Woke up in the morning to a glorious day with a few fluffy clouds hanging around. Couple of birds were running around the lawn just beyond our patio. We got ready, grabbed some sandwiches from the shop and set out towards Ubehebe crater. But first we decided to fill up the tank as we didn't want to risk running out of "gas" in the middle of nowhere. Let me tell you - the the gas pump charges a premium just because of that. Prices were round 80% higher - round the same price we pay in the UK anyways (lol). We stopped at the furnace creek visitor centre to get a sticker for our car which showed that we had a permit to be in the the park.
Near the crater the road forms a one way loop. We noticed a sign pointing toward "The Racetrack" within this one way loop. At this time we were heading towards the Ubehebe crater so we went onwards (and upwards - the road steeped upwards). There was a car park at the trail head next to the big Ubehebe crater. It was really really windy there. Luckily the wind was blowing out of the crater and not pulling us towards it. I walked up the trail and after a very short but very steep walk I could see the little Ubehebe crater too. Both of these were created when rising superhot magma hit an underground water table. The resulting explosion could be heard miles away as the steam forced out tonnes and tonnes of earth and formed these two craters.
After coming down the trail and have lunch inside the car we set out for The Racetrack. But we couldn't find the road sign we'd seen before. We turned around and then remembered that the track was from the one way section leading towards Ubehebe. Anyways we set upon the unsaved (stony) road. As before Sushmita drove(she has a thing for off road driving). The first landmark we hit was the aptly named Teakettle Junction. I've heard that the rangers clear out the adornments once a year but people passing. Y make it a point to bring along kettles to adorn this road sign, making it a really novel sight.
Unfortunately we didn't have any kettles (someone had placed a gravy boat too - but we didn't have one of those either). So we continued towards the playa. The first sight of the playa was around a bend.
At this distance it looked like a lake of sand with some rocks jutting out in the middle. But to summarise what it is, a playa is a dried up lake bed. The flattest natural surface possible. The lake gets a few centimetres deep sometimes when the weather is wet but dries up quickly, leaving behind a bed of deposited silt which cracks up. Now there are playas all around the world where conditions like this exist. What sets Racetrack playa different from the others is rocks on this playa move around, leaving tracks in the bed. The science behind this phenomenon is unknown. We then passed the car park park for the "Grandstand" - the name of the rock in the centre. We continued towards the south end of the playa as that's where the majority of the moving stones were.
The stones were clearly visible from the car park, but not the tracks. We walked about 100m on the playa to get to the nearest group of stones.
The tracks were amazing. I had expected them to be roughly in the same direction, as I was suspecting wind action causing the ,movement when the playa was occasionally wet and very slippery. But no, the tracks wee zigzags, sometimes crossing each other, even multiple times. Honestly, I can't think of proper reason behind this phenomenon that I was witnessing first hand. I took lots of pictures. Found that capturing the tracks from different angles made them look lighter or deeper. Once done we had some lunch in the car and headed back towards the grandstand. We didn't do the trek to the grandstand as we knew it was too risky to climb it and it looked better from a distance.
We set back on the long stony track back to the paved road near Ubehebe. We wanted to cover the mesquite sand dines too but the sun was fast going down behind the cottonwood mountains. We reached the Mesquite flat dunes after sundown when there was still some light in the sky. Actually the light stayed for a good half an hour before it was getting too dark to see. A koro had a whale of a time on the dunes. The dunes were not that high, the tallest beeping a few 100 feet. In between the dunes the bedrock peeked out in places.
When it finally got too dark we started back towards the furnace creek ranch. We stopped at the stovepipe wells village on the way, but finally decided to dine again at the 69er cafe tonight too. We had a bit of time after the dinner and walking around in the moonlight was a wonderful experience. I took this picture of the moonrise from the front gate. The gazebos were for some Art exhibition being held, but it added a bit of magic to the picture.
