Okay, so Sunday was very exciting. The main reason we came up for this weekend was to check out some sites that so captured my imagination when Mom and I came to Death Valley in October 2006 that I set my entire NaNoWriMo 2006 novel there. The central characters become stranded in a canyon after a flash flood.
We stopped by the ranger station at Furnace Creek and boy were the rangers wonderful. Talked to four who were amazingly helpful and of course knowledgeable. This photo of a photo is a little hard to make out, but it's a car filled with debris from the August 15, 2004 flash flood in which two people died. One ranger told us that this is not the car in which anyone died but that the car was similarly filled with rocks and mud.
Talking to the rangers was thrilling. They confirmed some things I'd imagined and corrected some things I'd wrongly assumed. But mostly it was confirmed that the central concept is realistic. AVV was an amazing resource for recent real-life stories that support my idea.
In a bold illustration of how people will get cocky and do ill-advised things, we drove into Emigrant Canyon with rain behind us. I took notes on my thoughts about doing exactly what we'd been told wasn't wise, and how we talked ourselves into it.
Wildflowers along the way.
This slab of rock fell from this cliff and shattered part of the concrete floor the former Wildrose Station, which I originally thought was the site of a gold processing mine. I received this information from AVV in an email: "Actually, that floor is from the former Wildrose Station
which had a small cafe, bar and cabins until it was torn down in the early
1970s. More recently we had installed an interpretive sign at the site. It
was crushed by the rockfall."
Even more interesting, especially since that means the rock fell very very recently, geologically speaking!
Members of Franklin Stove will take special note of the unique color!
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