Yeah, it’s been a while, but not a lot to catch up to. A lot of family stuff keeping us on the left coast, but we did manage to sneak over to southern Nevada for some alone time. First stop was bee-you-tee-full Pahrump, Nevada where we spent a couple weeks hangin’ at the Pair-A-Dice SKP park. With the insane China-virus-hysteria still in full force, going places and trying to live life normally is still nigh on impossible. The really nice thing about Pahrump is it is surrounded by open desert, with scads of areas to head out to in the Jeep and cap a few rounds off to relieve some of the daily pressures (OK, so the only limit on the number of rounds I capped was the severe pain-in-the-ass shortage of ammunition available in any of the gun & shooting supply stores).

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Heading, yet again back into “unfriendly territory” that is, Kalifornia, we wanted to do a few days of boondocking on the west side of Death Valley, a place known as the Panamint Valley dispersed camping area. This would turn out to be more of an adventure than we bargained for. Taking Hwy. 190 west through Death Valley, between Stovepipe Wells & Panamint Springs, we encountered a “glitch”. Now having been full-timing on the road for over 8 years, ocean to ocean and passing through all of the lower 48, I have traversed some of the steepest grades this country has to offer. But on this particular trip, I have found one of the worst. The above mentioned section of Hwy. 190 happens to contain a 9 mile stretch of 9% downhill grade. Thus far I have been able to manage all grades utilizing my lower gears coupled with my engine brake. Any brake use has been infrequent pumping just to take the edge off my RPM’s. But 6 miles into this downhill we got nailed with “that odor”. I immediately found a skinny piece of shoulder to pull off and stop. As I opened the door, the tell-tale “wisps” of smoke were emanating from my front wheels. Ouch. So there we sat, staring off at the flat valley floor 3 miles ahead. After a 30 minute “brake” break, I fired ol’ Rosie up and continued downhill. Not wishing to even touch my brake pedal, I made it down the remaining 3 miles using only first & second gears with the engine brake and absolutely no brake pedal use. Whheeeeeewwwwww! We made it to the dispersed camping area just west of the road to Ballarat and gleefully set up for a big “brake” break, 3 night’s worth, to be exact.

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Being this close to the ghost town of Ballarat, we just HAD to see it. It was a mere few miles drive down the dirt road (don’t worry, all you “pavement Princesses” out there, no high clearance or 4×4 necessary) to get to the “center of town”. This was about as disappointing as a “ghost town” could be. There were a couple of mud walls here and there, old metal parts and pieces scattered about, and one whole building with a sign designating it the “Ballarat Jail-Morgue 1898”. I have my suspicions as to the authenticity of the sign.

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Seeing we had been to Death Valley on a few prior trips, there was not much to try and see. But we were close to the Windrose Charcoal Kilns so we took the slow drive up into the hills. The kilns were used by the early miners to create the fuels (charcoal, I presume) used for smelting. We found them to be pretty well preserved.

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The really big downer about this time around in Death Valley, it happened to be nearly full moons all 3 nights. If you are not aware of it, Death Valley is an  international Dark Sky Park. Needless to say, skies aren’t much dark if there is a big ol’ lit up cheese ball right in the middle of them. We missed out, big time.

OK, so that kinda catches us up for now. Until next post…