The Trip Continues

Tue. Nov 11 This morning we pack our bags on the motorcycles and head down to Hwy 160. This takes us by Red Rock Canyon, up over the Spring Mountains and down to Pahrump where we turn towards Shoshone, Ca. We stop at Shoshone to fuel-up and get a soda pop. I go across the road to the Shoshone Chamber of Commerce. It's an old gas station with all kinds of memorabilia of the history of the area. They even have a display of some mastodons that college archaeology students uncovered there in the late 1800s. The rule for filling up for gas in this area is if you see a gas pump, you get gas even if you don't need gas. Coming out of Shoshone we turn onto Hwy 178 which will take us into the southern part of Death Valley. At one point we had to stop for a few minutes because they were resurfacing a section of the hwy. We reach Badwater Basin, the lowest point in U.S. (282 ft below sea level) where we stop for a few minutes. people walk out across the salt flat and then they try to get the damp salt off their shoes before getting back in their cars. We continue north to Furnance Creek where we eat lunch. We met a couple of guys and a girl from Germany that had rented a couple of Harleys in Las Vegas. They had made a loop out to the Grand Canyon, down to Phoenix and over thru California to where they were now. They want to know the quickest route to Las Vegas because they had to turn the motorcycles in that evening. Leaving Furnace Creek we travel Hwy 190 on thru the rugged landscape to the sand dunes just outside Stovepipe Wells. Just past Stovepipe, we start to head up into the mountains. We keep going higher out of Death Valley and at the top we stop to take a look back down into the Valley below us. Continuing down the mountain for 8 miles we reach the bottom where we take a hard left turn at Owens Lake, which is a Dry Lake. But we can see water out there. There are large ponds built all over it. I don't know how many acres are in the lake, but the road we turned on starts about halfway and we travel close to 10 miles to the bottom end of the lake. I see a pickup coming out to the Hwy from I guess there headquarters, so I stophim to ask about the ponds and their function. He told us the dry lake has contanimated soil on the surface, what pollutants he didn't say, and they keep a thin layer of water on the surface to keep the winds from blowing the dirt around. He said the wind coming down thru the valley can occasionally reach 70-80 mph. We continue on our way to Olancha where we plan to fuel-up. No luck. The gas station is closed. I figure we have a comfortable 80 -90 miles left of riding in our fuel tanks, I don't want to go too much futher because we have been climbing mountains and running 70+ mph on this stretch since the last fuel stop. So it's south on Hwy 395 we go, hoping we see fuel. Luck is with us, about 18 miles later at Coso Junction we pull in for fuel, pops and info. The guy running the quick-stop tells us we can find a room at Ridgecrest for tonight. We turn off hwy 395 and head east to the town which is at the southern end of China Lake Naval Weapons Center. After walking down the street to a restaurant for supper we turn in for the night.