We took it easy today, no rush.

Andre and Christoph checked the jeep this morning and it works again.

We drove to Titus Canyon, but first went by Rhyolite.

We first noticed the new sign put up designating Rhyolite as a ghost town and saw a new parking lot almost filled up. The bottle house had a new prison-like fence around it. We signed in the registry and walked over to the watchman who lived up on the hill. He was sitting on the porch of the bottle house flipping though a 3-ring binder with articles and photographs sheet-protected while explaining them to a small group of European tourists. We listened in, but the man was almost finished and offered us the binder to look at.

There was pictures of the mining camps and how the ruined buildings used to look. The man also told us that there were over 30 bars in the town. The bottle house was made from all the bottles in the town. Mostly beer bottles and some whiskey. There were some actual bottles used to build the house in the corner on the ground next to the porch and I could barely get my whole hand around it.

I asked the man when the new fence when up, because last time there was just a regular chain-linked fence. He got off on the wrong foot and started talking about vandalism. I told him I understood that. I just wanted to know when the new fence went up.

We left shortly after that. As Andre and I were walking back to the car, I told Andre, “I think he just wanted to argue.”

I didn’t take it personally, but he took forever to answer my question. It was almost as if I asked him the wrong question about the bottle house.

Now on our way to Titus Canyon and Andre already gets lost by taking some other path off the road. I told him the road started after the sign, but he disagreed until he saw the road we were supposed to be on. I always rely on my direction orientation and gut feeling

I heard that there are some steep dropoffs on the road, so I let Andre drive at first. It wasn’t that bad. We were driving through the Armagosa Valley, so I took over the wheel at our first stop. Then we quickly ascended towards the Grapevine Mountains and that’s when the road was on the cliffs. Andre drove the rest of the way.

The next stop to take pictures and I got out of the car and saw just how much space we had on the road. And it was more than enough. The steep drop offs are exaggerated.

We stopped at Leadfield, a ghost town built of fake advertising. The town was alive only for 1 year. We always left the jeep running when we stopped to avoid being stranded, so I didn’t go far while the guys went to take pictures. At Leadfield I wandered down the road to see what’s next and I saw where the Grapevine Mountains curve and fold toward the ground and then up again at the sky with layers of black, purple and white. This was what I was wanting to see.

We stopped again a little ways down the road and asked Andre to take a picture of me against the layers. I had scrambled up to an old platform of some sort and made sure no rattlesnakes were in my way.

After that we stopped at the spring to find petraglyphs, but they were vandalized terribly. As I was walking back to the jeep, Christoph said he had found some more on the other side of a boulder. These were still untouched, except for the 20th Century smiley face and a peace sign some dipshits tried to carve into the rock. I took a picture of the sun petraglyph so I thought it would make a nice tattoo.

The rest of the drive was amazing, a bunch of oohs and ahhs and “Andre stop the car.” We drove through the Narrows of Titus Canyon as Christoph sat on his window videotaping the view.

When we finished the drive, we came out and saw the wind picked up greatly and there was a huge sand storm. As we drove on paved road again, you could see the sand crossing the road in front of you like water.

On our way back to the motel we stopped by the Harmony Boax Works. Luckily a bus hadn’t arrived yet, but as we were leaving a bus pulled up.

Back at the motel Christoph and Andre went swimming and I stayed in the room. I couldn’t stand the heat and Andre didn’t have to worry about his camera and wallet. Plus I had time to write in my journal

That evening we went to the sand dunes at Stovepipe Wells for sunset. We climbed one of the tall sand dunes and saw the sand storm below the sun. Andre took his photos and then I took photos of him and Christoph playing Frisbee. That was so funny and the Frisbee caught the wind at the end and flew for almost 50 yards. Andre was exhausted when he came back from running after it.

We had chili and soup for dinner using our propane stove one last time on vacation. It was too windy for me so I ate in the room. After that I watched the end of a show I wanted to watch about ancient marine animals where this one fish could of wiped out the other animals if the asteroid hadn’t came and destroyed over 90% of the earth’s species.