens up into the floor of Death Valley