An Overview of The Ranch at Death Valley

The Ranch at Death Valley is our initial location in Death Valley for the first 3 nights.  It is connected with, but separated by 1 miles the Oasis at Death Valley, which sets at and above the junction of 190 and Badwater Road.  

As you enter The Ranch, registration is located in the Town Hall building on the left.  All the rooms and buildings are further back on the property.  Where the swimming pool and tennis courts are located.

To the left of Town Hall is a large building that houses the Last Kind Word Saloon Bar, 1849 Buffet  restaurant, and the General Store

The Last Kind Word Saloon Bar is typically western decor inside and is where we had dinner our 2nd evening.

There are a lot of palm trees on the property

And the property contains an outdoor Borax museum with numerous old machinery and a mule team "train" along with old stage coaches.

The view from my room looked through Palm trees and toward the mountains on the western side of the valley.

The Ranch was ideally located for all the biking we did, because it was near the intersection of 190 and Badwater Road.

The Ranch at Death Valley to Artists Drive and Palette

March 29th: This morning we had partly cloudy skies and lower 60's for temperature.  There were clear views from my roomof the mountains to the west.  

View from my room

Although today's mileage was shorter than yesterday's ride, the difficulty was markedly greater. Leaving The Ranch, we had about 8.5 miles to the left hand turn onto Artists Drive.  Along the way you could see fresh snow on the upper portions of the mountains.

Once at Artists Drive, the hard work began with approximately the first 2.5 miles of the 9 mile one-day road being 12% grade, which is the steepest bike climbing I have done. I was in the "granny" gear through most of the climbing and only going about 3 mph. It was a toss up whether to ride or walk. When I made it to the top, the vista was fabulous of the valley floor below and there were great views of the downhills ahead. 

A professional photographer created a video of our group's ride up to Artists palette.  Here is the link to the video:  https://photos.app.goo.gl/ZsGgJ6VoJcg7Mayq6. Here are two screen captures of making the climb from the video.

Gregg and me Climbing

It is Getting Steeper!

View of valley floor

Nice downhill coming up

Winding downhill

In a short time, I reached the righthand turnoff to Artists Palette.  As the name implies, the rock were a variety of colors.  The colors of the rocks were the result of hot, mineral-rich water bubbling up from below, splashing on the rock surfaces and changing the chemical composition of the rock surfaces. The greens and blues are different metal chlorites, the pinks and purples are manganese oxides, and the reds and oranges are iron oxides. All very pretty and striking against the typical brown and gray rocks. 

Leaving Artists Palette, I had a mile or so of nice downhill 

and then around a hairpin turn I faced another long climb. Fortunately, it wasn't 12%, but 8-10% for about 3/4 mile. Then came a nice winding downhill stretch 

that ended at the intersection with Rte 190 and a right had turn for the 5 mile ride back to The Ranch. 

I arrived back around 12:30 pm and immediately hit the lunch buffet, which had all the fixings for a great salad. After lunch, I walked to the Death Valley Visitors Center and surveyed the exhibits. After returning to the room, I relaxed until 3:30 pm when I decided to bike to the Harmony Borax Work interpretive site. This is the site of the Harmony Borax Work, which was a mining operation that operated from 1883 to 1888. The site has the remains of a few old buildings, machinery, and processing equipment. At full capacity, it employed 40 workers who produced 3 tons of borax daily. 

They refined the mined borate salts, dumped the mud and salts into vats of boiling water with carbonated soda.  

Extraction of Salts

The mud and rocks settled out and they drew off the borax liquid into cool vats where it crystallized onto hanging metal rods 

 

Borax Flats

The borax was scrapped off the rods, placed into storage bags and transported to Mojave by the famed 20-mule teams that pulled loads up to 33 tons. This included two wagons and a 1,200 gallon water tank to provide water for the 15 day trip to the railroad station. 

After 5 years, when the owners financial empire collapsed, the Harmony works shut down.

This is our last evening at The Ranch at Death Valley.  Tomorrow we move to Stovepipe Wells in an area to the north, which will permit us to easily access another area of the park.

Ashford Mill Ruins to The Ranch at Furnace Creek

 March 28th:  After breakfast in the 1849 Salon on The Ranch property, we boarded the van to be shuttled to the Ashford Mill Ruins, which would be the starting point for our 46 mile ride.  The shuttle was the best option for this ride, because the very strong south wind would make riding from The Ranch to Ashford Mill Ruins extremely difficult.  Granted we bike the same road as we shuttled on going to the put in point, but scenery looks different from a different direction.

Ashford Mill Ruins, as its name implies, is a place where mining took place, but is not ruins.  Actually, the Ashford's mined for gold off and on from the early 1900's until 1938, but the site never produced much although they developed a fairly comprehensive site to handle the ore.  All that remains are the concrete walls of an office building and a few ruins of the facilitates for handling the ore.  

Concrete Walls of Office Building

Unloading for the Day's Ride

After unloading, we started the 46 mile ride back to The Ranch, with a water stop at 12 miles and lunch at 27 miles (Badwater stop).  We are very fortunate, because today is much cooler than yesterday and actually felt chilly as we began cycling.  The high is to be in the 80's.

Since we are riding in the valley, the road is close to the mountains that border the east side of the valley and you have great views of the geological formations.  This makes the ride very interesting and picturesque.  In addition, there are no long climbs or downhill descents.  Much of the road is straight with lots of rolling up and down roadway.  All the today's ride is below sea level and we get back to sea level at the end of the ride in from of The Oasis.

We are off on a very straight roadway

Some of the salt flats along the route

At about noon, we pulled into the Badwater stop for lunch.  This site is 283' below sea level; the lowest point in North America.  The parking lot was fairly full due to all the tourist in Death Valley during Spring Break.  We didn't realize how strong the wind was from the south until we stopped.  The bikes had to lie on the ground to prevent them from slowly over.  Thank goodness, this was a tail wind for our ride.  Some gusts today were to be in the 40 mph range.

Roughly 18 miles remained to the ride and the cloudy sky hinted at rain.  Fortunately, it did not rain, but we did have a few sprinkles just as we rounded the bend near The Ranch.  I arrived back at 2:30 pm.

Tonight we have dinner at 6:30 pm in the Salon on the property.  Tomorrow our ride is shorter, but the climb is rather extensive to Artist Point.  There are some other optional rides need The Ranch property that I may explore and it is a short distance to the National Park Visitor's Center.

Shuttle to Death Valley National Park and the Vista at Zabriskie Point

March 27th:Today we met at the Hilton Garden Inn at 11:30 am for a get acquainted gathering and load all of our luggage onto the van and begin our shuttle to Death Valley National Park.  The drive took about 2-1/2 hrs and we had a good headwind as we climbed over the range west of Las Vegas.  The scenery along the drive was rugged:

 

At Pahrump, NV we turned left onto Rte 190, which took us directly to the national park and to our drop off point about 16 miles from Furnace Creek:

This was at the park boundary:

 

Death Valley is the largest national park (about 3.4 million acres) in the contiguous United States.  On the west it is bound by Telescope Peak (11,049’) and on the east by Dantes View (5,475’).  The Badwater Basin salt pan is the lowest point (282’ below sea level) in North America. 

First we had to unload all the bikes, fill water bottles, and gear up for the windy ride. 

Today the temperature was in the upper 90’s with a strong wind blowing out of the south; a cross wind as we biked towards the west.  The cross wind made biking somewhat difficult, because it was quite hard to keep a straight path and a lot of braking was required for the downhill trip.  The views were great:  

Downhill Ahead

After about 11 miles of riding, we reached Zabriskie Point, which was a fabulous lookout point for viewing the Death Valley badlands.  After parking the bike on the wind-protected side of the van, we had a short hike uphill for a panoramic view of the mudstone hills.

These golden-brown mudstone hills are full of rills and gullies created by times when water rushed down the slopes.  Down among the gullies are trails for traversing the badland area. There were information stations discussing the area and its history:

 

After 5 more miles of downhill riding, we entered the Ranch at Death Valley property, which is part of the Oasis at Death Valley and where we are staying for 3 nights.  We had about 30 minutes to shower and be ready for the short drive to the restaurant at the Oasis at Death Valley for dinner.  Both the Ranch at Death Valley and the Oasis are totally booked with visitors to the National Park.  

Tomorrow we have breakfast from 7-8:00 am at the 1849 Buffet on the Ranch property and then debrief for our 46 miles ride.