I decided to fly this morning.  Here I’m power testing the motor:

And away!

It’s interesting how different the valley looks from 1,000 feet up:

Furnace Creek Ranch is left of center in this photo:

Coming in to land:

There’s another PPG pilot here, flying a quad buggy instead of foot launch.  This is the only aircraft being stored at the airport today:

Packed up and ready to head back to the RV:

Here’s my flight path:

This afternoon we drove up to the Greenwater Valley.  The goal was to visit three town sites from the days of Death Valley mining from 1900 to 1910.  Our first stop was the town site of Furnace.  Nothing remains of the settlement, so we hiked up to look at an old mine:

The mine has been capped to prevent foolish tourists from being hurt:

The concrete pad is probably the base for the winch used to pull mine cars up the shaft:

Not much copper was found here, but traces of other green minerals like malachite can be found on rocks here:

Another capped mine:

This piece of rusting metal is all that remains of Furnace:

Another mine:

Next we visited the town site of Kunze, where several stone building still stand, at least partially:

This house now has an unintentional skylight:

The artifacts and furniture here are probably about 110 years old:

Lots of old broken glass around here:

Trish found an old spoon:

The town can dump?

Another mine:

This mine opening was large, and stones thrown in took a good 6 seconds to hit bottom, so the shaft must be pretty deep:

Our last stop was the town site of Greenwater.  Nothing remains except a modern sculpture made from antique debris collected here:

We had a great time learning about this aspect of Death Valley’s history!

Although my parents went home with David and Leisl and the kids yesterday morning, they kept the hotel room even though they didn’t come back until the middle of the day.  The kids had never slept in a hotel room, so Trish and the kids spent the night in the hotel room.  It’s funny that for them it was an exotic travel experience.  B was so excited she took pictures:

This morning a roadrunner came by to say hello:

Once my parents arrived back in Death Valley, we hiked up to the gazebo above the Death Valley Inn:

Viewed from here, it’s obvious that Furnace Creek Ranch is a man-made oasis in the middle of a vast desert valley:

The gazebo has seen better days:

I went up for a flight near sunset.  As a kid I used to bike out to the airport and watch the planes takeoff and land.  I was excited to finally be using the airport as a pilot:

It’s the lowest airport in the US.  At 210 feet below sea level, the air is thick, so takeoff runs are short:

I had to go quite high to conform to the FAA request to fly high enough to avoid bothering wildlife:

The airport and Furnace Creek are on the right side of the photo.  I’m at about 1000 feet here: