Scotty’s Castle, Death Valley, California.

Scotty’s Castle is not a town or city, in fact it isn’t even Scotty’s Castle.  It is actually the Death Valley Ranch, but you’ll be able to find “Scotty’s Castle” on most maps of California. Scotty is prospector, performer and con man Walter Scott (“Death Valley Scotty”), who notoriously scammed several investors out of thousands…

Ubehebe Crater, Death Valley

At the conclusion of our 72 mile trek through the northern-most part of Death Valley, we reached a paved road indicating that Ubehebe Crater was 3 miles west.  This was another “I didn’t know anything about this” find for us, and I have to say it was a pretty dramatic sight. It is a giant…

Our Death Valley Day

My blog posts are now up to March 12th (day 5 of our journey), and the day begins with a 1 hour drive SE from Mammoth Lakes, California to Big Pine – all on US-395S.  Our ultimate destination on this day is Las Vegas, some 298 miles away by the straightest route, but we rarely…

The Journey Continues – from Viriginia City, Nevada to Mammoth Lakes, California

As we left Virginia City, Nevada, we discussed possible routes we might take southward, and how far we might get, as it was already nearing 3 PM in the afternoon.  Our two museum tours in Reno and our unplanned (but very cool) detour up and through Virginia City had eaten up a good part of the…

Virginia City, Nevada

One of the things that happens when you head out on a “make it up as you go” road trip is that you are constantly finding places to visit and things to do, that didn’t show up in any of your pre-trip research.  Take Virginia City for example.           As we…

National Auto Museum In Reno

The first thing I should tell you is that I am not a car buff.  In fact, I’m notorious for telling people “I don’t have a mechanical bone in my body” (I was fortunate enough to marry a girl who could not only perform most basic car repairs and tune-ups, she even replaced and installed a…

When you think of Reno, you think of……..Bowling?

So back to our first week on the road, and my last post ended with us people-watching in 3 Reno casinos, and discovering that there were two venues of notoriety in the city – the National Auto Museum, and the National Bowling Stadium – who knew? In fact, Reno is quite proud of its connection to bowling, and…

Cactus League Baseball

I still need to go back and write about some of our activities last week on our drive from Langley to Scottsdale, Arizona.  In the mean time, I wanted to tell you about our day today (Monday March 17th), a day on which we went to our first-ever spring training baseball game in Tempe, Arizona.  We have…

Day 3. From Jacksonville Oregon to Reno Nevada

We pulled away from rain-splattered Jacksonville around 10:30 in the morning and as we eased our way onto the I5 at Medford, Oregon, we were now going further south than we had ever been on any previous driving vacation.  We were quite surprised at how mountainous the last 30 miles or so of Oregon were, and we were less…

Jacksonville Oregon

At the conclusion of my previous post, I mentioned that we had made it to Jacksonville, Oregon at the end of our first full day of travel (Sunday March 9th).  It is located a few minutes east of Medford which is right on the I5 as you head south toward the California border. It was named for Jackson…

It was huge!

Day 2 (Sunday March 9th) started the same way as day one had ended – with cold rain and gusty winds.  We re-packed the car after our night at the Red Lion in Kelso, Washington, but before we jumped back onto the I5 to head south, we grabbed a quick breakfast at the hotel (included with the room booking)…

Here comes the rain again….

So, our real journey began on Saturday March 8th, after a 36 hour stop back in Langley, following our brief but delightful Phoenix trip. We spent the day Friday figuring out what we might want to take for an 8-10 week road trip, and by Saturday morning we had everything assembled.  Two small bags each,…