Aguereberry Point, Death Valley National Park
This is our last day in the park as tomorrow morning we start on the long trip home for Christmas. We travelled to the west side today.
Our first stops of the morning were to photograph the Devil’s Cornfield and the Mesquite Dunes. The cornfield is a lot of approximately 1 meter tall plants, widely spaced, that do look a bit like corn plants at a distance. Mostly though it is just a lot of sand. We walked just a short distance into the dunes, but saw some interesting tracks. A park ranger was there preparing for a walk and talk, and she had cards with her showing the footprints. One of the more interesting tracks is left by a large stink beetle.
We then drove up the Emigrant Canyon road, all the way to the charcoal kilns. The last few kilometers of this road is rough gravel. We’d expected to see a few small mounds of dirt used to make charcoal. We were very surprised to find a large number of tall stone “beehive” shaped kilns, at least 25 feet high and 30 feet in diameter. They were used in the late 1870’s to make charcoal for a smelter about 60 kilometers to the west of here. Each kiln had a door at ground level, and numerous vents around the lower perimeter. Then there was a door about two thirds of the way up, and a number of vents in the top that seemed to be plugged with jagged stones.
From here we drove to Aguereberry point, a high rocky viewpoint with a spectacular view out over Death Valley from a height of almost 2000 metres. The road was a narrow twisting gravel road, barely big enough for one vehicle. If you met another vehicle at many of the turns, one of you would have to back up and find a place to let the other vehicle by. Fortunately we met no one either going up or down. The last 400 metres are a very steep and narrow trail, not much wider than a footpath, with shear drops off the side. I felt a bit intimidated driving on the road.
Finally we stopped at an old abandoned gold mine ruins, and the ruins of an old house, and that concluded our travels around the park. We filled up with gas here tonight so we are ready to leave first thing in the morning. At five dollars per gallon (almost two dollars per gallon more than we’ve been paying) it cost us $100 to drive around for the last three days, but the views have been well worth it.