We headed back into Death Valley to try to see a few more things there. We decided to take more of a main road to try to get us there more quickly. On the way in we stopped at the Ubehebe Crater view point. The wind was whipping off the crater as if to remind us to approach with reverence. It was quite a site and we intended to camp at the nearby Mesquite Springs Campground. It was a pretty enough spot, but pretty pedestrian as far as camping went. We decided to head further down and back into Cottonwood Canyon. We reached the road to the Canyon pretty quickly, but didn’t realize how far back the Canyon was. We had tried a few times to pick up the more detailed back country map that you could get at the ranger stations, but the only ranger station we had been near was the one near Stovepipe Wells that does not keep a regular schedule. We drove and drove and drove and finally it was nearly dark and we had barely seen any Cottonwood and certainly not the springs we had heard of. We find a lovely little spot to pull off the road though it was a lovely night. Still pretty warm, but cool enough now that the sun had set to make it feel just right. We couldn’t seen the moon as it rose up somewhere on the other side of the canyon, but we could see its light traveling down the canyon walls in a line. Pretty perfect.
