36.60530, -117.14520
A fine sunrise walk found the rocks diminishing, with sandiness increasing. After a few miles I reached the highway, crossed over, and hiked more or less parallel with it among the Mesquite Dunes.
I must say these were some pretty nice dunes–shapely, interspersed with mesquites, and relatively easy to walk on. Much easier than the footing of the last few days.
Nonetheless, once I got to the visitor parking zone I cut over to the highway and roadwalked it the last mile into Stovepipe. But not before I snagged an unopened water bottle that someone had left at the edge of the parking lot. The hot weather and slogging pace of the last couple days caused me to drink more water than expected, and I ran out before I got to the dunes. There was no emergency, but I was definitely feeling dry and so was glad to chance upon an abandoned bottle.
My first stop at Stovepipe was the campground. I was planning to camp in the tent area, but the good spots were mostly taken, shade was sparse, and it was already hot and windy. So I walked across the street to the motel and found that they had reasonably priced accommodations available. Or at least that would be available by 4pm. But a pool pass was included in the price of the room, so I made my way over to the pool and jumped in the shower there, taking care to toss all my clothes into the shower stall with me for a rinse-out.
My next chore was to go dig up my resupply box from behind the ranger station. It had escaped the notice of coyotes and I recovered it intact. Good thing, as the general store had little that would serve as backpacking food, or really, nutrition of any kind. They were also completely out of sunscreen, which certainly seems a bit of poor inventory management on their part. I mean, a run on sunscreen in Death Valley during spring break hardly counts as a surprise surge in demand. They blamed the supply chain, that being the all-purpose excuse of 2023.
The rest of the morning and early afternoon was spent hanging out on the motel porch, enjoying the shade while munching snacks and drinking cold drinks from the store. I was joined in this pursuit by a very vocal and gregarious raven. It seemed more interested in company than scavenging, ignoring the crumbs I occasionally spilled. Instead it perched on the rail, looked at me and kept making a gurgling sort of call. Not sure what it wanted, but it seemed amiable enough and not at all Edgar Allan Poe-ish.
