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| 03/23/2007 | 0800 Friday, up early for breakfast and make our lunches for the day. Then off to Scotty's Castle to pick up our tickets for the Lower Vine Ranch tour. This tour started along the roadside up towards Ubehebe Crater. This is a guided walking tour, our guide was Ranger Audrey for this two and a half hour trip. Lower Vine Ranch was Scotty's private residence. He actually lived here and not at the Castle for the most part. He kept his mules and dogs here with him. This area is where Albert Johnson grew a crop of alphalfa for three years in order to prove the land and gain title to it. There is plenty of water here from the lower vine springs. |
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| The house was built for Scotty by Albert Johnson. This house is not your typical cottage, it is built of redwood with well insulated walls. You can see the craftmanship that went in to the building of this place, the outside corners of the exterior walls are cut at 45 degrees like cabinet work would be.
The house is surrounded by cottonwood trees and is very pleasant, we saw a coopers hawk flying overhead. After the tour we returned to Scotty's Castle for a picknic lunch and then drove out to Beatty. We stopped at the Death valley nut and Candy Store and bought candy and treated ourselves to an ice-cream! |
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| Next we went to the Bullfrog-Rhyolite cemetary. In all the trips to this area we have never been to bullfrog or the cemetary! It was getting warm now, about 94. |  |
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We continued back to camp over Daylight pass where we saw several groups of Skitter birds, these look like large quail. These are not native birds but were introduced by Albert Johnson as game birds. Then down via Mud Canyon where we saw several varieties of flowers including Desert Five Spots! Back at camp we had our enchilada dinner, a campfire and met our new neighbors. This was a very pleasant evening, nice temperatures and a light breeze. The wind did pick up after we went to bed. |
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