death valley

Scotty's Castle
The unfinished pool

Scotty's Castle

Ubehebe Crater, small crater

Ubehebe Crater, large crater

Not too close!!

Wednesday 19th March

Today we got up nice and early as we wanted to check out some more of Death Valley. There was a couple of other bits we wanted to see before we headed off. We travelled north from Beatty and went to a place called Scotty's Castle. This was built by a guy (Scotty) between 1922 and 1931 in the middle of Death Valley. It was amazing to see this castle which was it's own oasis in the middle of what looks like desert. It has a long history of ownership from the time building stopped as there was a disagreement with the council on the location it was built. It was 1 mile out of place, it should have been on private property but it was not. Scotty stopped building and began legal proceedings to fix the situation, but he died and so did his wife and to cut a long story short the National Parks bought it to keep it as National Heritage. The building is about 90% complete and would of been unbelievable if it was completed. The largest part not complete was a massive swimming pool in the front. From there we went to Ubehebe Crater which is an old extinct volcano that erupted about 2000 years ago, which is relatively new in terms of age. It exploded from magma heating underground water and left black volcanic ash in a six mile radius. The view was great from the top but it was as windy as all hell. Now we were finished with Death Valley and after negotiation we went back to Stovepipe Wells, out of Death Valley and went to Los Angeles again, this time we wanted to go to Disneyland. We looked up in our trusty discount book and found a cheap motel within 500 metres of Disneyland so we were nice and close. It was only around 300 ks to Los Angeles from the edge of Death Valley so it was really not too much out of our way. The owner of the motel hooked us up with some cheap Disneyland and California Disneyland tickets. There are two Disneyland Parks at the one location and you need a ticket to cover both parks not just one. Off for more roller coasters and fun tomorrow!