Having averaged our usual 1mph - which includes all the time we're stopped for me to take photos and stumble around underground - on our hike in Buckwheat Wash, we had a few hours of daylight remaining when we got back to the Tacoma.
That'd be enough to get us to the starting point for our next hike - and hopefully to get dinner made - just before the sun set for the evening.
I'd planned to take pavement nearly to the trailhead in the southern end of Death Valley, but when we passed Furnace Creek Wash Rd - which we've never travelled - we figured we might as well give it a go.
Furnace Creek Wash Rd - or Furnace Creek Washington Rd 
if you ask Google - was a well-graded, high-speed raceway that may not have saved us any time compared to pavement, but surely didn't cost us any, either. Well, except for our stop to check out some art that was initially very confusing.
What is going on here?
Ahh, it's Desert Rock Art™!
I'm not generally a fan of this sort of artwork - it's hard to differentiate from graffiti - but it was a cool example of some of the weird stuff you can find out in the middle of nowhere. Not unlike the Mojave Megaphone.
Soon, we were cruising along again, and before long we found ourselves only a couple miles from the next day's trailhead, in a perfect little camp site with distant views of the least-visited mountains in the park, the Owlshead Mountains.
Just in time for the evening light show. Lenticular clouds suggested there could be moisture in our future.
Pack it in, pack it out. Leave no trace. Take nothing but pictures.
The following morning...
I am often asked how I find places to explore. The answer, usually, is that I accidentally stumble on one place that seems interesting - by reading a trip report or seeing a photo online - and then I spend an inordinate amount of time on the internet looking for other things nearby. Or, sometimes, nearby enough, or not-so-nearby, it seems.
In this case, the accidental stumble was a video I received from Doug, who asked if I recognized a particular view "somewhere in Death Valley."
As a matter of fact, I did!
It turns out that Doug was interested in this place due to an old engine standing guard on the main level of the mine, but what caught my eye was the rolling ore cart that was tucked away in the adit. At the time, I hadn't yet found my first functional ore cart, and even if I had, I'd still be excited to push another!
Because inside, I'm still 12 years old.
A little hazy, but the lenticular clouds of the previous evening were nowhere to be seen. Maybe there wouldn't be rain, after all!
Our hike today wouldn't be as long as the previous - or next - but I hoped to have a little time in the afternoon to continue the search for an elusive rabbit, so we were up with the sun, @mrs.turbodb once again getting breakfast and lunch sorted while I folded up the tent and filled our respective reservoirs with water.
Soon enough, we tucked the Tacoma off the side of the road, and set off on foot.
Who needs trails?
The first half of the hike - as we worked our way up the alluvial fan toward the mouth of the canyon that would deliver us to the 'MacClatchie Power' mine - was like a stroll in the park. With the sun at our backs, we made good time over the gravel surface, chatting about this and that, and nothing in particular.
I'm not sure what this is - perhaps Dove Weed (Croton setiger) - but I really liked the soft, ombre leaves.
Confidence Hills and Owlshead Mountains view.
In no time, we reached the mouth of the canyon, where the walls quickly climbed, and the colors popped under blue skies. This wasn't all that surprising - a nearby canyon is named for the kaleidoscope of colors it contains - but we were thrilled, nonetheless.
Enticing entrance.
Minerals.
Shady sunstar.
The higher we climbed, the steeper the canyon became, but there was only one point where we were forced out of the wash by a 15-foot dry fall. Consisting of three polished levels, stacked one on the other, we probably could have made it with a little teamwork, but with several obvious bypasses only a few feet away, we took the easy way out.
We didn't miss out on all of the fun scrambling.
An old miner's trail climbed out of the narrowing canyon only a few hundred feet below the mine, easing our final approach to the oh-that's-why-it's-called-the-"MacClatchie Power" mine.
There, standing guard, was an old, three-cylinder MacClatchie Power engine, along with it's (t)rusty Cadilac radiator.
Always amazing how miners got this equipment into such remote places.
Panther wake-up juice.
The MacClatchie Panther Company made experimental aircraft engines and, similar in design to a rotary aircraft engine, this is a vertically-mounted rotary engine well pump.
Panther pride.
This engine, instead of being mounted on top of a water well, is mounted on top of an automobile drive shaft and axle. The wheel on the axle would be used to power whatever equipment was needed for the mine.
The old drive wheel.
After a few photos of the engine and belt wheel segments, my first order of business - naturally - was to scurry into the nearby adit, curious to see if the rumored ore cart was still hidden inside, waiting to roll - if only for a few minutes - along the hundred-year-old rail.
And sure enough, there it was, just waiting for someone with LED puck lights to come along and show it some love.
Somehow - even having spent more than twenty minutes photographing it - I seemed to get no great shots of the ore cart.
Then, it was off to explore the rest of the workings. Split amongst three levels, the lowest level - with the ore cart - seemed to be primarily used for material extraction. At the upper level, a vertical shaft dropped straight down, following the vein for a couple hundred feet. And in the middle, an adit - with several stopes - intersected the vertical shaft and allowed easy dumping of ore down into the waiting cart below.
Looking up the vertical shaft from the middle level.
After eating the rotisserie chicken sandwiches that @mrs.turbodb had prepared, and wandering around for a little over and hour, it was just before noon when we started working our way back toward the Tacoma. One might think that this would be retracing our steps on the way up, but in this instance, I'd found an old miner's trail that continued up to a nearby saddle before dropping into an adjacent wash. Excited to make it a loop, we followed in the footsteps of history as we made our way down.
Southern Death Valley stretched out below.
We made a few stops along the way - mostly to wonder about various can dumps and platforms that still scared the hillsides - but before long we were back in the truck with the air conditioning kicked on and our sights set on the next adventure.
Trailhead-to-trailhead taxi.
Somewhere out there, a rabbit was hiding in plain sight. It'd eluded us on our last search, but would it be so lucky this time?
The Whole Story
