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Eureka Thanksgiving

We were privileged to join Robert Brownstein for Thanksgiving in Eureka Valley in 1999. We had a wonderful time, as some of these pictures may suggest. The QTVR shows a 360- degree panorama of the valley just outside our campsite. (It's 2.2M -- sorry.)

The dune is in the background of some of the panorama; it is clearly made of sand and is about 700 feet high. The mountains are in the background of other parts of the picture. The immense size and loneliness sometimes plays tricks on your mind out there.

This image is a part of the dune --
The eastern end of the dune.
-- and shows the eastern slope, with the mountains in the background.

This image shows someone on the knife edge of the dune --
On the dune's edge
-- and you can see the footsteps leading up to the person standing on the dune.

This is the campsite as seen from the south --
The campsite, with our sleeping bags on the tent.
-- and we have our sleeping bags on top of our tent to air out.

Since some of the group could not take off from work early, we had our Thanksgiving dinner on Friday. Robert baked two 16- pound turkeys in his barbecue grills, Red and Alec passed around quesadillas and egg rolls made from scratch. Louise and I contributed two bottles of Chandon, and Louise fried apple rings in butter and brown sugar. Ian made a pizza from scratch (including making the dough!) and baked it in a barbecue grill. All the food was absolutely delicious. After the meal, Ian passed around a bottle of Amaretto as a digestíf. Wonderful.

Louise and I got up every morning a little before 7:00. My official REI keychain thermometer said 20 degrees each morning. The sun did not get past the mountains to the east until after 8:00, so the warm up was excruciatingly slow; however, by about 11:00 it was hitting 60 degrees, and it stayed there until sunset at about 4:15 behind the western mountain range.

Overnight lows were likely in the high teens, and our water generally froze if we left it outside the tent. We would fill the coffee pot the night before so we would have water in it in the morning. It was frozen solid every morning and took awhile longer to get to boiling, even though the altitude at the valley was 3,050 feet. The mountains on either side of the valley rise another thousand feet or so above the floor.

The skies were just as gorgeous during the day as they were at sunset --
Gorgeous skies over the dune.
-- and this view shows the clouds over the dune. We roasted chestnuts on an open fire one night, and no one knew how to tell if they were done. Then they started exploding, so we decided that the exploded ones we could find were most likely to be done. Nope. That was not it. So Red punctured the next round before putting them on the fire. Then we decided that they were done after they stopped burning. Nope. That was not it, either. Sometimes life is like that.

This view of the dune is what we saw from camp --
Overview of the dune, with hikers.
-- and there were four hikers on the near ridge.

This view is with a 210mm lens and a 2X converter, equivalent to 420mm --
Close up view of the hikers.
-- showing the hikers on the ridge near the lower portion of the crescent of sunny sand.

The sunsets were glorious. This shot was taken at about 4:15 pm, just after the sun went down behind the mountains --
Just after sunset.
Eureka Valley is about 550 miles south and east of San Francisco. From Mojave, California, it is north on 395. Eureka Valley was only recently added to the Death Valley National Park, so older maps may not include it.

For additional information on Death Valley and its environs, see Death Valley National Park Tourist Information, a Web page maintained by Janet Westbrook, who can see Telescope Peak from her computer. It has a ton of information: road reports, weather, camping spots, sights, directions, events, and more.

Wrybread have added their page about this trip at Death Valley, with great shots of the Shiek and his turkey, some kangaroo rat action, and a gorgeous panorama from the top of the dune.

Photos from our 2000 trip are also online.

Photos from our 2004 trip are online.

For current information on Eureka Valley: See the Death Valley Talk Message Board. Check for washouts, weather, road conditions, recent photos, and post queries.