by Jay Reynolds Freeman, Desert Wuss
By my odometer, it was 476 miles from my home in Palo Alto to the star party area. The route would have been longer, and taken more time, if I had followed the simpler but more circuitous directions provided by on-line map services; fortunately, another attendee who traveled frequently in the area had contributed detailed directions for what short cuts to take, and -- more importantly -- which ones to avoid. I will not repeat his route here, for fear that conditions might change while this posting is still in somebody's archives: Even in March, even with 10 gallons of water in the vehicle, the Mojave Desert is not an environment to take likely, and I would not want anyone to get lost and in deep trouble from listening to me. On some of the roads I took -- well-paved, well-marked two-lane highways -- I drove for more than an hour, during daylight hours, without seeing another car. Roads I did not take were reported to start looking good, but peter out and require four-wheel-drive later on. It would be bad to have a breakdown in places like that.
The landscape was magnificent. In my days as an active lightplane pilot, I explored much of the Mojave at low altitude. It was a delight to see its multicolored, eroded land forms again, the more so from closer up. I love the desert; I just wouldn't want to camp there...
There are adequate fuel and rest stops en route, but don't be tempted to stretch your vehicle's endurance, or your own, till the next town: It may be fifty miles away, or its one gas station may have shut down. This area is full of ghost towns, like Garlock, and incipient ghost towns, perhaps such as Trona, which appeared to be a place with three gas stations, going on one. Fuel prices increase a good deal as you get farther out -- a gallon of 87 octane sold for $1.29 at Buttonwillow (US 5 and California 58), at $1.49 in Trona, and at $1.99 in the National Park. The game is to top your tanks frequently as you enter the desert.
Noteworthy passes lie on the routes from the Bay Area. The toughest and steepest is Towne Pass, just northwest of the Park; its 4956-foot summit lies more than 5000 feet above the valley floor, and features grades up to eight percent, some long enough and twisty enough that careless drivers might burn out their brakes and loose control. Use engine braking here, and take the descents slowly.
There seemed to be plenty of camp sites in the Park. The Texas Springs location had separate areas for tent and RV camping, with a water faucet at about every third parking site and flush toilets within 100 yards. There was no electrical power at the parking locations. I noticed a waste-dump station for vehicle toilets on the way in, and there is a gas station, a store, and diverse other facilities at Furnace Creek, a few minutes' drive away. The fee for RV camping was $12 per night. There was an additional fee of $10 to have a vehicle in the park, camping or not.
Horizons at the camping area were pretty good, but not as good as at our site in Henry Coe State Park. Much of the obscuring topography was within a few hundred yards; what you got varied considerably with which parking space you chose. From my location, Omega Centauri cleared terrain long before it reached culmination.
Death Valley is a long way from light domes. The night sky was *dark*, and dark all the way to the sky line in all directions. I do not think I have ever had as good a view of the winter Milky Way as from this location. Omega Centauri was an obvious and easy naked-eye fuzzball. I didn't even have to know exactly where to look to pick it out. On the other hand, there was local light pollution, from camp sites and from a few bright lights in Furnace Creek. Many of these went out as the night wore on. The lighting situation was quite different from what we Bay Area amateur astronomers have to contend with at our regular sites; mostly we have bright sky, or at least light domes near the horizon, but few lights in the immediate vicinity. At Texas Springs, it was the other way around. Notwithstanding the local light pollution, I would rate this site excellent for any kind of visual dark-sky observing. If I lived within a few hours' drive, I would come here regularly.
I have almost nothing to say about the seeing. On Friday night I set up my Vixen 90 mm fluorite refractor on my modified NexStar 8 mount, and since I was doing deep-sky work, I did not use more than 101x all evening long. Seeing was good enough that splitting Polaris was easy, but not good enough to show more than four stars in the Trapezium. (Stars E and F are no problem for the Vixen 90 mm with better seeing.) Another observer, with a late-model Astro-Physics 155 mm EDT, said that seeing had been better at dusk -- I arrived late and was late setting up -- but, upon discussion, not as good as I had recently encountered with a similar 6-inch instrument in the Bay Area. I had separated Sirius on that previous occasion; he had tried but not succeeded from Texas Springs.
Ambient conditions were quite good. The sky was clear, and temperatures were almost but not quite shirt-sleeve. There was wind enough to jiggle the Vixen 90 on the light Celestron tripod, and enough to drive the wind-chill down to where my down vest and ushanka were more than necessary. Still, for most of the evening I did not find it necessary to zip up my vest. There was no trace of dew.
My observing program with the Vixen was to finish a Herschel-400 survey that I had in progress, and then play. I had not brought anything bigger, anticipating -- not quite correctly -- that my inexperience camping might result in spending so much time and energy dealing with camp gear, that I would not wish to fuss with a larger telescope. I did finish my survey, and also spent quite a while nosing around the Markarian's Chain area of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster. I could see all of the "usual" galaxies in the chain, plus NGC 4468 and 4474.
I almost didn't get to talk to anyone else that evening, since I was anxious to set up my camp and use my own telescope. The only other telescope I looked through was the aforementioned Astro-Physics 155. After I stopped observing, at about 2 AM, I wandered around to other people's set-ups, but almost everyone else had given up and gone to bed. There were perhaps 15 telescopes present Friday evening, including at least two Dobsons in the general range of 20-inch aperture.
Next morning, I slept as late as possible, and when I got up, nearly everyone else had gone sightseeing, so again I didn't get to talk to more than a few people. I had plenty of communication with other attendeed by EMail, prior to the event, but I bet most of them didn't realize that I actually showed up.
I left in the middle of Saturday afternoon, in part because of camping-related problems I shall discuss separately, and in part because it looked as if more serious weather -- at least thick, high cloud -- was entering the area. I have not seen any other reports so far, so I don't know whether the weather developed as it seemed to be threatening. The drive back was just as gorgeous as the drive out, and I was home and soaking in my tub before midnight. My cats didn't seem to have noticed I was gone, but I had put plenty of food and water in their bowls, so what did they care?
I think this material is relevant. I know that some of you have nibbled on the fringes of considering camping out. Perhaps you would like to hear the thoughts and experiences of someone who has basically just tried it for the first time. Well, not quite, but almost.
Twice before I have gone through spells of attempted camping out. Once was in what I would describe as the scout-camp time of life, once was in connection with a sea kayak tour of the San Juan Islands in the early 1990s. Despite good professional advice and good equipment in both of those eras, I decided each time that camping was not for me. Yet the prospect of using camping as an adjunct to astronomical observing tempted me enough to try it again. Perhaps camping with my van handy would be different.
I bought good equipment. I am indebted to members of the TAC mailing list for advice on tents, about a year ago. I ended up with a Walrus Armadillo, that nominally sleeps four, but was very spacious for one, with headroom even. This rather complex tent features an outer shell with vestibule, from which is suspended an inner, enclosure, kind of a cubical cocoon, with a rain cap over the shell. I bought it because it was spacious and because the multi-layer wall was likely to do a better job keeping the sun out when I wanted to sleep than a single thickness of cloth. My first set-up of the tent was at Death Valley, at night, when I was tired, yet it went fast and flawlessly. (I don't have space in my yard to practice at home.) I had no problems handling the tent.
One potential tent problem was circumvented by good luck. I had anticipated that extra tent pegs might be useful, and bought half a dozen foot-long steel ones. The plastic pegs that came with the tent were no use at the site -- the desert floor is something between hardpan and caliche, it chews up plastic pegs and spits them out in small, jagged pieces. Fortunately, six was exactly the right number of pegs to set up the tent, the steel ones worked well, and yes, I had thought to bring a serious mallet to pound them in.
I set the tent up on a ground cloth. Within it I put a large, low folding cot, on which I spread my self-inflating air mattress and my sleeping bag. Again, no problem, all this equipment worked fine, was appropriate to conditions, and was comfortable.
I have been doing one-burner cooking off a hot plate in motel and resort rooms during previous observing expeditions, largely without refrigeration. I leveraged that experience by buying a compact one-burner butane stove for camp use. It worked fine, and was easily sheltered from breezes that threatened. I could boil two quarts of water in perhaps fifteen minutes with it. I already had some cooking gear, and I bought a little more. I had experimented at home with recipes, so I could easily prepare a hot meal in short order -- ask me about my pasta with vegetarian tomato sauce, using textured soy protein, some time. (I promise not to tell about the experiments that failed, like the spaghetti sandwiches.) All went well here, too.
The main problem was that I am one of those people who needs low light level and quiet to sleep. I have tried various kinds of ear plugs and sleep masks in other circumstances, and they are too irritating to put up with; they don't work for me. Once the sun cleared the ridges to the east, the tent lit up and woke me up, and voices, vehicle noise, and music playing in adjacent camp sites was equally distracting. Thus, having driven nearly 500 miles and stayed up past two in the morning, I got only about five hours of sleep. That wasn't enough, and the basis for my decision to pack and leave was the fear that another similarly sleepless night would have left me too tired to drive safely on Sunday.
Contributing to my displeasure was lack of opportunity to take a shower. When I am grubby and sticky, my mood deteriorates, and so does my functionality. Vacation becomes a thing to put up with, not to enjoy. I think I would have gone home even if I had gotten enough sleep, just because I was feeling yucky and grumpy. I did try various obvious things to improve my attitude, including drinking lots of water -- dehydration is a major worry in the desert -- having plenty of coffee, and eating a hot meal. After all that, I felt hydrated, well fed, tired, sticky and grumpy. So I decided to call it quits.
I might still enjoy camping if I were not attempting to do astronomy at the same time -- I expect I could have slept well enough if I had done so during the hours of darkness, when others nearby were quiet -- and if there were a place to swim or shower handy. Yet for astronomical ventures, I seem to be one of those folks who needs an RV the size of an aircraft carrier, with a soft bed, curtained windows, sound proofing in the hull, and enough tanked hot water to soak in. Trouble is, resorts and motels are lots cheaper, and lots easier to drive. If I go to any future Death Valley star parties, I will probably book lodging at the Furnace Creek Ranch or perhaps at a more distant location. Considering the sky and the beauty of the area, it will be well worth it.