Thanksgiving desert camping week

Late last night we returned from our week-long adventure to Death Valley (with a stop for a night at Calico Ghost Town and another night at the Mojave desert). To say I’m exhausted would be an understatement. After spending much of the day unpacking and organizing and doing laundry, I collapsed in bed and napped for hours. But I would say that despite how fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants the trip was (non-reservable campsites, no internet for most of it so we had to old-school it with paper maps), it was pretty magical, and I’m missing it already.

The desert is so quiet you can hear the blood sing in your ears, and the vastness of it is almost incomprehensible. The moments I had outdoors were definitely the best. The moments trapped in the RV - and there were many, since the nights were long and cold and we drove over 1300 miles during the day - were not my favorite. It was like our at home pandemic experience but condensed to an infinitely smaller space - with not a square inch to escape to - and constant concerns about having enough water, propane, gas, and when and how to empty the tanks. I had hoped we would only have to make one or two stops for fresh water and tank dumping - but we ended up having to make stops nearly every day. We had one mad dash all the way to Nevada to refill the propane tank, which would have been a real drag except that I had wanted to head that way to see the Rhyolite ghost town anyway. 

The cold and dark were a real problem - most of our campgrounds were at high elevations and dropped into the 30s at night with gusting winds; except for our final night at Mesquite Spring campground, we never had any time hanging out outdoors in the evenings, so no campfires, no s’mores, just the four of us packed into a tiny space. Also, the sun setting by 4:30 each day meant we were always scrambling to our next campsite in the dark - sometimes along treacherous mountainous roads, not really knowing where we were going or what we would find when we got there (only once, on Thanksgiving, did we drive 30 miles only to find our campground full and have to drive 30 miles back to a depressing parking lot campground in town, which ruined my Thanksgiving meal plans. Oh well. Nobody missed it). 

I’m glad the BF and I have a similar tolerance for adventure/danger. There were many white-knuckle moments on rough roads up steep inclines. There were several times I said “I don’t feel so great about this...” only to have it turn out ok after all.

And the boys? They loved the sand dunes and rock scrambling the most; I felt bad they didn’t get out to run around as much as I would have liked. They were definitely stir crazy in our tiny vehicle and I often had to tell them to stop screaming, stop jumping on things, settle down, etc. That part sucked. But hopefully we built some happy memories. Our epic Uno games - which Theo mostly won - were terrific.

For me, one huge problem was my constantly hurting left arm/shoulder, which made everything painful and difficult. Not only does it hurt most of the time anyway, but a new horrible dynamic developed during this trip, which was that due to the intense dryness and synthetic fabrics on everything, I was constantly getting huge, painful electric shocks, which under normal circumstances would be just annoying, but in this case would also cause me to pull my hand away abruptly which would then start a chain of events in my arm that would leave me breathless with agonizing pain for about ten minutes. And this would happen several times a day. It was torture. I’m going to have to figure out something about this shoulder pain. It’s gone from a slight annoyance to a debilitating misery. 

Would I do something like this again? Probably, although I have to admit camping during late fall/winter isn’t so great because it’s just too damned cold (to be fair, to see extreme deserts like this you pretty much can only go now or in early spring). 

There were so many highlights to this trip, but here are some of my favorites: