Death defying Furnace Creek Ranch and Resort in Death Valley National ParkRead Jetsetters Magazine at www.jetsettersmagazine.com To read this entire feature FREE with photos cut and paste this link: http://www.jetsettersmagazine.com/archive/jetezine/cabinweb/furnace/furnace.html
I'm cruising out of Las Vegas through 120 miles of burnt brown desert, through Pahrump and Amargosa Valley, past Amargosa Opera House, then heading west at Death Valley Junction. I put Benz into neutral for a 20-mile coast into Death Valley National Park. There is no Park entrance station, thus no fees, so I smile a desert rat chapped grin.
It is August, heat gripping landscape in a tight infernal fist. Traffic is light. Wave after wave of desiccated mountain ranges unfold as I fall into a silent awe, tires humming, as I glide past Zabriskie Point into lowest point in Western Hemisphere — Death Valley National Park — astride California-Nevada border like a roadkill sidewinder rotting across yellow lines on baking tarmac.
I have stayed at Furnace Creek Inn three times, but never in heighth of summer heat. I am anxious to test my resolve in this true, rugged wilderness, but in elegant comfort. At least I am not behind a 40-mule team borax wagon. Do you remember "Death Valley Days" on TV? This is Ronald Reagan country. Salt licks. Salt pans. Panamint Mountains. Lost ghost mines. Borax mounds. Empty skies. Clear horizons. . . Heat. . . Hot. . . Water. . . !
Before leaving Pahrump I stop at a country store for ice water and last chance for ice cream bars. I have to eat ice cream fast, but ice water is now slush, and cold, and good. Don't roll down that window. Tires whirl with an unusual stickiness. Did I just see a buzzard? Nah, not in this noontime heat. Am I cracking up?
Then after a couple of curves there is mirage . . . Furnace Creek Inn, placed on a sandy, desert brow, looking across lonesome valley. A refuge from death.
I park quickly, wasting no time in hot box when A/C shuts down with a rumble and a knock. I crack windows a tad so leather seats don't melt. I grab my kit bag and skip up flagstone entrance to Furnace Creek. The blast of cool air tells me I would never make it as a pioneer, living out on range, drinking jimpson weed water, sweating like a long-eared dog and then becoming as delirious as a dead longhorn steer bloating with death, eyes bugging out . . . flies. . . !
No sirree. It is straight to Oasis Bar for a quick one, ice water that is. About a liter or two ought to do. Then I check into hotel and it is back to bar to swipe sweat off with a cocktail napkin. A whole bunch of cocktail napkins. The bartender eyes me as warily as a coyote checking poisoned bait.
I get caught up in saloon conversation. Talk circulates around hotel watering hole about a man who lost his life in this heat sump called Death Valley, and only last June. He had walked only a few miles from his broken down car at Badwater before heat exhaustion took him from this earth. His wife survived in car, using her cell phone to call a tow company; crew drove up from Baker, California, and found hapless motorist dead, sitting on a rock not far from car. That is why they call this national park Death Valley. After that twisted tale, I am always close to pool or bar.