Starting?
Ok.
Welcome back to Penguin’s Wanderlust.
Here’s Carolyn again, and Penny and Penguin,
and myself Christine.
We are on the 190 east right now heading towards
Death Valley, towards Darwin Falls.
We stopped here because …
Beautiful white stuff that we are assuming
is some kind of salt.
On the way here, on the first highway after
we left Fossil Falls;
It said to watch out for cattle on the road
but I didn’t see any cattle even in the
fields.
If I was a cow, I wouldn’t really want to
live around here because it didn’t look
like very good food around here.
Then we went a little farther, and there was
a tumbleweed tumbled across the road.
Then the third thing was, oh ya, a part where
it said “Dust blowing”.
It was a little bit like being on the playa
at Burning Man.
But there wasn’t much dust.
Nothing compared to the playa.
But anyway we stopped, and the Sierra Nevadas
are absolutely gorgeous here.
And there’s this sort of pseudo-lake with
the salt.
How far do you think it is to Death Valley?
About maybe another 30 miles.
That sign said about 40 back there.
We’re about maybe 20 – 30 miles out.
It’s getting warmer.
It is.
That should be good.
There’s so much to see.
So bye for now.
Bye.
Hi.
Penguin’s Wanderlust here.
I’ve lost Christine.
She’s way over there.
Hasn’t come back with the car yet.
But this is a very interesting little place.
If you keep going down this road.
You come to a place called Darwin.
We were going towards Death Valley, when Christine
saw a small sign that said Darwin.
She slammed on the brakes, and I almost rear-ended
her.
However I didn’t.
So that’s good.
But we stopped, and we went up to Darwin.
It’s actually quite a nice little detour
because we’re surrounded; I think they’re
joshua trees although they might be yukka
plants.
I’m not really sure.
Some of them seem to have a cone on the top,
and they seem quite furry.
If they’re not joshua trees; they’re very
similar to joshua trees.
It’s phenomenally gorgeous here.
If you keep going down that way, you come
to an interesting little road that’s got
a danger sign, and says active mine.
It doesn’t say what kind of mine it is.
I’ll have to look that up later.
The town itself was built in the early 1800s.
And it only has a population of 50.
So I’ll have to do some research on that.
But I thought I’d stop here because this
is so amazing.
I’ll just get behind the camera, and pan
around so you get a little bit of view.
This is a great detour.
But now I remember, Nick saying that Darwin
Falls is not in Darwin.
It’s the sort of thing, you know, when people
are telling you a lot of information;
It’s hard to absorb it all as you’re trying
to write it down.
Then you get to the place, and your memory
triggers, and you think “Oh, right.”
Even Christine kind of remembered Nick saying
that to me but she wasn’t paying attention.
So lesson learned.
I will just pan around, and you can have a
little bit of a view of the amazing landscape
here.
Because it is quite amazing.
Yeah, that’s as far as we’re going to
turn that way.
We’ll try going the other way.
Still a learning process.
All is good.
But there.
Quite the valley, eh?
There’s her little blue car down there.
And see there’s the white capped Sierra
mountains over there.
So.
Thanks for watching!
Welcome to Penguin’s Wanderlust.
And behind us, you see the Sierra Nevadas.
The Pacific Crest Trail is on the top of those.
Yay!
Go.
Welcome back to Penguin’s Wanderlust.
This is Christine.
And we are about 18 miles from Panamint Springs.
We were surprised to find joshua trees here.
So this is a joshua tree.
It takes forever to grow.
Yeah, I bought some seeds, and it’s one
inch per year.
Wow.
And there are only two spots in the world
where joshua trees grow.
One is this area here Joshua Tree National
Park.
That’s why I’m surprised they’re here.
And the other one is somewhere in Israel.
Only two locations in the world that have
these trees.
So here you go.
Here’s a joshua tree.
Cool.
(wind)
There’s the road we took to go down to the
Darwin mine.
Here we are back at the tree.
Thanks for watching!
Yay!
Go.
So I’m going to read the sign.
This is like rock they had at the corner intersection
of 190 and the road to Darwin.
It says here “The town was named after Darwin
French who explored the area in 1860.
Giving his name to the falls, canyon, and
wash.
This was dedicated October 1981.”
A month before I was born.
Cool.
Cool.
As you were noting before, somebody has defaced
the …
Look it’s hard to read.
Someone scratched it on purpose.
Maybe they didn’t agree with the history.
Not very fun.
Thank you, Christine.
Here we are at the entrance to Death Valley
National Park.
Homeland of the Timbisha Shoshone tribe.
I stopped and Christine didn’t notice.
But I’m sure I’ll catch up to her.
And here’s what it looks like here.
Soon we’ll be back on the road.
So Penguin says “Thanks.”
Ok, we’re working.
Hey, it’s Christine again with Penguin’s
Wanderlust.
Right now we are near Panamint Canyon in Death
Valley Monument or Park.
Sorry for not knowing it correctly.
If you look out here, it is gorgeous.
There’s some sort of canyon down there.
We unfortunately are going to have to turn
around because we’re running out of time.
Darwin Falls is a mile trek in, and a mile
trek out.
So that takes maybe two hours depending.
We’re going to head back into town, head
towards Keough Hot Springs, and soak tonight.
Yay!
It’s beautiful.
Yes.
It is beautiful.
Yeah.
I had thought it was only going to be one
hour to go in and out.
I’m not really up for another major hike
like yesterday.
But anyway this is quite gorgeous here.
And we saved our 25 dollars.
We didn’t have to pay to get into the park.
Oh, bonus.
Bonus.
Yay!
This is the …
What’s it called?
Keough Hot Springs.
Here we are at Keough Hot Springs at the base
of the eastern Sierras.
There is a spa.
(I was going to talk.)
The spa is ten dollars a day, I think.
But the water overflows.
So there are like two or three ponds that
are “free”.
If you catch it.
Sometimes they stop running the water.
So you might come here, and there might not
be water.
But otherwise it’s a pretty nice free soak,
if you like hot springs.
Cool.
Great.
