December 22, 2003

Betty, Nevada

I left Goldfield yesterday morning and headed south. The snow alert didn’t amount to much unless it went north while I was south. I don’t think there was more than an occasional cloud in the sky and as I was listening to the Las Vegas station they remarked on how clear it was. The Vegas valley can really get smoggy at times and they need a good wind to blow it out.

The highway is all down hill it seem from the pass at Goldfield. By the time I got down to Sarcarobatus (sp?) Flats it was just down right warm. I had the windows down in the pickup. At the Flats there is a highway that turns to the west ( Scotty’s Junction) and goes down into Death Valley and Scotty’s Castle. There has been quite a bit of building and trailer dragging in at the Flats. At the junction was a bar and restaurant many years ago called ‘Slims’. It was owned by a legendary guy named ‘Seldom Seen Slim’. It was probably the best bar that I have ever been in. Most bars are dark and the only thing to look at is the mirror. Slim’s bar had big windows looking east toward the mountains across the valley that are just beautiful. They are multi colored with red and pink strips and in the afternoon sun are just breathtaking. When I lived down in the Flats at Don Creech’s place (I was working at the Castle in Death Valley) we would often see tourists stopped along the road trying to take photos of the sunset on the mountains. Photos can just never capture the grandeur of a scene like that. The window also had a good view of the highway so you could keep track of the passing traffic.

The road to the Castle skirts the north edge of  the Flats and I could see water in the huge lake in the middle of the valley. They must have had some serious rain in the not too distant past. Don and I used to take his greyhound dogs and my ridgebacks out on the dry lake and run them. Ridgebacks are beautiful runners, but greyhounds are just so graceful and fast, they make ridgebacks look clunky and slow. There is an old mining camp called Bonnie Clair just at the break over point into the next valley. This was where quite a bit of the building material was off loaded for the Castle. I think it was also a stage stop in the very early days. There isn’t much left now and I drove in to check if anyone was still living there. The tracks were old but someone has a small trailer there and no trespassing signs up so I kept going. Just before the road breaks off down into Death Valley there is a good size dry lake right off the highway. Thirty years ago there was a long black strip of used oil that ran down the center of the lake. It was used by drug smugglers who flew in loads of pot and what ever. It was really handy as you could just drive a truck off the highway and up to the plane. This place is really isolated and at night in the desert you could see the ‘strip’ at night without lights. Some said that Slim was involved in this trade but I don’t think he ever got caught. One of the police forces put an end to the traffic by plowing a ditch across the lake at right angles to the strip. I heard that they landed fairly big planes there (maybe DC3’s) but after they dug the ditch across the strip the traffic ended. I drove out on the lake and parked while I had my lunch. I got the bike out and Ely and I took a tour of the lake. There are small  islands out in the lake that are formed by something growing and building up the wind borne soil to make little hills. The more soil that accumulates the more grows so they get bigger until a big blow decimates them. There was a big blow not too long ago in Silver Peak. Ken and I went out shooting at a range he set up on the drylake there. When he set it up, the land was flat and smooth. When we were there, the place had been blasted and the wind had scoured the surface leaving it over a foot deep in spots. The little hills formed by small bushes were almost totally destroyed. On the windward side of the hills was just a mass of bare roots of the bushes. It was really amazing how many and dense the root system is on those little bushes. I guess that they have to put out lots of roots to take up any water that my happen. The plants have to conserve the water there as well because the evaporation rate in Silver Peak can reach almost an inch a day in the summer when it is windy. The little islands on this lake were hit pretty hard in that wind too.  I remember looking at one of these little islands of maybe 10 square feet several years ago and counting over 30 different things living on it. That included insects and plants. The diversity was amazing out in the middle of  the dry lake. Over the years the oil marking and the ditch have finally been erased by wind and rain. It is really fun to go out on the lakes and just drive and walk around. If you get at eye level you can see the curvature of the earth. It is a reminder we all are living on a huge ball….

I drove on down to the Castle and it looks the same. I took a quick swing through the parking lot to see if I could get water there, but the park service has taken out the hydrants that were located there. I went on down the road to Ube Hebe Crater and about two miles down that road is a small road up to Scotty’s cabin. This is where Scotty used to hang out with his friends as he couldn’t stand to be preached at up at the Castle. My friend Don who worked at the Castle told me that they had done a lot of work at the cabin and that it was now open to the public. The road was closed and I hiked up to the cabin and had a look around. They did clean the  place up some and put new roofs on the building but evidently it is not open to the public. Ely and I  had a nice walk but before I headed out I had to take off the long underwear. After we got up to the cabin we were both hunting shade. I stopped at the grapevine ranger station for water and headed back out to the highway and down the road to Beatty.

I talked with a guy who runs a trading post here and he told me that Beatty has gone through a huge boom and bust lately. There was a big mine out toward Ryolite and it shut down. Over 1,000 people have left town. I guess I missed the boom part and am amazed at the size of the development on the hill west of town. There are a lot of empty trailers and spaces. Beatty will grow back into itself though. The weather here is very nice in the winter. I am camped behind the highway department yards along the Amargosa river which is running a small stream.