We depart our marvelous Night 2 camp after a hearty breakfast of Spam, bacon, and eggs and proceed to cruise south along the ridge toward the South Park area. There are many opportunities to stop and take in the widespread views.

What you can see in the image directly above is the Middle Park valley directly behind us. As we proceed south on the Middle Park Ridge, we will soon be able to drop directly down into the South Park Valley, which is partially observable in the upper left corner of the image directly above.

In many aspects, it is truly incredible how different this area is than the time we came two years prior. As you can see in the image above, the area is quite green. Just two years prior, this was a complete and utter dust bowl. After the initial shock of the greenery, we revisited some of the mine artifacts we discovered on the previous trip just to see how they were getting along. Just as one would think, there were no observable differences.

Now as we technically continue driving west, we drop in elevation and enter the narrow passages of the Pleasant Canyon south section.

After several miles of slow, downhill traveling as well as a sketchy rock feature or two, we finally made it to our destination for the night. The true goal, to be frank, was to stay at the Briggs Cabin. Briggs Cabin was, as often happens, occupied at the time. So, we settled for the slightly smaller, slightly less luxurious accommodation – Stone Cabin.

The day is still young at this point and the relatively high temperature of the area as a whole makes the idea of sitting around a musty cabin a little less appealing when compared to the air-conditioned comfort which our vehicles would provide. That along with the fact that we know Gohler Wash is “just around the corner” and Gary hasn’t been there before, we decided to keep driving all the way out of the canyon and south again to go through Gohler Wash and check out some of the scenes we encountered when we first came here in 2021 (see my Winter Camping (Jan 2021) series if you haven’t already). With our minds made up, we unload some gear and raise the flag to claim the cabin and then we hit the trail again.

At this point, we just relive Winter Camping Day 1 (Jan 2021) as we show Gary around the same areas. As a result, there’s not much for me to say about it nor are there many photographs. Our biggest takeaway was that it turned out to be much hotter in this area than it was in South Park Canyon. Without much delay, we backtrack precisely back the way we just came to get back to the Stone Cabin.

And so, our day ended. We swept up rodent droppings from the bunks before we laid out our sleeping bags and then we were out. The only thing keeping us up at night wasthe truly terrifying and discomfortingly loud braying of the donkeys in the canyon. Never has any sound engineer working on a horror movie created a sound so awful as the echoing bray of a donkey. At least they look cute while drinking water!

Thank you for taking the time to read my writeup of our Memorial Day Death Valley Adventure (May 2023) trip! If this is the first post about this trip that you’re reading, make sure to go back and read about day 1 in the Memorial Day Death Valley Adventure (May 2023) series. Make sure you check back in the “Trips” category to see the other trips I’ve taken with my blue yota!