Barry and I had a nice 2day visit at Death Valley this weekend. This is the house at Cow Creek - the lady there said they had upgraded it a few years ago, but it is as close to the original as they could make it.

 They had to remove the giant palm tree "because it was invasive" and also not native to the area - she said the CCC brought them in to enhance the landscape.

 These are the Charcoal Kilns at Wildrose. They are in great shape - the sign said they were repaired in 1971 by some Navajo engineers. We drove up to the kilns on a bumpy dirt road and it seemed to take about half an hour, but the ride back down only took 10 minutes--both of us were really astonished about that!

 This is the house in Wildrose - there are only 3 houses left and they are in pretty bad shape. I would say no one has lived there or been there for several years. The only other thing at Wildrose is a campground and across the street from the 3 houses, there are a couple of tin sheds that are in worse shape than the abandoned houses.

 It was windy at the Ubehebe Crater!! I had to hold the white flowers in my hand to take a picture of them!

 We did not hike down to the crater bottom, nor up to Little Hebe, but we did look close enough to see the wild flowers!

 Took both tours at Scotty's Castle and found it quite interesting - especially the Underground because it is quite extraordinary how Mr. Johnson engineered the power and water and plumbing that still work! There were a couple of Pelton Water Wheels in use, also.

The wild flowers were quite abundant along the roadside - we stopped and admired the varieties and colors. As we drove out of the park the flowers along the side of the road just vanished - like they knew they weren't protected anymore!
On Friday night we were driving across the park from Pantamint Springs back to Furnace Creek and the only radio station we could find was playing "Ghost Riders in the Sky" which we thought was very appropriate for the time and place. The stars are brighter there, too.