Spring Break - Day 5 (Leaving Lake Tahoe)

View of Lake Tahoe from the private beach behind our hotel

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Although today was mostly going to be a travel day, we wanted to keep a more strict schedule than we had earlier in the trip.  Our plan was to camp at Death Valley National Park this evening (almost a 7 hour drive away), but the problem was that none of their campsites took reservations.  Although I figured that a weekday wouldn't necessarily sellout, the earlier we got there the better, plus we wanted to be able to set up camp before the sun went down.

So we got up at 8:30 and spent some time packing and cleaning the townhouse.  Then we snapped some pictures of Lake Tahoe from the beach behind the resort before heading to breakfast.  Sprouts Cafe was the location of choice based on a recommendation from one of Steph's friends.  It was pretty tasty, somewhat healthy, brunch spot.  We made another stop for some more Lake Tahoe pictures from a higher elevation, before hitting the highway for our long trek to Death Valley.

My very own bakery in Bishop, CA

Around halfway through our drive we passed through the town of Bishop.  It logically seemed like a stopping point for lunch, but this became mandatory when I saw a billboard for Erick Schat's Bakkery.  Yes, I realize that there are quite a few spelling mistakes there, but that's the closest I've ever seen a restaurant named after me, so I found this very exciting and made it our lunch stop.  Erick Schat seemed to have trouble deciding what he wanted to sell, as the restaurant was a combo of a deli, a bakery, and a general store.  We each got ourselves a sandwich and a pastry, which were pretty good, so overall we thought it lived up to the strong name of Erick Schat.

The rest of the drive to Death Valley was pretty uneventful except for one key mistake with gas management.  With a little under half a tank left, I didn't fill up in the last town we passed through before getting to the park.  I realized later though that we weren't going to make it to the campsite  with what we had, and our GPS showed no stations before we got deep into the park.  Because of this I decided to backtrack almost 20  miles to go to the nearest gas station, which caused a 45 minute delay in total.  It's a good thing we got it when we did, though, because Death Valley is much larger than I anticipated.  It was around 100 miles of driving from the park entrance to the campsite, and when we got there, the gas station had the highest gas prices I had ever seen, at $5.90 a gallon for unleaded.

The poor gas decision notwithstanding, I had been thinking earlier in the day how everything had been going pretty perfectly throughout the trip.  No real mishaps or major curveballs.  Well that changed when I passed the sign that said that the campground we wanted to stay at was full.  This caused quite a scare because it was already getting late, and we had no idea where else we could stay.  There were some hotels in the park, but we made a couple calls and they were booked.  There were some other campgrounds, but we wouldn't know if they were full unless we drove to them, and they could be an hour or so away from our current location and from the attractions we wanted to see the next day.  This had the potential of derailing our Death Valley plans, and we started to wonder if we should just drive the five hours back to LA tonight.

Furnace Creek Ranch, our oasis in the desert

Even though the Furnace Creek Ranch (a hotel resort within the park, right near the campsite we were trying to stay at) had no vacancies for tonight when I was looking into lodging for the trip a week ago, we still gave them a call as a last resort.  And as luck would have it, they had a cancellation and now had one room available, for a fairly reasonable rate.  We booked it immediately, and were relieved that our Death Valley plans could be salvaged.  We had to spend a little more money than planned, and wouldn't have the camping experience we were looking for, but the Ranch was actually a pretty nice mini resort.  Several restaurants on site, a heated pool, outdoor games, and several other amenities which we didn't use.

Semi-sunset picture at Zabriskie Point

Before getting settled in the new room, we quickly headed to Zabriskie Point,which was a nearby lookout point known for having great views of sunrises and sunsets.  We ended up missing the sunset by several minutes, but it was still a cool view.  We finished off the night with dinner at the Corkscrew Saloon, and a few games in the room.