Day 3 – Warm Springs Camp to Beatty, NV
Sunday Dec. 26th, 2021
Warm Springs Camp – Barker Ranch (18 mi – 1.5 hrs)
Barker Ranch – Ballarat Ghost Town (22 mi – 1.2 hrs) Lunch
Ballarat Ghost Town – Wild Rose Charcoal Kilns (30 mi – 1 hr)
Wild Rose Charcoal Kilns – Journigan’s Mill (21.6 mi – 43 mins)
Journigan’s Mill – Stovepipe Wells (16 mi – 20 mins).
Stovepipe Wells – Beatty (34 mi – 40 mins)
The Atomic Inn
350 South First Street, Beatty, NV 89003
775-204-0450
Totals: 136 mi -5 hrs
So a cold sleepless night, and you might recall I mentioned some outbuildings Mandi was certain of? Yeah, we found them after back tracking our previous nights backtrack and only 30 minutes further up the road. Oh dang, we could’ve slept here, in one of these cabins. I was going to hear about it all day.
After perusing the ruins, we continued west up over the mountain into Butte Valley, taking in the scenery, chatting with other explorers and checking out more structures, not to mention grabbing a few photos of all of this, and after getting side tracked along the way and missing our turn due to another group that must’ve also missed the turn. We continued on towards the infamous Barker Ranch, made famous by the Manson gang in the late 60’s, for a quick lunch, and found it to be quite a popular place as another group was enjoying lunch there too.
We bailed out of there and continued west and then north towards Ballarat Ghost Town, it was busy and we kept driving north, as it was creeping into the late afternoon and we still had quite a way to go. Continuing on to the Wildrose Charcoal Kilns way up a basically dead end road, grabbed some photos and returned down the same road to a cut-off (Emigrant Canyon) we hoped would save us some time and fuel, dropping us back onto Hwy 190 to a fuel stop at Stove Pipe Wells. I floated in on fumes, my gauge had been on E for the last 20 miles.
Word to the wary! Fuel in Death Valley is not only EXPENSIVE, but they only sell 87 Octane, why I mention this is due to the fact the my Jeep runs on Supreme or 91 Octane, thankfully (& smartly) I carry octane booster so I don’t have to suffer any pinging with the lesser grade fuel.
After fueling at the only gas staion on our path busier than a hornets nest, and already dark we pressed on for our reserved motel room in Beatty NV. Once we got settled into our room, we set out looking for food, on a previous trip on our Harley we had a lot of fun in a place called the Beatty Club, right at the intersction in town. Unfortunately we found out it had closed a couple of years after our last visit and with all the convid crap open places at 9:00 pm were scare. We ended up at Denny’s inside a hotel and had to wait 30 minutes to get a seat. Bad service (they claimed short staff – Christmas break and all) and horrible food, was how the night ended.
Tomorrow we start with Titus Canyon (or so we thought)!
