Who are these people, and why are they jumping out of hyperspace?
This is a computed image. It started as a snapshot of a group at a lunchroom table. There was nothing particularly significant about it except as a record of a pleasant reunion of this group of old friends. And like many such shots of a group at a long table, it is hard to get them all in the frame and to represent each member in a photogenic pose. In particular, the persons at the far end of the table are lost in the distance. It is particularly noticeable with wide-angle lenses, the default for phone cameras.
My test image, a scene shot using a wide angle lens of a group at a table. Photo courtesy Fred Nourbakhsh.
I wondered if I could re-image this scene so that the people are more equally sized, the furthest members are not so small, and the closest not so big. This is what would naturally occur if the photographer used a longer focal length lens and stood further back. This is an account of what I learned.
Lone Pine is a gateway to the tallest mountain in the contiguous US, Mount Whitney. Along the route to Whitney Portal, one encounters the unusual rock formations known as Alabama Hills. They are not in Alabama, and I’m not sure I would call them hills, but they are a photogenic setting for Hollywood filmmakers shooting Westerns. The movie business has become part of the economy of Lone Pine, and the route into Alabama Hills is called “Movie Road”.
For the second day in a row, we found ourselves out in the dark waiting for sunrise. It was cold at this elevation of 5000 ft, and we had to shelter ourselves from a blustery wind, but the sun came up as scheduled, and we were treated to another stunning visual display of morning light and shadow.
It was a beautiful way to start a travel day; we now needed to get back on the road to catch a plane home.
Alarm at 5:00. Poldi made coffee and we headed to the dunes for sunrise. We returned to the place we had found the previous night speculating where they might be illuminated at dawn. But now it was dark, and our hike was by “dead reckoning“. We couldn’t see them, and we hadn’t scouted them using GPS, so we just headed down the wash in the approximate direction. As we got closer, we could make them out in the gradually increasing twilight.
I wanted to capture the light on the dunes in a time lapse, so I set up the camera and tripod on the sand mound we had just climbed, and started the image capture sequence. I will have to make changes to the camera settings as daybreak approached, but there was now time to sit at the top of the dune next to Poldi, share the coffee, and watch the magic of sunrise as it brought light and color to a new day.
We could make out distant small figures on the dunes– like ants climbing a hill. Several groups would make their way along the dune crest lines, visiting each peak along the contours of sand. Eventually the sun burst over the mountain range to the east, and the sinuous shadows of the sand made a sharp contrast with the now sunlit crests. This was the visual reward for our early morning efforts. It was stunning.
The Devil’s Hole Pupfish has had a challenging past, and is on the endangered species list.
Our hike today was up Golden Canyon. We thought we were early, but on reaching the trailhead, the parking had overflowed to the shoulders of the highway. We had arrived just as a large ranger-led group was heading up the canyon. It didn’t take long to catch up, and then join them as the ranger explained the geology we were walking through.
Among the things we learned was the evolutionary history of a small fish that lived in the prehistoric lake ecosystem that had once thrived here. As the lake diminished to become multiple smaller isolated lakes, the fish evolved separately, resulting in distinct species. They are still found in remote locations in and around the park, and in fact can be seen at a wilderness preserve not far from here!
This fascinated Poldi, who had already read about the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge and she immediately revised our plans for the day. We completed the hike to our “halfway point” up Golden Canyon (to the magnificent Red Cathedral), then hastily returned to the car and headed to Ash Meadows, a wildlife refuge just east of Death Valley.
“The Ranch” in 2023 did not match my memories from 1995 or 2005.
We left the warm comforts of Tecopa hot springs and headed back to Death Valley. The predicted rains arrived, as predicted, an anomaly in this arid zone, hindering our return to the park. In this large expanse, few places offer the tourist services we now were in need of: a good diner or café to sate our growing hunger. Miles and hours later, we reached the focal point of Death Valley, Furnace Creek, where the National Park visitor center serves as a key information source, displaying the current temperature prominently, along with the daily high temperatures, while also reminding us of the all-time planetary high temperature recorded here.
Furnace Creek also provides other tourist accommodations: a campground and a modest collection of motel rooms, with a restaurant and bar to serve the travelers passing through. At least that is what it was in 1995 when I stopped for a late-night snack on my way to Dante’s View for sunrise, and even in 2005 when I stayed for a few nights experiencing a peak spring bloom in the desert. But now, about twenty years later, I did not recognize the place.
It was still “The Ranch at Death Valley” per the signpost, but now the entry took us through a gate into a different world, one with ice cream parlors and novelty shops at the boundaries of a golf course carved out from the desert, all nonexistent just twenty years prior.
The dining room was now a fine dining room, albeit with one choice, an expensive buffet. The rustic western-style bar that I recalled from 1995 was now an upscale scene that offered drinks with wings or pizza, high cholesterol choices at high prices.
We were hungry, but not hungry enough to partake in these options. Something had changed. This was no longer a place to enhance an experience of Death Valley, at least not how I perceived it. And it was certainly no longer affordable. It had become a playground for the wealthy, and capitalism reigns, even within the boundaries of a national park.
It reminded me of Horseshoe Bend: what had been an obscure dusty foot trail to the edge of the Colorado River is now a major tourist attraction with admission gates, pavement, and tour bus parking. At least the revenues go to the native tribe whose reservation land it crossed. Here at Furnace Creek, the revenues end up in the concessionaire’s pocket.
This was not what we had come to Death Valley for. Still hungry, we left this misplaced slice of Las Vegas and headed to our more primitive accommodations at Stovepipe Wells.
If you were unable to see the previous post about the date farm (because of my WordPress settings error), I encourage you to go back and check it out (use the “previous” links).
On the way back to the hot spring resort after visiting the date farm, we passed Tecopa Springs township, where a hot spring facility next to the road looked vaguely familiar. I wondered if this was the same place I had stopped at almost twenty years ago during my escape from Las Vegas visit in 1995. At that time, it was an isolated building along the side of the road, operated by the county or state and offering the hot spring pools to local residents and passing tourists, for free!
There were two sets of pools, men’s and women’s, with no-soap pre-showers, and nude bathing a requirement. I recall there were a sequence of pools, starting hot, and getting hotter at each. I also recall no towels were available. I had to do some hand squeegee removal of water before getting dressed again. I resolved to bring a towel next time.
Well, this was next time; I had my towel, but the setting had changed. The government-run pool building that once stood isolated like a roadside “point of interest” marker, was now surrounded by other, more entrepreneurial hot spring facilities, with motels and campgrounds providing overnight accommodations. An entire community now surrounded this former hot spring outpost.
I stopped and asked the attendant if this was indeed the place I remembered. Yes it was, and it is still operated by the county (but not free anymore), and yes the pools are still separated for men and women. And I would still need my own towel.
But I was on my way back to claim our next hot spring soak at Delights Resort before we checked out. Which we did, using the towels they provided.
We had a nice long sleep in the decrepit trailer home at Delights Hot Spring Resort. On the previous evening at the nearby brewery/barbecue, we met a vivacious young woman, Kayla, at a shared table on the patio. Kayla works as the Field Manager at a date farm (yes, there is such a thing), and when we peppered her with questions, she not only answered them enthusiastically, she retrieved a date sampler package from her car to gift us so we could try them. She invited us to visit her at the date farm the next day. She is clearly a date ambassador.
The eclectic landscaping at Delights Hot Springs Resort
It was a miserable night in the car. My air mattress deflated (probably user error—my misunderstanding of modern inflation valves. We could not find a comfortable position. According to my measurements, my six-foot-one frame should have fit in the space available. It did not. We did not sleep well. What had once been an unremarkable event in our youth (spending a night sleeping in a car during a road trip), had in the decades since become physically challenging! What happened?
Revived by our morning coffee, and with the sky clearing to blue, we enjoyed a wonderful hike up Mosaic Canyon, the trailhead just “across the street” from the campground. We had a little trouble with the occasional short scramble over the smooth marble-colored geology of the canyon, which narrowed in several places to just a few feet across. It widened to broad washes as it continued its climb, but eventually choked down again, eventually presenting a boulder wall, stopping our progress. There was a designated route up them, and with help from fellow hikers, we could clamber up and continue. But beyond the wall, the canyon remained narrow and twisted with yet more obstacles. We decided to turn back; we were feeling at the “halfway point” anyway and didn’t want to take risks. Another thing that has changed over the decades.
Unlike our previous visit which was part of an extended road trip, we planned a more streamlined experience this time: flying to Las Vegas, renting an SUV, and “car camping”, literally, in the desert. We brought the essentials: sleeping bags and pads, collapsing camp chairs, a minimalist stove for heating water and canned or dried food, and of course, our French press coffee maker. The idea was to shift our gear around at night to make room in the back of the car so we could sleep there. All we needed was a place to pull off the road far enough to qualify for “dispersed camping”, and we could roam freely in the back country of Death Valley, hiking and exploring by day and capturing pictures of the sky at night. It was a romanticized image which we didn’t quite achieve.
“Death Valley Days” is the title of a long-running television series that I vaguely remember but did not watch. Now I wish I had. Thanks to my early-adopter dad, we had a small black-and-white television, the only kind available back then. It would have been just fine since the episodes were shot in black and white. There was no color in those days.
I have since had the pleasure of visiting Death Valley, several times. My first visit was in 1995, a brief weekend departure from a trade show that involved stealing a blanket from the hotel. I spent the night with it in my rental car, at Dante’s Overlook, which provided a bitter cold but spectacular view of sunrise on the Panamint Mountains across the valley.
I wrote about a more recent visit, experiencing the magic of Racetrack Playa, and I was excited to return this year and explore the park further. Over the next few essays, I’ll try to convey some of my experiences in this unique place on the planet.
If you enjoy this series of stories of Death Valley, I invite you to subscribe for future posts. They are not always about travel, but I try to keep them interesting.
