Roger
Senior Member
- Joined
- Sep 9, 2010
- Messages
- 144
So you have probably seen my 1000 questions regarding this trip in the planning portion of the forum. I have to admit I had some (ALOT) of apprehension regarding this trip.
The plan was for a night in Big Pine, a night in Death Valley and back to Big Pine for two nights.
Death Valley was the big question.
Do these popup campers fit in the Mahogany Flat Campgrounds? Are the sites level enough? It is cool enough at night? So many questions and no one seemed to know...
Well, if you can make it up to the camp site, here is what you can expect...
On the way up we had to pass an older gentleman in a Chrysler 500 coming down. I am not sure if he made past Thorndike. The road up to the campground may not require 4x4 but it is nice to have.
Most of the campgrounds in the first half are pretty level; but you have camp near the pit toilet.
In the back half of the campground they are less "stinky", but they are also not as level. There are only about 10 to 12 campgrounds, we were lucky there were only about 4 people camping there this time of year. It was about 79-83 F at 3PM when we arrived there and it cooled off afterwards.
Since it is so dry no campfires were allowed at the time. No water unless you wanted to head back down 15 miles to the "improved" campground at wild rose canyon.
I took this photo about 20 yards from my campsite using a telephoto zoom lens at max.
the next day we headed out to see the ruins....
Before we left we talked with another FWC'er and (Tim?) about the in's and out's of camping and the various trips we liked to take.
Our first stop was Aguereberry Camp/Eureka Mine.
Not much there, but it gave me a chance to see if the hold downs were getting loose or not.
Next was the stamp mill at Skidoo, it was OK going in, but on the way out I did notice that the road had a bit of a "list" to it. It was about 800 feet from the turn around to the stamp mill.
There were a lot more dirt roads that seemed to go everywhere in Skidoo; I wish we had more time to explore, but we had heard that there was ice cream in the valley so we decided that after the Tucki Mine we would go to the valley. I was figuring that we would be in and out of Tucki by 12:30!
So the first couple of miles for Tuckie were pretty bumpy and gravely, we had to slow the most for the overhang
but we cleared it with lot of room.
I never did figure what a dry fall was but there were a couple of tight spots. Lots of overgrown brush, I was busy trying to avoid that the most.
We finally made it to Tucki mine and had lunch after visiting and signing the log, if I remember the last person to sign in was from May and we were visiting in July. We had lunch in Tucki and got out by about 1:30. It was about 90F at Tucki and 115 in the Valley an hour later.
The plan was for a night in Big Pine, a night in Death Valley and back to Big Pine for two nights.
Death Valley was the big question.
Do these popup campers fit in the Mahogany Flat Campgrounds? Are the sites level enough? It is cool enough at night? So many questions and no one seemed to know...
Well, if you can make it up to the camp site, here is what you can expect...
On the way up we had to pass an older gentleman in a Chrysler 500 coming down. I am not sure if he made past Thorndike. The road up to the campground may not require 4x4 but it is nice to have.
Most of the campgrounds in the first half are pretty level; but you have camp near the pit toilet.
In the back half of the campground they are less "stinky", but they are also not as level. There are only about 10 to 12 campgrounds, we were lucky there were only about 4 people camping there this time of year. It was about 79-83 F at 3PM when we arrived there and it cooled off afterwards. Since it is so dry no campfires were allowed at the time. No water unless you wanted to head back down 15 miles to the "improved" campground at wild rose canyon.
I took this photo about 20 yards from my campsite using a telephoto zoom lens at max.
the next day we headed out to see the ruins....
Before we left we talked with another FWC'er and (Tim?) about the in's and out's of camping and the various trips we liked to take.
Our first stop was Aguereberry Camp/Eureka Mine.
Not much there, but it gave me a chance to see if the hold downs were getting loose or not.
Next was the stamp mill at Skidoo, it was OK going in, but on the way out I did notice that the road had a bit of a "list" to it. It was about 800 feet from the turn around to the stamp mill.
There were a lot more dirt roads that seemed to go everywhere in Skidoo; I wish we had more time to explore, but we had heard that there was ice cream in the valley so we decided that after the Tucki Mine we would go to the valley. I was figuring that we would be in and out of Tucki by 12:30!
So the first couple of miles for Tuckie were pretty bumpy and gravely, we had to slow the most for the overhang
but we cleared it with lot of room.
I never did figure what a dry fall was but there were a couple of tight spots. Lots of overgrown brush, I was busy trying to avoid that the most.
We finally made it to Tucki mine and had lunch after visiting and signing the log, if I remember the last person to sign in was from May and we were visiting in July. We had lunch in Tucki and got out by about 1:30. It was about 90F at Tucki and 115 in the Valley an hour later.
