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We woke up in Beatty, Nevada, knowing that we were headed back into Death Valley that day. The Rough Guide had suggested a couple of things that we decided we would do and that night we were going to actually stay in the valley, as I had called the number in our hostel listings and discovered that the hostel had been bought by a lady called Cynthia who was in the process of turning it into a proper hotel for real people, as opposed to backpackers. She had said that she owned another B and B, but that it would be out of our price range but, won over by my British charm, she had said that she would do us a special rate at this new place as it wasn't quite finished and we were obviously living on the breadline...Anyway, more about that later.
We headed out of Beatty (admittedly not that sad to be leaving) and went looking for a place called Ryolite, which is another ghost town (though considerably warmer than the last one we'd visited!) and a strange desert sculpture place. We found it without much difficulty. Ryolite is much less impressive than Bodie and much younger - I think there may have been people living there up until about 3 weeks ago (well, that's probably an exaggeration, but let's just say I was a little bit underwhelmed by the place.) The one thing that stands out the most about the place is one house which is built entirely out of bottles, but you couldn't really get up close to it and so I didn't get any photos...just imagine looking at a house and where you'd normally expect to see bricks you see the bottoms of bottles. It would've been better if the bottles were upright, but I guess that's why I've been working in sales and not construction. I took photos of the freaky sculptures, which I have to admit made for quite a weird atmosphere, but we didn't hang around long.
We set off, with the roof down to try and work up a bit of a breeze as the air con is pretty much useless when faced with the heat that we were experiencing. We were headed for Scotty's Castle, which is the biggest tourist attraction in the valley - other than the valley itself I guess. We went there buoyed on by how great Hearst Castle had been and prepared to be blown away by the incongruity (good word, no?) of this luxurious place in the middle of bloomin' nowhere, and it took us a good long way off route, but it seemed a shame not to make the effort when it's doubtful either of us will ever have the opportunity again. We got onto the tour, which was run by a man supposedly wearing period costume (the period being the 1930s.) He was wearing a pair of Levis, a denim shirt and a stetson (frankly, I wasn't impressed with the effort he'd made!) and spoke with such a thick American accent that we had difficulty understanding the majority of what he said (God knows what the Israelis on the tour picked up from it!) His commentary was jumbled, to say the least, leaving us not really understanding much about the place by the end of the tour, but it was relatively cool inside the castle and was a welcome relief from the desert heat. The castle was relatively impressive, I suppose, and they had a full working church organ in one room which was kind of weird, but it had nothing on Hearst Castle...
Anyway, we set off from there aiming to work our way through Death Valley and out the south end of it. It was oppressively hot, with the temperature hitting 96 degrees. We made a couple of stops whenever we had the chance, and bought an ice cream at Furnace Creek, which is the most luxurious hotel in the area (and very nice it looked too!) We came to the south edge in the late afternoon and started making an effort to find the hostel/hotel. Cynthia had told me on the phone that she would be there working on the place and so would meet us, but we were later than we had expected, so weren't exactly sure what to expect. We got to Tecopa, the town where we hoped to find her, to discover that it was simply a road that stretched either way into the desert and seemed to have very little more than just houses. No petrol station, no shop, nowhere to get anything to eat, so we were a little concerned. I ended up knocking on someone's door to ask for directions and unfortunately she was clueless (despite living in a town made up of about 10 buildings - surely you'd know everything about everyone?!) but thankfully she had a guest who knew exactly what I was wittering on about and offered to lead us up there in his car. Off we went...not entirely sure that he wasn't driving us off into the desert to meet our grizly fate, but with very few other options! As promised he led us to Cynthia, who is one of the warmest people I have ever met. She had just written us a note and pinned it to the door as she was about to leave, telling us that she had thought about it, and gosh darn it (they say that over here), it was silly for us to stay in the place that was not fully decorated, and that as long as we promised not to tell the other guests we could stay at her other B and B and pay $50 for the night instead of the standard $100. How sweet is that?? We were obviously very grateful and, after being shown the teepees (which they were setting up as an accommodation option for future guests...with carpets and beds in them!) by Cynthia's business partner, we got back in the car to be led by Cynthia in her massive truck to her other place. I am not kidding you, it was the most remote place I think I have ever been. You would never have known it was there! She actually led us through a canyon, where stone rose above us up to about 30/40 feet in the air, leaving a very narrow pathway down the middle. I have to say we felt pretty foolish at this point with our roof down as Cynthia's truck created so much dust we were both covered in a coat of it when we got to our destination. Which was beautiful. It was really just Cynthia's house which is in the grounds of a date farm. She rents it from the owner of the date farm and has done up 3 or 4 of the rooms in order to run it as a B and B. She used to be an interior designer in Las Vegas but yearned for a simpler life and says that she always loved the desert (which frankly, you'd have to if you lived there, as you can hardly just pop out to Asda!) She took us to our room, told us dinner would be served at 7pm and left us to our own devices.
We sat down to dinner with Cynthia's other guests - a middle aged couple called Peter and Deanne, a little bit late as they had got lost in the dark in the desert. Really not my idea of fun, but she was driving and he was navigating, so there was obviously no hope! As an apology they had picked up a bottle of locally brewed rose in a place called Pahrump, which Peter insisted on calling Pomme Frite. He was British and she was Canadian, and they live in Devon, but were on a road trip around the area and then were headed to her home town in Canada for a week or so before heading back to the UK. They were a lovely couple and made really good company - something that I think we both appreciate after having spent so much time alone together! The food Cynthia cooked for us was delicious and it was great to swap stories from our travels.
The following morning we got up and had breakfast whilst chatting to Cynthia about our next destination and then headed out. To Las Vegas baby!! x
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