Darwin Falls

We were taking our walk this morning (all 4 of us, since it's Saturday) and Rocket Boy said, "Do you have anything planned for the weekend," and I said no, not really. He said, "Do you want to go anywhere?" I said sure, always. He said, "What about Darwin Falls?" I said OK, why not? So we went home, got ready, and headed for Death Valley.

It's funny, we waited all summer and fall for it to get cool enough to visit Death Valley. Now, in December, it seems to us like the perfect time to go, but apparently no one else thinks so. From Ridgecrest to Trona to Panamint Springs, there was NOBODY on the road. We cruised along. It was cool and a bit overcast. The desert has this wintry feeling to it, hard to describe because there's no obvious sign: no snow, no major shift in coloration. The desert plants haven't lost their leaves. Everything just has this sense of dormancy, different from the sense of dormancy that everything has in the summer. (When does this country wake up? Only in the spring?)

It took us just over an hour to drive 70 miles to Panamint Springs. We had lunch there; it was almost deserted. RB commented on this to the waitress and she said this is their slow season. What's the busy season, we asked, thinking probably spring. "Summer," she said. You're kidding, we said. No, she wasn't kidding. I remember reading that a lot of Europeans come in the summer, because they want to experience 120 degree heat.

The Darwin Falls trailhead is about 3.5 miles from Panamint Springs and we found it without too much trouble. For this hike we thought we'd carry the babies in backpacks. We hoisted them up on our backs and began walking. Unfortunately, either we got lost or the trail is not good at this time of year or the trail needs work. We soon found ourselves wading through a fairly deep stream with very cold water. Of course I was wearing my Nikes. Then we had to cross the stream again. Then again. Then we were going to have to scramble up some rocks. If we hadn't had the babies, we probably would have gone on, but we did have the babies. I could just see myself falling off a rock into the stream and dumping Baby A out of the pack on his head. So we went back without ever seeing the Falls.

To go home, we headed west to Olancha (and then south on 395 back to Ridgecrest). The drive to Olancha was almost spooky. Such barren countryside and almost no one else on the road. It's all so gorgeous, in this weird, deserty sort of way. I am really getting to like the desert (but unfortunately not, as RB said, the people who live there). The dark, towering, snow-topped southern Sierra Nevada mountain peaks loomed ahead of us. When we got to Olancha the sign said the population is 39. RB was hoping for a restaurant, but there was nothing. We went home and had scrambled eggs.