We headed into Death Valley and entered through Beatty. We made a short side excursion to the town of Rhyolite. Rhyolite is one of the many ghost mining towns in the area, but Rhyolite has quite a few preserved buildings including an almost completely intact train station. Unfortunately some of the better preserved buildings are fenced off so you can’t tramp around inside of the them. It was a fun spot through. A couple folks seemed to still live out there and there was an outdoor ‘museum’ that including some funky art installations. Druid-like plaster cast figures in white are hollowed out but for the shape of their robes. You can pose inside them including the arrangement of figures that is based on the last supper. After a nice stretch of our legs in Rhyolite we headed into Death Valley proper and decided to just make things easy and stay in one of the bigger villages, Stovepipe Wells. Stovepipe was a bit warm, but not quite too warm yet. The camping wasn’t much to speak of – just a big parking lot really – but the village was fun and we had beer at the Tavern across the street. I recommend the bacon wrapped dates. It’s also very central to the rest of the park so we could decide where to head from there and even pick the brains of the other campers staying there. It’s nice to be way out in the middle of nowhere, but also nice to practice our social skills with other camping/traveling folk here and there.
