Sierra Nevada Airstreams - Recreation with vehicles in the Sierra Nevada and American Great Basin areas

Sierra Nevada Unit, WBCCI

DEATH VALLEY RALLY

Gail and Don (Motoman) Williams

The Sierra Nevada Unit closed out its 2008 season with a special November rally in Death Valley. Gail and I, the most southern members in the Sierra Nevada Unit, hosted this unique rally with some concern; would our unit members travel almost 300 miles to visit some of the most beautiful desert in California?

Gail, Zorro and I left Riverside in early afternoon and stopped in Baker, California at the historic Mad Greek Restaurant for a late lunch; 5 PM! Our hunger appeased, we drove north on CA-127 and then west on CA-178 across Jubilee Pass into the south end of the valley. The south end of the valley is usually a great drive but the darkness and the 25+ miles of construction and graveled roadway made it an early evening nightmare. The one highlight was the valley floor, which seemed to glow like snow in the dim light before the moonrise. We reached Mesquite Spring Campground at 9 PM, picked a pull through site and settled in for the night.

Dawn brought the sun and an obligatory walk with Zorro and what did we see, a Squarestream! It turns out that the first to arrive on Monday and unknowingly for our rally, was Jim Dodds or jimmini on the AIR Forums. Wait a minute, Jim is a Four Corners Unit member and what’s he doing here? Jim was off for a couple of weeks by himself relaxing at different campgrounds through out Arizona and Southern California. Little did he know he would be swept up into and be the focal point of the Sierra Nevada Unit rally at Death Valley.

Gail and I spent Wednesday visiting with Jim, setting up my amateur radio station for a California statewide emergency exercise on Thursday and checking out the campground. Mesquite Spring Campground is located about two miles south of the northern entrance into Death Valley near Scotty’s Castle. The campground has 30 campsites and sits next to Death Valley Wash with a large sloping plateau flanking Tin Mountain to the west. That night we sat around Jim’s small propane fire pit and shared Airstream stories.

On Thursday I had a brief breakfast and then turned on my amateur radio and checked in with operators that work in Riverside County Office of Emergency Services’ Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service or RACES. RACES operators are sworn volunteer amateur radio operators that provide emergency communications throughout the county at no cost to the taxpayers. Conditions were very good in the early morning allowing very clear communications with operators in the Coachella Valley area near Palm Springs and in the western county area near the city of Riverside. While this was a statewide exercise, each county and/or municipality developed its own scenario around the theme of a major earthquake on the San Andreas Fault. I monitored stations in LA County, Mariposa, California, Reno, NV and Las Vegas, NV checking in with various agencies to offer help if they needed assistance.

I took a break from the radio and we took a break from the rally tradition and held our first potluck as a luncheon so we could cook Gail’s spicy chili and Jim’s hot links with solar power and our 12-volt lunch-box cooker. After lunch I returned to monitoring the exercise however conditions for communications deteriorated in the early afternoon so I shut down my station around 2 PM. While I wasn’t able to participate in the same capacity as being at the emergency operations center, listening remotely gave me a different perspective of the communications activity for the exercise, what we do well, what we need to improve and were it not for our commitment to host the Rally in Death Valley, I would have been back in Riverside helping with the exercise instead of sitting in a beautiful setting next to our Airstream. Hard choice huh?

Our third rally guests, Wheels and Doris Wheeler, arrived in mid afternoon, as Gail and I were getting ready to take the underground tour of the basements and tunnels at Scotty’s Castle. Wheels and Doris had setup their camp by the time we returned so we congregated at Jim’s trailer around his fire pit for the evening.

Friday Wheels and Doris toured Scotty’s Castle and wore themselves out taking both the standard tour through the home and grounds and then the underground tour. In retrospect they might now recommend a taking the two on different days unless you like a lot of walking and standing for almost four hours! While the Wheelers enjoyed Scotty’s Castle I took a hike to a low peak and on the long sloping plateau to the west of the campground. I missed finding the ancient rock petroglyphs but did find more recent rock art in the form of geometric shapes, Cairns, a peace sign and even a caricature of a woman. We all closed out the day with a potluck dinner and campfire at Jim’s Squarestream.

Saturday found Wheels and Doris touring the Furnace Creek and lower Death Valley, Jim relaxing at his Squarestream while Gail and I repeated a portion of my Friday hike. the main valley Gail and I hiked on the plateau. That evening we changed the routine; shared potluck dinner followed by Doris serenading us around the campfire with her beautiful country voice and guitar. We even attracted the attention of another amateur musician in the campground who brought over his banjo and joined in our sing along.

All good things must end; Sunday found each of us following our own lead, Jimmini packed up and headed down to Furnace Creek to camp there for a few days, Gail and I packed up for our trip home to Riverside, leaving Wheels and Doris to spend another night at Mesquite Spring Campground before they headed off to camping at Edwards Air Force Base.

See the photo gallery of the Death Valley rally

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