Death Valley and the Amargosa Hotel

We took a short trip to Death Valley over Thanksgiving weekend, and for the first time spent the night. We had been planning to camp, but we were afraid it would be too cold, or all the campsites would be full. I thought the hotels would be full too, but when I did some checking, it turned out that there were vacancies. And then Rocket Boy said, "Would you want to stay at the Amargosa Hotel?"

The Amargosa Hotel is in Death Valley Junction, a tiny town -- well, a wide spot in the road, actually -- just outside of Death Valley National Park and very close to the Nevada state line. I won't go into all the details about its history, but it's a very interesting place, and supposedly haunted. Here's a shot looking down the hallway.

And here is our room, Room 22, where Red Skelton stayed a few times...

...according to the sign on the wall:

The room was pretty basic (aside from the wonderful wall paintings) and had no TV, so the twins entertained themselves by jumping on the two double beds (whose mattresses were already shot and REALLY did not need to be jumped on) and hiding in the closet and screaming. Finally, to let the other hotel guests enjoy their experience a little more, we went down to the lobby, where there was a TV. No TV service, of course (and no cell phone service), but there was a VCR and a few videotapes to choose from. We watched The 101 Dalmatians.

But we had a terrible night's sleep on a terrible mattress. Our room was heated by a little space heater -- worked very well, but so noisy. I woke up over and over and over again, and in between I dreamed and dreamed and dreamed. We all got up for good around 6 am, as the room started to get light. The cafe didn't open until 8 am, so we went back out to the front lobby and watched The 101 Dalmatians again.

Another hallway photo. Just before coming here we had rented a David Lynch movie called Lost Highway, which has some scenes filmed inside and outside the Amargosa Hotel. The hotel room shown in the movie is Room 26. But as you can see in this picture, Room 26 doesn't actually have a number.

And here's the view out the back, from the window in our hotel room. You can see a closed-off wing of the hotel, complete with broken windows. I couldn't look at this the night before, too creepy. No, those are not ghostly eyes staring out of that window, that's condensation on our window. But still.

After breakfast in the cafe, we drove back into the park and saw some sights, including Dante's View, where we had never been before. It gives you a view of the whole valley.

We also saw Badwater again, and the Devil's Golf Course, where we hadn't been since the twins were two or so.

But the best place was the Mesquite Sand Dunes, where we had never stopped before. Now it's clear we'll have to go there every time we go back to the park. The twins adored them. We visited them both on our way into the park on Saturday...

and on our way out of the park on Sunday...

Greatest place in the world for four-year-olds to play. They had a ball.