Death Valley Road Run

[Old Henry]

Thought you all might be interested in our Death Valley Road Run. Here's the story in pictures.

The magnetic signs I designed and Chuck's sign company made for the car doors:


Up until the day we were to depart we had 12 people going in 3 cars, my '47 Fordor, Chuck's '47 Tudor, and Paul's '51 Custom. The morning we were to depart the couple that was going to be in the back of Paul's car called to say she had fallen the night before and had a concussion and was real sick so they couldn't go. So, we left Orem and Spanish Fork, Utah Wednesday with 3 cars and 10 people. Here are my back seat passengers. My wife's mother on the right at 86 years old and our very adventurous neighbor on the left at 92 years old. She was as excited to go as anyone.


The first night we stayed in Delta, Utah and the next morning were taken on a tour of the Topaz Museum (one of 10 Japanese "internment" camps during WWII housing 8,000 Japanese "relocated" from the west coast and stuck here for three years). Here we all are with the cars at the museum Thursday morning. One of the original "barracks" housing the "internees" is the tar papered building behind my car.


Then, on the way out to the Topaz site we stopped at Van's Dance Hall, a historic old dance hall that ran from the 20's to the 70's in town, closed down in the 70's and has just been left since then as it was then. Here it is:


More pictures of the place: http://www.uen.org/utahlink/tours/to...&tour_id=13645 More stories of the place: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/3...ING-AGAIN.html

Then we drove out to the site of the internment camp.


Learn more about Topaz here: http://www.topazmuseum.org/


On the way back to the highway we went "cross country" on snow covered dirt and gravel roads past this venture in wind generating equipment abandoned before completion 10-15 years ago.


While at the Topaz site Paul's wife got a call about a family emergency so they went home to take care of that. That left 8 of us in two cars.

When we got to the highway where Paul took his '51 Custom left and we went right toward Death Valley I had the first, and fortunately last, mechanical problem of the whole trip - a tire low on air. Had to pump it up then and the next morning but not the morning after that for some strange reason.


37 miles west of Delta something broke in Chuck's drive line that was, of course, not repairable on the side of the road. I towed him to a shoulder where he could get off the road.


Then we took one last picture of the two cars together before I went on down the road with my 4 and chuck waited for a tow truck to come and haul his car and 4 passengers home. So, from then on we were on our own in "Old Henry." A little scary and lonely and a bit of a disappointment since I had put so much effort into planning this trip for 12 people in three old cars not just the 4 of us in one. But, we were determined to make it on our own.


Driving across Nevada we climbed over a half a dozen passes that got progressively higher until this one which was the highest - Conner's Pass at 7,722 feet. That was the top. Then we headed down more than that 7,722 feet to 282 feet below sea level.


After staying the night in Tonopah, Nevada and squirting a little of dirt off the car we headed toward the ghost town of Goldfield, Nevada - our last stop before Death Valley. Right at the entrance to Goldfield there was this collection of 4 old junker cars and trailers decorated to the nines with junk glued onto them turning them into most interesting works of art. Here's just a couple:


Goldfield, Nevada is a great ghost town with a lot of great old mining shacks, train cars and engines, and even an old Dodge Brothers car body.


Even the remains of an old motorized bicycle.


And the famous haunted Goldfield Hotel. (Really. See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdAZy6ZThVQ)


At the elevation that I live at - 4,800 feet - I can run with ignition advanced all the way and vacuum advance as far as it will go. But, when we started down to below sea level I started to get premature detonation (knocking/pinging) and had to stop 4 times to screw in my vacuum advance progressively more and more to get rid of it. Then, on the way back up to higher elevation, screwed it back out for maximum advance. When we got down to sea level the engine idled rough and could have used an adjustment of the idle mixture but I didn't bother with that as we were soon to start climbing up again.


Had to stop at Scotty's Castle. An amazing place with a most facinating story.


Learn more here: http://www.nps.gov/deva/historycultu...tys-castle.htm

My favorite part was the 1933 Packard owned by the builder and owner of the estate, Albert Johnson.


Down in the valley, the valley so low. Hang your head over, hear the wind blow.


It was amazing how colorful this desert was that only gets an average of 2 inches a year of rain (and some years none at all). This is "Artist's Pallette" on "Artist's Drive."


At the bottom - 282 feet below sea level. The lowest point in the United States. Sea level is marked with a sign up on the side of the mountain 282 feet above "Old Henry."


Now for the rest of the story of the second car that went home.

As I said, they broke down 37 miles west of Delta, Utah with 52 miles to go before Baker, Nevada - out in the middle of nowhere. They called their new insurance company for a tow that was part of their policy. Poor old Chuck had such a time with that girl. She just could not process his request without knowing his address or nearest cross street. (Any such was at least 37 miles away.) Finally she told him to call 911 and have them "ping" his location so she'd know where he was. (Apparently she had no map to just look at 37 miles west of Delta.) So with another cell phone he called 911, told them it wasn't an emergency but that he could not get his insurance company to send a tow truck until the dispatcher "pinged" him to tell him where he was (whatever that meant.) The dispatcher immediately said, "Are you that red car on the side of the road?" He had some way of connecting the location of the cell phone triangulated between the various cell phone towers to a satellite that would zoom in on his exact location. We were all quite amazed. Anyway, whatever information Chuck got from the dispatcher didn't quite make it around his head to the other phone where the insurance company person was trying to get the information. So, they hung up and said they'd get back to him. I then called my AAA service who had some of the same difficulty but not quite as much. They did ask me a few time after I told them I was 37 miles west of Delta what was the nearest city. I repeated Delta and she said but what city is nearer to you than Delta. I said Baker, Nevada 52 miles the other direction. "Oh, so Delta is the nearest city to you?" Duh. Anyway, she was having a hard time getting hold of any tow truck to send and put me on hold. After a while Chuck's insurance company called back to say they had a truck in the way. I was still on hold without any confirmation that AAA was sending anyone so just hung up and we took off down the road leaving Chuck and his group to wait for the tow truck.

Out there in the Nevada desert cell phone service was "spotty" to say the least so we didn't get the rest of Chuck's story 'till later in the day. After "sunbathing" (in 50 degree temperatures) on the side of the road for a couple of hours waiting for the truck to arrive one did. They just got the car loaded on it when a second truck arrived! Turned out the first truck was my AAA truck that came from Fillmore and the second one was Chuck's insurance truck that came from Delta! Chuck stuck with my AAA truck since it would tow them 100 miles toward home instead of just to the nearest town as his insurance truck would.

Later in the day I got the voice mail my AAA truck had left saying he was on the way.

So, the AAA truck hauled their car to Mona, Utah, still 40 miles from home where Chuck's passenger's son had brought a car trailer to take the car home and Chuck's Cadillac for everyone to get in with their stuff to try to catch up with us. Since they didn't have a map with them (they were just going to follow us for the trip) they took a little "different" route to try to catch up with us. They made it to Ely about midnight that night when were were staying in the next town 170 miles away in Tonopah. The next day we went into the north end of Death Valley National Park which they also did but we went clear to the south end to the "bottom" at Bad Water while they left the park midway toward Beatty and saw the very interesting ghost town of Rhyolite. We finally met up that night at the Indian Springs Nevada Casino and motel where we all had reservations to stay that night and came home together the next day.

End of a very interesting story.

Prior road trips:

Pike's Peak in July 2011: https://www.fordbarn.com/forum/showthread.php?t=19141

Route 66 in April 2010: https://www.fordbarn.com/forum/showthread.php?t=57511