Lone Pine, CA to Panamint Springs, CA

A lovely quiet night at the Tuttle Creek Campground until the ‘host’ or someone who was staying with them started up their damn diesel engine truck at 6 a.m. and left it running for ten minutes. Really what is in (or not in) people’s heads.
During the night I had thought I heard running water. In the morning I could still hear it and thought maybe it was someone with a huge RV running a generator. On investigation I found a lovely mountain stream running between two parts of the campground. I suppose the line of trees growing along the stream's route should have been a tip off for me.
This area is called the Alabama Hills and behind the hills sits Mount McKinley the tallest peak in the lower 48 states. A fellow from Oregon that I was talking to said he’d seen people preparing for a summit attempt and had seen their lights high up on the mountainside the night before.
This fellow was also travelling with companions – his wife and two whippets. He said that they were taking the whippets for rattlesnake aversion training on Saturday somewhere south of Lone Pine. As he described the process, the dogs are exposed to rattlesnake(s) that have had just had their venom milked and then been muzzled! This was combined with shock collar training which he said they’d had had good success with with the whippets. Later on I was thinking about this story. I am pretty gullible and pretty much believe what people tell me. I wondered if the guy was having me on. In any event, I would have gone along just to have seen how one muzzles a rattlesnake!

We finally got underway and I stopped in town to use the wi-fi at McDonald’s. The place was packed as it was noon and there is a high school across the street. After getting caught up internet-wise, I was able to park in the shade and pick up some groceries. The guy in front of me when I was checking out was this lively old geezer. I was only half listening to his conversation with the woman who was on check-out. But then I realized that he was clearly flirting with her. They bantered back and forth. Actually he bantered; she just mostly looked stoic and slightly embarrassed. When it appeared he’d left, I advised her to ask to see his bank balance before making any decisions. (You never know he might have found lots of gold in them thar hills.) In any event, in the middle of my checking out he returned and passed her his phone number which he’d written on the back of his receipt. I did note that she didn’t throw it away.
Then it was off down Hwy136 to connect with Hwy 190 and head for Death Valley. Despite the scorching temperatures forecast I thought it best not to miss the chance to see this place I might not have the opportunity to return. There are two mountain passes that you have to get up and over before you’re in Death Valley proper. The first isn’t terribly high and the VW pulled us up and over without problems. We rolled down the other side into Panamint Springs. There’s a commercial operation there that was grandfathered in when the park was expanded. There are cottages, a restaurant with a nice veranda and a campground for tents and other campers. There is almost no shade and as we had descended from the pass the heat really came on. Blistering heat especially in the sun. So I found and paid for a campsite and then put up my tarp to wait out the heat. From the campground the road leading up to the next pass was in clear view.