TRAVELING DOWN THE ROAD: Pahrump and Death Valley

I want to wish all my friends a very MERRY CHRISTMAS and a HAPPY NEW YEAR, another year gone, hope it was a good one.

I can't believe that I haven't done another blog. I have been so busy having fun there has been no time. After I left Lake Mead I headed to Pahrump, it was only an hours drive. Most of the drive is up a 6% grade of a mountain so it was a long slow drive. I have a campground membership where I can stay for 35 days for $3.50 a night and after that $12.50 a night so I booked in for two weeks. I was going to go with a singles group to Death Valley, but I had enough of dry camping for awhile and was tired out from the drive west. So I stayed 7 weeks and would have stayed longer, but it turned cold and would you believe it snowed. It went down to below freezing every night in December and only up into the mid 40's.

While in Pahrump I did go up into Death Valley quite a few days and hooked up with the singles group. Pahrump was the area where the Shoshone Indians hung out. Pah means water in Shoshone and rump means rock. It has a abundance of artesian wells so the area was a great place to farm. Alfalfa, cotton and cattle were raised. Before the 60's there were no roads, phones in or out of the Pahrump Valley. The town being an hour away from Las Vegas became a place where people wanted to move so, the telephone lines and paved roads began. In 2000 there were 25,000 people but that has grown a lot since then. Its called an exurb because almost all agriculture has stopped. Michael Jackson bought a home here in 2008 and lived for a while with his kids. There were parts of a few pictures shot in the Pahrump area, Rain Man, The Amazing Race and Mars Attack. From Pahrump you have access to Death Valley, Shoshone, and Rhyolite (a ghost town) just north about 50 miles. Pahrump is very unique it has brothels where you can go for lunch and get the tour. One is the Chicken Ranch, we just looked outside and Sherri's Ranch where we had lunch and a very interesting tour with one of the girls, who was dressed in a very tiny bikini and stiletto shoes. The place was very high class and very friendly. They had different rooms that the men can go to with hot tubs, jazzcui tubs and a Bud Weiser room. Beautifully decorated, we didn't ask the price for the girls. What they do is parade by the men who are sitting in a very up scale sitting room and they pick. I was impressed. The girls come to the ranch for a week or two then go back to their normal lives. I am told they make very good money. Forgive my spelling on some words.

I went on a couple of tours with the singles in Death Valley and one was Shoshone. What a interesting town there are a couple of restaurants the buildings from the early 1900s. There is a museum with a lot of history including a dinsours that were found in the area. Lots of mining equipment. I love the old pictures and a lot of them show how the woman survived. They celebrate once a year with Shoshone Days. There is a cemetery there with over 55 people in it and just by the side of the road. They still use it. In the hill side there is what they call Dublin Gulch, in the 1920's miners carved dwellings in the caliche clay (don't know what that is). The name comes from an area of the same name in Butte Montana. Some caves have split levels, stovepipes and garages. It is hard to believe that people lived in them for years. Of course being in the desert it is a lot warmer. No one has lived in them since the 1970's. A lot of old buildings that house restaurants, motel, high school and swimming pool. They even have a small airport.