The forecast is for 105°  at Downtown Death Valley – Furnace Creek – but we will be higher and, hopefully, cooler. NOAA says it will be in the high 80°s where we are going.

Eight years to the day after Bush declared Mission Accomplished, bin Laden has been tracked down, killed, and dumped at sea.  As James Fallows said at the Atlantic. Hooray. It is almost never right to celebrate a death. Almost.

I am not much interested in the Wedding of the Decade. Watching somebody I don’t know get married on TV just does not seem that interesting. I did enjoy Robert Altman’s movie A Wedding, however.  On the other hand, I like to watch very specialized cars drive around and around a track to see who is faster so I am in no position to say say what people should or should not watch on TV, or what is serious and what is frivolous.

I consider myself a small “d” democrat and somewhat of an anti-monarchist. Actually, I have not been around enough monarchs to be an anti-monarchist in anything but theory although I did date, for a while, a Homecoming Queen from the University of Texas. Also, I have never been invited to any royal weddings – even the Texas girl’s. I did once photograph a very minor maharajah – known as a raja, I think – when we stayed at the  Bijaipur Castle and I was so nervous and sweating so much I thought my camera might squirt out of my hands. I did get alot of nice shots of commoners, though.

I am mildly interested in the ho haw surrounding the wedding. The professed claim that this is not a state occasion but a personal occasion as the reason the Obamas or the Blairs are not invited. Apparently just seventeen hundred of their closest friends was all there was room for, so no old friends of the boys’ mother were included. Fortunately, there was room for Shaikh Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, the “King” of Bahrain. I guess the fact that he recently killed some of his troublesome subjects was not a deal breaker – although it did get the Syrian ambassador’s invite rescinded.

Anyway, Happy Wedding Day to all.

I have been driving up to and down Highway 35 – better known as Skyline – my entire life. Well, at least as long as I haver been able to drive. While the State’s Highway 35 starts in San Francisco and runs down to Highway 17, along the spine of the San Francisco peninsula mountains,  between San Jose and Santa Cruz, my Skyline runs from Highway 92 between San Mateo and Half Moon Bay, to the Saratoga Gap. The first time I can remember going on this road was with my Grandfather when he took the machine out for a Sunday drive. Some of my most memorable drives were in my MG A, top down in the fog, wearing what was known at that time as a car coat.

As an aside, as an English car, a MG was designed to drive in fog, or cold damp conditions with the top down. The driver and pass anger could sort of snuggle deep down into the bowls, with the heater turned up to melt. An Italian car, like an Alfa Giulietta , was too open. Even with a heavy car coat. End aside.

A couple of days ago, on one of the clearest days we have had in awhile, I drove up to look at the view. After leaving 92 and driving up hill for a little bit , I looked back to see San Francisco in the distance, beyond Crystal Springs lakes, Highway 280, and the Bay. Looking the other way, I saw Highway 92 dropping towards Half Moon Bay.

My plan was to drive down 35 until I got to the old Skeggs Point View turnout and vista point to get some shots of the Peninsula below and the Bay beyond. When I got there, the view was gone.And – evidently – had been gone for a while.

So here is this great view that I remember all the way back to my childhood. It would appear that nobody has thought it worth while keeping the view spot clear enough to see much of anything below. I can understand that; the state is broke and, with what little money there is, I would rather feed homeless children or put it into schools. Except that somebody – I am going to guess the State Highway Department since this is a state highway – is spending money building a worthless new wall. Why not just trim back the bushes, shitcan the new wall and use the saved money on schools. What a shame.

Much of the road with a view, runs through oaks and, while it is pleasant, there is not much of a view.

Towards the end of the day, I came to Russian Ridge and went for a walk. The sun was getting soft and the haze was giving the hills a layered look that I love. here are some samples.

One of the least traveled places in Death Valley National Park is between Steel Pass and Dedeckera Canyon. On a bigger scale, it is between Saline Valley and Eureka Dunes.  It is not an easy road, going up from Saline Valley includes long stretches of steep gravel streambed that require good, offroad, tires, four wheel drive, low gearing, and patience; going up from the Eureka Dunes side requires driving up a very narrow rock streambed and requires a spotter pointing out to the driver where to put the wheels. Both roads are doable, just not done very often.

Neither way is the hardest road in the National Park and I think that the reason more people don’t take the road is because it just takes too much time to get to the starting point.  Both the Saline Valley and the Eureka Dunes areas are at the ends of long , rough, roads. Both also are great end destinations in themselves being more intrinsically interesting than the road section between them. Most people don’t take the road because it just isn’t worth it.

I think that is the same problem with Afghanistan. It is about the most remote place in the world. To get there one has to either go through Iran, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, or Tajikistan. It doesn’t have an outlet to the sea, and once there, there is not much there. It doesn’t have oil, it doesn’t have lots of arable land, it doesn’t even have any lost cities of gold. It is not that it isn’t conquerable, but that it just isn’t worth the resources that it would take to conquer it. If we wanted to throw in the same resources we used to conquer Germany, I am sure we could, but Why would any country want to put forth that kind of effort?

Meanwhile, back at Steel Pass, there is a spot on the map called Marble Bath.  The old USGS 7.5 minute map – but, apparently, not the new maps – showed “Marble Bath” almost at Steel Pass on the side of the road. I had once tried to find the Marble Bath on the ground and couldn’t. As it turned out, so did Wendell Moyer, a research chemist, inventor, mountaineer, desert rat, and all around good guy who had looked for the Bath several times to no avail. Wendell thought it would be a public service to install a marble bath where it was shown on the map to relieve any future Marble Bath seekers the disappointment at not finding it.

At that time, a bill was moving through Congress that would annex the Saline and Eureka areas into Death Valley National Monument and then turn it all into a National Park. A National Park usually gives an area an higher level of protection. A lot of us thought that a higher level of protection might not be a good thing. We were afraid that the area was going to become too civilized.

Then, and now, the Saline Valley was known for its several nude hot springs and the fear was that the hot tubs would be closed or – at a minimum – become clothing mandatory; the side roads off the road between Steel Pass and  Dedeckera Canyon would be closed – they were closed, preemptively by the BLM– or even the Steel Pass road itself would be closed or, maybe, paved; the private holdings in Saline would be bought up; etc, etc. Very little of that happened.

In that atmosphere, Wendell Moyer thought up what I like to call the Marble Bath Gambol. He got a clawfoot tub, more than several boxes of marbles, and rounded up a couple of friends to install a real tub where the missing tub was shown on the map. Michele and I were included with Michele being the only woman. Among other duties, we were the official photographers and took numerous pictures of the installation including a couple of Michele taking a bath. Unfortunately, the pictures were film and are in storage. I hope.

Later, I heard that the tub had been removed by the Park Service. That turned out to be totally wrong! Not only is the tub still there, but it has gathered somewhat of a reputation as a required stop for the few travelers that pass by. People even added rubber duckies which, presumably, they brought with them for that purpose.

And now, even more amazingly, after the tub’s marbles had been depleted by souvenir takes, there has been a successful campaign to restore it to its former glory. If he were still with us, I think that Wendell would have been very pleased with the way the Marble Bath Gambol played out. Sadly, Wendell Moyer died just after climbing 22,000 foot Ojas del Salado in Chile in 1995. I believe it is the way he would have wanted to go.