April 5th & 6th 2013 – Beatty Nevada

We joined Bob in Beatty around 3 pm.  He had spent the day riding around town on his bicycle.  Not much to town he says.  He did meet a new friend, Rupert.  Rupert owns a motorhome just like Bob’s, as well as a few Harleys, sport cars and a couple of Lola racing cars. In the 1980’s Rupert raced Lola’s in the Can-Am Series.  He also started and ran for 10 years the Bragg-Smith Corvette Driving School in Pahrump, NV.  Currently he is transforming on old NAPA Parts building.  He covered the blue metal building with bricks, you’d never know how it started it’s life.   He's working on the inside, and it's going to be beautiful.

We spent the first night in Beatty parked behind the gas station.  Big trucks would stop, leaving their motors running while they went inside to get food and snacks.  After dark it actually quieted down enough that we could sleep.  But it was not a place where the cats could go outside. So in the morning we went over to Rupert’s in case he knew of a good place for us to camp.  He did. He has a huge piece of land near the airport. It was originally developed and has some infrastructure in place.  It's strange to see the fire hydrants and electrical services out in the middle of the dessert.  We moved out to his land, and the cats love it. 

After setting up camp we unloaded the bikes and went for a ride. We are camped at about 3000’, and our ride into Death Valley had us at least 25’ below sea level. I know we climbed as high as 5700' that day.  From one end of the spectrum to the other!

 

 We started over Daylight Pass and down through Hell’s gate.  We went north through the valley to Scotty’s Castle.  "Scotty's Castle is a two-story villa located in the Grapevine Mountains in Death Valley National Park. Scotty's Castle is not a real castle, and it did not belong to the "Scotty" from whom it got its name.  Construction began on Scotty's Castle in 1922, and cost between $1.5 and $2.5 million. Prospector, performer, and con man Walter Scott, known as “Death Valley Scotty”, convinced Chicago millionaire Albert Mussey Johnson to invest in his gold mine in the Death Valley area.  While out west looking at the 'mine', Johnson fell in love with the area and purchased property to build a winter home on.  Unknown to the Johnsons, the initial survey was incorrect, and the land they built Death Valley Ranch on was actually government land; their land was further up Grapevine Canyon. Construction halted as they resolved this mistake, but before it could resume, the stock market crashed in 1929, making it difficult for Johnson to finish construction.  Johnson willed Death Valley Ranch to a religious organization, with the provision that Scotty could live there as long as he wished. Scotty’s Castle was never completed, but Scotty lived there until his death in 1954. He is buried above the castle."...www.nps.gov

The castle grounds now include a picnic area where we stopped for lunch, and met up with 3 guys from Utah.  Two were riding KTM’s and the third was on a Husqvarna.  Small world, we actually had met one of the guys last summer at Leadore while riding with our mutual friend Charlie.  We had planned to have a GPS track to follow on this ride, but due to electronic malfunction (couldn’t be me, wasn't my GPS) we didn’t have one, so we were going to come back via the pavement and Highway 95.  These guys however were going to Beatty via dirt roads.  They let us tag along for the ride!

Our new friends 

It was about 120 miles and a great time was had by all.

 

On Saturday we headed east out of Beatty on the Fluorspar Canyon Road.

 

 We stopped at a mine to check out the huge hole in the ground. Then it was up Tates Wash and around the hills to the edge of Nellis Air Force Bombing Range. At the place where we turned south we expected to find a historical site, what we found were testing wells, Geological survey markers and a piece of a race truck left behind from one of the Vegas to Reno off-road races.

 

 

Remnants of races past

From there we went south back to Highway 95 where we crossed over to the west side and headed out into the desert in Amargosa Wash. We got back on part of the race course and headed back over to Death Valley Park to catch the Chloride Cliffs road up to the Keane Wonder Mine. 

One of the locals?

We aren’t sure, but I think we were in an area that is closed.  The only sign we saw was after we had lunch sitting at the mine, then rode up higher and saw some other entrances to the mine as well.  “The Keane Wonder Mine was one of the most successful gold mines in Death Valley. Miners were following a rich vein of ore that was deposited in fractures in the metamorphic rock. Tunnels were dug; side tunnels were added, always removing as much ore as possible. Eventually the mine became a series of chambers supported by pillars. So much material was removed that the entire mountain slope above became unstable and started to collapse. Besides the obvious danger of entering a crumbling mine, just being on the surface above or near the mine has become a safety hazard.”…www.nps.gov

opps, we may have been in a bad place...

 

From there it was up and down, and around to Daylight Pass and the paved road out of Death Valley. 

Once we got close to Beatty we took a side trip to the ghost town of Rhyolite.  "The town began in early 1905 as one of several mining camps that sprang up after a prospecting discovery in the surrounding hills. During an ensuing gold rush, thousands of gold-seekers, developers, miners and service providers flocked to the Bullfrog Mining District. Many settled in Rhyolite, which lay in a sheltered desert basin near the region's biggest producer, the Montgomery Shoshone Mine.  The town had a very advanced infrastructure, including piped water, electric lines and railroad transportation that served the town as well as the mine. By 1907, Rhyolite had electric lights, water mains, telephones, newspapers, a hospital, a school, an opera house, and a stock exchange. By 1920 the town was all but deserted due to falling prices and mine closures"...www.nps.gov

This casino is still in pretty good shape, in fact the whole town is in better shape than other 'ghost' towns I have been to.

Then it was back down to the highway and back to camp. We spent another night camped on Rupert’s property.  We really appreciated that he let us camp there.