Having earlier written about our visits to Dante’s View and Zabriske Point in Death Valley National Park, we move on to Ubehebe Crater. Located at the north end of the park, Ubehebe Crater is a formation of 13 overlapping volcanic craters that created in an eruption 2,100 years ago. The largest of the craters and the one really carrying the name “Ubehebe Crater” is half a mile across (800 meters) and 600 feet (183 meters) deep.

The 55-mile (89 kilometer) drive from Furnace Creek to Ubehebe Crater takes about 90 minutes. You turn off of CA-190 15 miles (24 kilometers) from Furnace Creek onto Scotty’s Castle Road, also known as the North Highway. The scenery along the way is beautiful. You see alluvial fans, rock formations, and the stark beauty that characterizes Death Valley. The turn off to Ubehebe Crater is right where the road heads into the mountains to Scotty’s Castle.

As a side note, the road to Scotty’s Castle closed in 2015 after a major rainstorm caused significant damage. It was expected to re-open in 2023, but the remnants of Hurricane Hillary dumped 2.2 inches of rain on the park in a day. That compares to an annual rainfall of 2.15 inches. Roads were damaged across the park and the park closed for several months. The damage done to Scotty’s Castle road delayed the reopening which is now not expected until 2025.

As you approach the craters, you enter a field of ash and lava. You pass the turn off to Racetrack Valley before arriving at the parking lot at the crater’s rim. Here is the view from just a short distance from the parking lot.

The craters formed in a steam and gas explosion triggered when rising magma came into contact with groundwater. The exploding gas threw rock in the air leaving deposits of both basaltic lava and fragments of sandstone. It is quite an impressive sight. Click on any image to see a full-sized version.

Snow-covered Tin Mountain loomed over the crater’s rim. Tin Mountain is a 8,953-foot (2,729 meter) mounting in the Cottonwood Mountains, part of the Panamint Range. Off to the left is Dry Mountain in the Last Chance Range.

The colors and patterns of the crater rocks and the Grapevine Mountains of the Amargosa Range are striking.

Last month I wrote about our visit to Dante’s View in Death Valley National Park. This month we move on to Zabriske Point. Zabriske Point is a highly eroded area with colorful sediment and rock formations along CA-190 south of Furnace Creek. I first heard of the place when I was in high school and my older brother was taking a cinema class that was covering the director Michelangelo Antonioni. Antonioni has a film called Zabriske Point (1970), a somewhat bizarre film of which I only remember people rolling in the dirt at Zabriske Point in Death Valley and a house blowing up at the end of the movie.

Zabriske Point is named after Christian Brevoort Zabriske, a VP and General Manager of the Pacific Borax Company. The Pacific Borax Company drove development of the borax mining industry in Death Valley in the early 20th century and made Twenty-Mule Team Borax a household name.

The area around Zabriske Point is composed of sediments from an ancient lake, it is part of the Amargosa Range, just like Dante’s View. This makes for a variety of colors and textures in the landscape. The parking area is just off of CA-190 and it is a short walk up to a view area. The view to the west has what is perhaps the “point” in Zabriske Point.

Looking back at the parking area, you can see the Funeral Mountains in the background. Click on any picture for a full-sized version.

The light foreground sediment contrasts with the dark rock in the higher elevations.

Last month I started my series of pictures from our trip to Death Valley this last April. From our stop at the Father Crowley Overlook, we drove down through the Panamint Valley, over Towne Pass, and into Death Valley proper. We stopped at Stovepipe Wells where I picked up my lifetime National Parks and Federal Recreation Lands Pass (age has its benefits) before heading to Furnace Creek and our lodgings at the Ranch at Death Valley.

A downside of a trip to Death Valley is the cost of food and the lack of options. We had dinner at the Last Kind Words Saloon, where the service was good and the food was decent, but the prices were quite high. If you are traveling during the winter and spring, make your dinner reservations in advance, as things fill up quickly. In any case, we had a nice room and overall the resort was in good condition. We were up the next morning and after an expensive and so-so buffet breakfast, we drove off to our first stop of the day, Dante’s View.

Dante’s View is about 24 miles (39 km) from Furnace Creek. With the windy road and a significant elevation climb, it is about an hour’s drive. The drive itself is pleasant. You pass Zabriske Point on the way (our visit there will come in a later post) and Twenty Mule Team Canyon. The drive through Twenty Mule Team Canyon is picturesque, but I don’t take it in a low-clearance car as it is rocky and steep in places. Apparently several scenes from Return of the Jedi were filmed there, but I admit I did not notice anything that would connect the location to the movie.

Once you make it past the last steep grade to the parking lot at Dante’s View, you are rewarded with an amazing view. On any visit to Death Valley, this is not a place to be missed. With our rainy winter, Telescope Peak and the Panamint Range was just amazing across the valley to the north. Click on any picture to see a full-sized view.

Dante’s View is 5,575 ft (1,699 m) above the valley floor and has an amazing panoramic view in all directions.

Dante’s view is directly above Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America. The parking lot for Badwater Basin is just out of view.

The view to the northwest up the valley is remarkable.

Part of the Black Mountains in the Amargosa Range, Dante’s View is named after Dante Alghieri, author of the Divina Commedia. It was named in 1926 when the Pacific Borax Company was beginning to realize the tourist value of Death Valley and was introduced to the site by the Deputy Sheriff of Greenwater.

In April of this year, we took a four day / three night trip to Death Valley National Park. We’d always wanted to visit the park in a proper time of year — that is, when it is not burning hot. Death Valley National Park is, to quote the National Park Service, the “hottest, driest, and lowest national park.” It is also the largest national park in the contiguous 48 states at over 3.4 million acres. We had our maps and our guide book and were ready for our visit.

We left mid-morning, heading across the San Fernando Valley, up CA-14 through Lancaster, Palmdale, and Mojave. We stopped for a picnic lunch at the Red Rock Canyon Visitors Center, merged up with US-395 near Inyokern, and stopped for gas at the turn-off to Death Valley in Olancha.

Our first stop of our trip was the Father Crowley Overlook. Named for Fr. John J. Crowley, this vista point has remarkable views down Rainbow Canyon and across the Panamint Valley to the Panamint and Argus ranges of mountains. As we pulled into the parking lot, we were greeted by an amazing view of the snow-covered Panamint Mountains with Telescope Peak standing tall at the center. We were lucky to be traveling to Death Valley at the end of a wet winter as the snow-capped mountains made a great contrast to the colorful and stark desert below. Click on any picture to see a full-sized version.

Fr. Crowley, also known as Padre Crowley, was a Catholic priest in the easter Sierra in the early-mid 20th century. He worked to help residents of this sparsely-populated but beautiful area and earned a reputation for effective administration and hard work. He did much to enhance tourism in the area, which includes the Death Valley, the lowest point, and Mt. Whitney, the highest point, in the contiguous 48 states.

There is a monument to Fr. Crowley at the overlook. The plaque on the monument reads:

Father John J. Crowley

From the snowy heights of the Sierras beyond the deep shadows of Death Valley, beloved and trusted by people of all faiths, he led them toward life’s wider horizons.

He passed this way.

Father Crowley Overlook is above Rainbow Canyon, also called Star Wars Canyon due to the rock colors reminding people of Luke’s home on Tatooine. This view looks west from the overlook.

Looking east from the overlook, the twisted rock layers in the Panamint Range are stark and beautiful.

South of the overlook is the Argus Range, the western boundary of Panamint Valley. The tallest peak in the range, Maturango Peak, is in the center of the frame.

Finally, here is a panorama showing the remarkable views to the east and south. Click on the picture to embiggen.

In my previous post, I mentioned that the next series of photos would be from Death Valley. That was wrong. We had visited Anacortes over Thanksgiving last year and I have some nice photos from our time there.

One day I drove up Mt. Erie, the highest point on Fidalgo Island at 1,273 feet (388 m). The view from the top is great, although the trees are growing up and are starting to interfere. Here is the view looking southwest, with the snow-covered Olympic Mountains across the Salish Sea. Click on the picture to see a full-sized version.

No trip to Anacortes is complete without a stop at Washington Park. I took the circle drive later in the day with a beautiful fall sunset in the sky.

I stopped and took a walk through the woods. With the fading light the turned leaves looked like they were glowing in the dark.

This is the eighth installment of my travelogues of our summer trip in 2022 when we travelled from Los Angeles to Anacortes and back. You can find the prior installments by scrolling down from the home page of the blog or by going to the Road Trip tag in the side bar. At this point in the trip we are heading home, traveling south from Anacortes.

Our destination the day we stopped at Tahoma National Cemetery was Hood River, Oregon. Hood River is a nice little town on the Columbia River, 60 miles (97 kilometers) east of Portland. We’ve stopped here on previous trips as it is a convenient distance from Anacortes. We stayed at the Best Western Plus Hood River Inn and had a nice dinner at a real find of a ramen restaurant called Mugen Noodle. I highly recommend it if you are passing through Hood River. This panorama was taken from the path by the hotel and you can see that the view is excellent (click on any picture to get a full sized image).

The Hood River-White Salmon Interstate Bridge, commonly called the Hood River Bridge, is also right by the hotel. Opening in 1924, the bridge has narrow lanes, no shoulder, and is reaching the end of its serviceable life. A replacement was proposed in 2023 and construction should begin in 2025.

We planned to stay two nights in Hood River because we wanted to visit the Bonneville Dam. The dam is 24 miles (39 kilometers) west of Hood River. The dam consists of two powerhouses and a spillway, with one powerhouse on the Oregon side and one on the Washington side. There are visitor centers on both sides of the river, with the Oregon one located on Bradford Island in the Columbia River. Water thunders through the spillway, seen from the Bradford Island Visitor Center.

On our way south from Anacortes, we stopped at Tahoma National Cemetery to visit my father-in-law’s grave. He died in November, 2020 and, as veteran who served at the end of WWII, had the benefit of being able to be interred at one of the national cemeteries. This being Memorial Day, I thought I would write to honor him and all those who have fought for our country.

The Tahoma National Cemetery is east of Kent, Washington. The day we visited was beautiful. It was warm but not hot. The sky was clear. Mt. Rainier was visible in the distance.

The VA has a good grave locator. The grave locator has a link to a map and with it we were able to find his grave without any trouble.

It was nice to wander and look at ways the men and women buried there had served our country.

May God bless all who have served and are serving the United States of America. In particular, may God care for those who gave their lives in service to our country. As Abraham Lincoln said in the Gettysburg Address:

… that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863

Here is another installment of photos from our road trip to Anacortes, Washington in July 2022. You can find prior posts by following the Road Trip tag in the side bar. On a pleasant, somewhat overcast Sunday morning we headed out to visit the Samish Overlook. At 1,200 feet (365 meters) above sea level it has great views across Samish Bay to the San Juan Islands and across the farmlands of Skagit County. This panorama is the view that greets you when you step away from the parking lot. Click on the picture to embiggen.

I found out about the Samish Overlook when I was looking for good places to hike. That search led me to find the Oyster Dome trail, a five-mile round-trip hike with 1,050 foot (320 meter) elevation gain. In the end, I didn’t have any takers for the hike, but the overlook seemed like a good place to visit. And it was.

To get there from Anacortes, you need to go east to Burlington, take I-5 north exiting at Lake Samish road. Going west from there you turn left on Barrell Springs road and shortly come to a right turn to go to Mount Blanchard and the Samish Overlook. It was quite steep in a section shortly before arriving at the overlook, but apparently the road has been upgraded since I was there.

Here is a view looking southwest with Samish Bay in the foreground, Padilla Bay on the far side of the peninsula, and Anacortes in the distance.