The old RR station. 
A small rhyolite mine.
The white chalk hillock was interesting. It’s the mineral rhyolite. You could see that small hill from practically everywhere in the town. It had become a boom town because of a gold strike though, not just the deposits of rhyolite. Back up in the hills there are old mines scattered all over, and a sign in town warning people not to try to explore them as they are dangerous. There is a giant gold mine still being worked on the outskirts of town. It’s rather low key, you wouldn’t know it’s a mine as you drove by it if you weren’t paying attention.
I didn’t take many shots of the dilapidated buildings in town, probably because I covered it in an article last year. But, on the outskirts of town there’s a tiny ‘museum’ that has these ghostly figures installed by a famous European artist. Stopped to take some pictures.
They’ve been here since the 1960’s or ’70’s I think. They are kinda neat.
Anyway, we drove on to Death Valley. The eastern access road heading into the valley goes right by Rhyolite.
Lots of minerals in these hills. 
This is Golden Valley, there’s a trail that goes in there. I forget the type of geology. 
Would hate to be out there in the summer.
The valley gets it’s name from the heat it experiences most of the year. And from those few early pioneers who died trying to cross it. It was late October when we visited and it was 96 F.
Volcanic debris. This hardened lava is interesting and seemingly out of place. 
Heading south out of Death Valley…
My brother had grabbed a map of the valley from the NPS headquarters and wanted to take a road out of the park that heads south instead of the highway everyone else takes. And here’s a map of the road (the road we took is that white line leaving highway 190 and passing Ryan, if you zoom out the map, it disappears). It’s unimproved and takes you due south of Death Valley and spits you out at highway 178. Follow that several miles and you arrive at highway 127 which would take us back to Pahrump. The small town of Shoshone is a few miles south of the 178/127 junction. Dan wanted to take that ‘short cut’ just to see what it was like. Now I am up for an adventure like most, but the road is a primitive road barely maintained, dirt and gravel, crosses stream beds where the edges were collapsing (dry during this trip), and my car is not an off road vehicle. It’s low slung too. After several near disasters of almost getting stuck in deep fine dirt, I lost my enthusiasm of trying to make it all the way to Shoshone on a dirt road in Death Valley. It was nearing dusk, the map we had was inadequate, and I feared getting stuck out in the middle of nowhere with no cell phone coverage, no food or water, and no warm clothing. We actually traveled 24 miles one way on that road, and Dan’s map said the highway was only 20 miles from where we had gotten on the road. Map was not very much help as it lacked detail. Probably hadn’t been updated or edited for accuracy in years. Eventually, I decided we’d gone too far without finding the junction and felt we were probably on the wrong road. Cresting a small hill gave a view far into the distance and no highway could be seen. Just more desolate valley. So I just turned the car around and we struggled back to the highway. Almost got stuck in a couple places on that return trip too. The bottom of the car was scraping the dirt many times and had to plow through piles of dirt. A few days after getting back, spent an hour washing off all the fine dust and dirt from all over the car. Undercarriage was caked with dirt.
After that adventure, Dan went home, and I just hung around Pahrump. There’s some fun things to do at the Preferred RV Park like they have a carpentry shop, card games, occasional meals at the club house, that sort of thing.
And here’s the street I’m staying on this time.
I appreciate the park, the town, and the area as it’s just my kind of place to while away months at a time. This trip I arrived on Oct. 21st and was still here as 2018 ended.
Nothing much happened during November except my brother came back for a visit because we wanted to go see a Las Vegas show. We went and visited the Pahrump Valley Winery for dinner the night before. The weather was threatening but it didn’t rain too much. Enough to make puddles though. The tour was very short, dinner was pretty good, and the Burgundy I bought was excellent.
Day after the winery visit, it was on to Vegas…
And then we went and saw the Penn & Teller show. You’re not allowed to take pics in there but I think I got a couple with my phone. I’ll try to find them and post them later. It was dark on the way home. Nice trip. Had some fun, but ran out of time for visiting other casinos. Could have wandered some more but ended up we didn’t have enough time before it was time to get in line for the performance.
And the month passed into December. I had been considering getting myself a cat, and had put it off many times before or had visited a shelter and never found a good match but this time and place, I found myself a rescue cat at the local no kill shelter. I had walked in there asking if they had an older, spayed female cat with short hair? And they had a few but the only one that seemed interested in me during my visit, was this one:
She was out of her cage when I visited and was very interested in telling me her story while trying to climb up on me and trying to get pets. Name was Blackie. She’s 4 years old, been spayed, and I got her her shots and had her chipped before I picked her up and brought her home on Dec. 18th.
By Dec. 21st I knew there was something wrong with my belly button because it was painful, swollen, and had a large red bump instead of an innie and after talking by phone to the VA nurse at the hospital about it, I arranged for a baby sitter for Blackie and drove over to the VA Hospital in Las Vegas. Turned out I had a strangulated umbilical hernia and I was admitted to the hospital shortly after I was examined. Had the surgery the next morning and all went well. They knocked me totally out so can’t say much about what went on in surgery, didn’t take long. Was released the next afternoon and got home an hour after that after having been gone for 3 days and 2 nights. Blackie was fine and my house was fine, not torn up by Blackie, and the Preferred employee who had watched her for me said that she hid whenever he came into the RV (left it unlocked for him) to feed and water so he didn’t really see her much. Soon after I got home she was out of her hiding place and saying hi!
Took a week before I was feeling up to doing much of anything. Not a lot of pain, just discomfort. I never took the oxycodone they tried to give me before and after surgery, and never picked up the prescription they had waiting for me at the hospital pharmacy…they were persistent in trying me get me to use it, sort of a gentle push many times but I never really needed it. I kept wondering if the hospital gets a kickback for prescribing it excessively and if they aren’t unknowingly actively contributing to the epidemic of oxy abuse?
I still went shopping while recuperating, just not much else. Mostly stayed home and watched TV. Blackie was really liking her new home and soon decided she likes laying on my chest and purring for 10 minutes then moving down to relax in my lap while she grooms herself. The grooming was necessary as she reeked of shelter stink.
And that’s how 2018 ended. With me recuperating from hernia surgery while enjoying the company of and becoming attached to my cat. I enjoyed the year, except for that hernia business, and hope you enjoyed reading along. Kwnn, which is the cat’s new name, turned out to be easily trained with a squirt bottle and the worries I had about her scratching up all the furniture and wandering all over my computer keyboard were quickly put to rest with a few squirts on a few occasions. She has her scratch pads and takes out her scratching urge on those and leaves the furniture alone. Good cat.
Thank you for reading…