We had a few busy weeks in May and I’m almost three weeks late for our updates. In the last post we left you at Bishop. A small town in California on the border with Nevada. The plan was doing some grocery shopping and head toward the Death Valley but as always things didn’t go ahead as we planned it.
We had a vibration in steering wheel when braking since we got the car in San Francisco and it was always on Amir’s mind to show it to the mechanic and out of all places, he chose Bishop to do so. We went to see a local mechanic and he went for a test drive with Amir. After half an hour they were back and before we knew it, car was in the air and the front tire was out. He said that the fix will be done in 2 hours max. But we hang around for an hour in his busy workshop and finally his receptionist, reminded him that he was booked to do another repair the very same afternoon so he sent us home and asked us to come back the next day at 9:00. Well when I say home, it means that we had to find a camp spot close to Bishop to drive back the next morning.
Bishop was an interesting place, it had this spring looking water holes all around the town, that locals were hanging around them and taking a dip every now and then.
It was a hot afternoon, we just moved from the frozen water tap in the morning to jumping into the cold water in the afternoon.
While we camped around Bishop, Amir spent hours to get to the root cause of the problem with the vibration and the best solution for it and found one. It was a good outcome to not have the car sorted the same day. We ordered the parts required and sent them to a proper Landcruiser mechanic in Arizona and plan to go there in few days to fix the issue properly when spare parts arrived. More on this one, later!
After having the car issue sorted in our mind, we headed to the Death Valley National Park.
We got a detailed route from an Instagram friend who owns a Troopy in the USA and just finished a tour of the Death Valley and was kind enough to write us a detail itinerary of the area which I translated that into a Gaia map while waiting for the mechanic the day before and it was mostly off the beaten path and off road. We started on the northern side and the views were spectacular. We didn’t expect so many wild flowers in the hottest, driest and the lowest national park of the country. I just picked a few shots to show the vibrancy of the colors.
For the first day in the death Valley we camped right next to a massive dune and we pretty much had the whole place for ourselves. After reading all the horror stories about how busy national parks in the USA are, it was a pleasant surprise! The whole desert floor, next to the dunes was covered in yellow flowers and the weather temperature was pleasant, what we could ask for?
The second day, we already started the day with a small deviation from the route that we had in our GPS. We had a bit of internet the day before, and read a recent report about the quality of the mountain pass that we were about to pass and how bad are the washouts. So we changed the route a bit and carried on deeper into the national park. We visited a small ghost town that used to be a mining town called Ballarat and then headed into another rough part of the road. We had some sketchy passes and managed to move around few stones to prepare a safe pathway but after all the hard work in the extreme heat, we got to the point that there were no way that we could carry on. Maybe if we were in a convoy and had our weekend vehicle and few days worth of time to spend on the passage, we could give it a go but none of them were an option for us so we turned back!
We were exhausted with the hard labor in the extreme heat and had to drive back all the crazy route that we spent hours to get to but it is part of the fun. At least it will be fun when you look back at it. For the second night, we decided to get out of the national park to have a cooler camp site among Jashua trees and get back in the park the next day.
The third day wasn’t as much fun as the other two since we got to the main part of the park and in the lowest altitude in park, it was simply too hot to enjoy anything, we left the park on the northern side toward a small town called Beatty in Nevada, camped and had a cold shower.
It was a lot of warnings of strong winds popping up on our phones every now and then that we had a weak cell coverage but it really showed us how severe the wind can be the next day!
We decided to stay on top of the hill just on the outskirt of Beatty for a day to recover from the the desert heat and get some work done. We stuck to our plan till the wind got up to 40 km/h and then we just knew that we have to leave our spot on top of the hill and try to find some shelter.
After a bit of searching on the map, we noticed that there’s a ghost town just down the road from where we camped so went for a visit. It was crazily windy, cloudy and there wasn’t even a soul in the area and it just added to the airy feeling of the ghost town! The big area was covered with the different art pieces of the local artists and was a nice distraction from the wind but wind didn’t stop, it only got stronger for another 2 days!
The next stop for us was Las Vegas, the Sin city! since camping on top of the hill wasn’t an option, we decided to head toward Beatty and then the main road to Las Vegas and hopefully find a nice camp spot half way to Las Vegas, so the next morning, we won’t have a long drive.
We passed dusty Beatty and headed toward Las Vegas. An hour out of town, there was an interesting massive white sand dune in a distance along the way that looked like a nice spot for the night camp. Almost half an hour drive on a gravel road, took us to the foot of the massive sand dune. The wind was killing us and it was almost sunset, we crawl into the back of the car and knew that it won’t be a fun night sleeping in the car. We were reviewing the options of what possibly we can eat without getting out of the car and complaining about why we ran out of beer while we saw a small compact SUV type Jeep just rushed into the sand dune and disappeared from our site. After half an hour and reviewing our dinner options, it was almost dark and we were having a cup of tea and some biscuit in the car before call it a night. After all in that strong wind without internet, there’s not much to do in the middle of nowhere. While having our cup of tea, we heard someone approaching us on foot, Amir opened the door and the guy said, he was in the same Jeep that we saw went into the sand dunes hours ago and they are stuck! They tried their best but couldn’t get out and he asked if we had some recovery gear that they could use! Amir said give us 5 minutes to pack up and come and see how we can take you out. So our cup of tea before bed in the extremely windy situation, quickly turned into the recovery mission just before dark. We deflated the tires and went into the dunes to find them. They didn’t make it that far into the dunes, but they managed to get completely stuck, after a bit of digging, we winched them out and made sure, they get out the soft sand safely, in returns, they offered us a pack of beers which we only took a few! That was amazing how we were forced to changed our original camp site because of the wind to be in the right spot to help these guys. There was no cell coverage in the whole area and walking to the highway would be at least 4-5 hours for these boys so they were extremely lucky that we just happened to be there.
And for us, we got our beers from the sky!
We had an absolutely miserable windy night and headed early in the morning toward Las Vegas without having the breakfast the next morning. We were hoping that the wind will eventually ease out and we’ll stop to have a breakfast but it kept blowing. We found a shelter to have a quick bite and got into the Las Vegas! We didn’t have plan to spend much time in Las Vegas, just wanted to park our car somewhere and walk down the Boulevard, the famous street in las Vegas and see the vibe up close but in most of the car parks, our car wouldn’t fit and we didn’t want to park it far away so we went up and down the main street with the car few times and headed to a Persian restaurant for lunch!
So that was our quick stop in Las Vegas, Persian restaurant instead of Casino but it was really good! The wind was still strong but the forecast was saying that it will ease out the same night. We drove out the Las Vegas toward east and the next state, Arizona and camped in the nice forest full of Jashua trees for the night and had an early night.
Next week, we carry on into northern Arizona, where we spent almost a month for various reasons. More on that in the next post. Till then, take care
Michael Chernishov
June 10, 2024 at 5:34amNice. Thanks for the update. Those guys could have had a very miserable night if it wasn’t for you guys who are so well equipped! I bet it was awesome to be eating Persian food in Vegas. You guys are awesome. Loving your updates.
Azadeh
June 10, 2024 at 1:45pmThanks Michael. Yes they were lucky! The Persian food was really good. We missed those Persian kebab parties together.