Five years ago now, I received an email that began thusly. Needless to say, I was intrigued. I just wanted to drop a quick line to say howdy. I only recently stumbled across your site and felt a bit of deja vu. I'm a photographer and I've spent the last 3-4yrs exploring the western side of North America in my 1998 Taco (with 400k miles on her!) and have been to a lot of the same amazing places you have. Luckily, you've been to a lot of places I haven't as well and given me some great inspiration. It seems…
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National Park | Preserve | Monument
While it may seem that most of my trips are well-planned months in advance, the reality is that I usually only have general sense of where I'm going - Death Valley or Utah or Canada or whatever - until two weeks before I leave, at which point I'm frantically looking for something to do that will be amazingly cool. Luckily, there seems to be no end of amazingly cool things in nature, so I'm usually OK. This time, it was a Thursday when I suggested to @mrs.turbodb, "We aren't doing anything next week. Want to go to Death Valley for…
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The last quarter of 2025 has not been kind to Death Valley National Park. Major flooding occurred on September 19th, wiping out many roads that'd only recently reopened after hurricane Hillary went through in 2023. The September rains couldn't have happened at a worse time. The NPS - already historically underfunded in my opinion - had been gutted by asinine firings and government cutbacks. Budgets for managing and maintaining our National Treasures had been reduced dramatically. This resulted in cleanups that took longer than ever, a situation that was further exacerbated by a government shutdown - over the availability of…
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Our last trip to Death Valley - our first time exploring the Backside of the Black Mountains - I mentioned that every time I visit my favorite National Park, I always seemed to come away with a longer list of places to see after the trip, than I had going in. Of course, it happened again. After wandering around the Black Mountains for three full days - which included driving every road in the entire area - and before I'd even posted my stories of the adventure, I knew of several more places that I would take longer to explore…
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First prints. Every time I visit Death Valley, I cover some amount of ground. I know this because I fill every daylight hour with hiking, driving, climbing, and poking my head into places that a younger, smarter me would certainly avoid. Somehow, though, at the end of each trip, I realize that my list of places to explore has gotten longer. It happens without fail. Every. Single. Time. In 2018 - when @mrs.turbodb and I were exploring the Ibex Dunes and the talc mines near Saratoga and Ibex Spring - I noticed a little valley on the eastern flank of…
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As we explored Montana in July, it was Monte @Blackdawg who suggested that a December trip to Death Valley would be the perfect time to get everyone together for a visit to the desert. Having planned our first trip in 2021, I set about building an itinerary that would pick up where we left off, taking us through entirely new terrain over the course of six days in the desert. Then, a week before blast-off, the plumbing in Monte's new house exploded. Understandably, that put a crimp in his ability to join, and soon after, Mike @Digiratus, Zane @Speedytech7, and…
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Winter. You will never hear me share my love for winter in the Pacific Northwest. Here, during the period of the year that lasts from the end of the September until the beginning of July, it is gray, dark, and damp. Still - for the last seven years - I find myself looking forward to the season. Winter, for me, signals the time of year for trips to Death Valley. A vast wonderland of exploration that - every time I visit - seems to reveal additional secrets and endless ideas for future adventures. After 20 trips to this spectacular place,…
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I always look forward to winter. Not to the snow - though a day swishing down the slopes is always enjoyable - or for the cozy afternoons enjoying popcorn and a movie, but because they mean that it is time - once again - to explore the desert. Having wrapped up the last of the work on the Tacoma - a new 5th gear and some major repair work to the bed - while it was housed at home, the end of October meant that it was time for the long drive south to escape the cold, wet weather of…
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It's been more than a year since I last visited Death Valley. Hit hard by Hurricane Hillary, nearly the entire road system of the Park was closed, and it's taken a long time for it to re-open. In fact, even today, many of my favorite trails - the ones that shuttle intrepid explorers to the far reaches of remote valleys - are still closed. I've tried to satisfy my desert appetite with places a little further south in the Mojave, and even the lower lying Colorado deserts, but there's something special about Death Valley for me. I can't take it any…
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With the Pacific Northwest winter in full swing, both @mrs.turbodb and I were itching for warmer temperatures and a bit of sun as we planned our trip to the far southern reaches of California and Joshua Tree National Park. I'd visited for my first time almost exactly a year earlier, and this would be an introductory visit for my companion, one I hoped she'd enjoy given the heavy emphasis on hiking - and the nearly-complete-lack-of-driving - that I had planned. Plus, with surroundings composed of rock wonderlands and sunny skies, I Was reasonably confident that we'd be pleasantly entertained. As…
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This wasn't a typical adventure for us. There were no tents, only a few miles of dusty roads, and not once did we yearn for the day when we could finally hop in the shower. In fact, this adventure was so vacation-esque that I had no plans to write a story, and even contemplated leaving my camera at home. And yet, as we found ourselves exploring the big island of Hawaii - a new-to-us destination, since we've traditionally enjoyed Kauai - the things we saw were familiar but new, and as exciting as ever.
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As always, we wanted to run a BDR this summer, and I'd had my eye on Colorado or Utah as both are always beautiful states through which to travel. With record snowfall across the west, we realized a few weeks before our departure date that Colorado was completely out of the question, and even portions of the Utah route could still be blocked by snow. Still, the Utah BDR is an iconic route. Meandering 871-miles through the Valley of Gods, climbing the Moki Dugway, picking the perfect route through the rough roads of Lockhart Basin, and winding through four mountain ranges…
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I've been itching to get out of California for a while now. Over the last 16 months, a full 15 of my 24 trips have been to the Golden State, and I'm starting to miss the variety offered by places like Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming. Of course, the high elevations and northern reaches are still snowed in, but there's never a shortage of amazing hiking and exploration to be done in the Grand Gulch and Cedar Mesa area So, with a few days to burn, I'm headed out in search of history. With more than 30 miles of trails, it'd…
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We didn't plan to go to the Mojave. In fact, I've felt as though - over the last year - I've spent too much time in California, and I've had an urge to find myself back in places like Utah and Colorado. Alas, with a fantastic trip planned to hike the canyons of the Grand Gulch and Cedar Mesa, the weather did not cooperate. Snow - and lots of it - blanketed southeast Utah, rain spread across much of the lowland south. And so, at the last minute, I whipped up an itinerary to the only place I could find…
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In all the years I've been exploring the deserts of southern California, I've never made it to Joshua Tree National Park. The reason - if a little lame - is also simple: it's just too far away. Now, I know what you're thinking - they drive 20+ hours from Washington to Death Valley on a regular basis - and Joshua Tree is too far? Yes. It's a few more hours, and even I have my limits for what are usually 5-day trips where we leave at 8:00am and need to get at least a few hours of sleep before starting the…
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Almost exactly a month ago, we headed south to Death Valley. Our goal - to explore a handful of places we've left behind over our years of exploration: There are several places that I've wanted to check out in Death Valley for quite some time, but that haven't fit into the route or schedule for previous trips. Hoping to knock off a bunch of those places that I've "left behind," I set about planning a route that would take us along West Side Road and the eastern escarpment of the Panamint Mountains. From there, we'd repeatedly climb into the canyons,…
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There are several places that I've wanted to check out in Death Valley for quite some time, but that haven't fit into the route or schedule for previous trips. Hoping to knock off a bunch of those places that I've "left behind," I set about planning a route that would take us along West Side Road and the eastern escarpment of the Panamint Mountains. From there, we'd repeatedly climb into the canyons, exploring the mines, narrow passages, and vistas that each had to share. It would - I thought - be a lot like our trip along the Nadeau Trail,…
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Preserved as a 205,000-acre wilderness adjacent to Death Valley National Park, the Inyo Mountains rank among the most formidable and majestic mountains in the California desert. Forming the western backdrop of Saline Valley, they rise in just a few miles from an elevation of a little over 1,000 feet at the valley floor to above 11,000 feet. Very few places in the desert are this steep over such distances. From Saline Valley, this abrupt wall appears to be impassable - and it is nearly that. The few roads that make ingress into this sheer wilderness of stone are short but…
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Let me share something that may not be obvious given my love for hiking: I, personally, hate hiking with a pack on my shoulders. It's uncomfortable - both while hiking and after - and so rarely do I embark on any journey carrying more than a day pack that rests on my hips. For more than a year I've been trying to get to Panamint City. Despite requiring a 7.2-mile (one way) hike with more than 5,000 feet of elevation gain, trekking to-and-from this ghost town high on the western slopes of the Panamint Mountains isn't the issue. Rather, the…
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Generally, when I visit Death Valley, my goal is to explore the more remote regions of the park. Long lost dirt roads, canyons that entail as much climbing as hiking, and days without seeing another soul (with the exception of @mrs.turbodb) - these are the places we spend our time. As such, exploration of Death Valley proper - largely along CA-190 - has been light. Sure, most of the major tourist attractions have been seen, but surely in a place this inhospitable, even CA-190 holds special places that are only infrequently visited. Remote despite their proximity to pavement. With a…
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