Wednesday would turn out to be another exciting day in the park! We woke up that morning with the plan of taking the Racetrack trail to Lippincot Mine and into Saline Valley to the hot springs. Linda had some friends staying there and I was very excited because I had wanted to spend some time there but I wasn't sure we could fit it in.
We packed up camp and headed north to make a quick detour to Scotty's Castle. It is unreal to think so long ago people paid $2 million to build this mansion in the desert. We didn't pay for the tour but did walk around the grounds and checked out the visitor's center which had a little museum.
Onward we went towards the Racetrack, first making a stop at the Ubehebe Crater. The crater was massive with black cinders all around. You could walk to the bottom but the grade was so steep it would have taken almost an hour to hike out so we skipped that. Josh had noticed the steering wheel was a little off on the truck and after closer inspection at the Crater it looked like part of the steering was bent into the boot on the passenger side. Luckily the truck wasn't shaking or pulling so we decided to carry on to the Racetrack.
After leaving the Crater the road turned to graded dirt. It was quite bouncy but nothing crazy we thought. Poor Linda and her Tiger RV were having a tough time though. We crawled a few miles at about 15 mph. About 5 miles in we decided to stop and air down the tires in hopes of making the ride smoother. At mile 6 one of Linda's rear tires shredded off the rim. Josh and Linda changed the tire and we decided it would be best to get her back to pavement since she was now without a spare. We followed her back to the Crater and she was off to Beatty,Nevada for a new tire. We agreed that there was no way her RV would make it to the hot springs without more issues so the plan changed to meeting back at Panimint Springs that evening.
Back down the Racetrack we went, and we were able to make up some time with increased speed. There wasn't much to look at for the first 2/3 of the trail but finally we made it to the famous Teakettle Junction.
Just a few more miles down the road we could finally see the Racetrack Playa and Grandstand coming into view. It was certainly an amazing site. We stopped about halfway down the playa and found some of the sailing stones, but were directed by some half-naked college kids that we needed to move further south to see the bigger rocks.
We drove to the very south end of the playa, parked and walked about 1/2 mile to where most of the rocks were. It was well worth it because we got to see quite a few of the sailing stones and got some great pictures.
Looking to the north you could see a mirage of water around the Grandstand, and although it was only in the 80's I could easily picture those tales of people crossing the desert on foot and what that must be like.
It was getting late in the day, around 430p as we got back in the truck to venture down the Lippincot Mine trail. This was the roughest-rated trail of our whole journey with an estimated time of 1.5 hours to complete so I was starting to get concerned about making it to camp in time in Panamint. The road ended up being a very narrow shelf road with less than zero room to pass but we wouldn't consider it overly rough. Lucky for us we didn't come upon a single vehicle and we were able to clear the trail in about half an hour.
We hit Saline Valley Road around 5pm and turned south again to get to Panamint Springs. This part of the trail was beautiful going through the valley with huge mountains. Just before reaching the highway we came upon a HUGE forest of Joshua Trees. We stopped for more pictures and to let Josh finally soak up some of his special trees.
From here it was paved all the way to Panamint Springs. Just as we were pulling into town, Linda called out on the radio. She too had just arrived and secured a campsite. We paid for a spot next to her - the campground was nothing to really write home about but they did have showers and internets, plus there was an excellent little cafe across the street. We set up camp and had dinner at the cafe and soon after I passed out after a long day in the sun.
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