Desert Dog Blog

Skidoo Trip Canceled, the Dogs Visited Owens Valley Instead

Image from absoluteastronomy.com

Skidoo Trip Canceled, the Dogs Visited Owens Valley Instead – We were planning to hit up the ghost town of Skidoo, in Death Valley, in August.  We were going to explore alongside our friends from Antelope Valley Haunts.  But, we didn’t do that because AV Haunts had some car troubles, which is totally understandable.  So, we went to Owens Valley instead!

You’ll have to wait for the videos to see what we did, but let me just say that at the end of the trip we had an awesome fish fry, and all our biological and archaeological needs were met.

So AV Haunts, I hope we have a chance to hang out some time in the future.  No hard feelings.  And if you want us to tag along on one of your investigations, we’d be happy to do so.  I think it would be an awesome episode, and I’m sure the Desert Dog scientists would like to check your methods.

In the meantime, to all who happen to come across this blog, be sure to visit and subscribe to our videos on Youtube.

There were bodies everywhere …

Photo from Creative Commons

“There were bodies everywhere …” – Lucerne Valley was a tragic scene of carnage at 7:48 p.m. on Sunday, August 15.  A 19-year-old girl named Niky Carmikle was there with her boyfriend.  In fact, she had left her seat temporarily, and returned to find that her boyfriend, and seven others were crushed by the car.

“There were bodies everywhere,” Carmikle said (quoted from The Press Enterprise).

Investigators called to the scene said there were no barriers between the race track and the audience.  In fact, the audience was standing so close they could be described as the wall.   Except, of course, it was a wall made only of flesh and bone.  A wall made up of the very substance that a wall would have been protecting.

Brett Sloppy, owner of Misery Motorsports in San Marcos, was the driver of the Ford Ranger that careened into the audience.  While he was not hurt physically, I imagine the pain of knowing he was at least partially responsible for these deaths.  It was an accident, though, and most of the responsibility ought to be laid on the organizers of the event.

Everyone in attendance were very much like the Desert Dogs.  The Press Enterprise put it this way, “Many of the spectators were cut from a similar cloth of adventuring and hanging out in the desert.”

To our fallen desert rats, rest in peace.

New video – Lost in the Golden Valley

Click here:  Lost in the Golden Valley

The Golden Valley lies between two mountain ranges. Stretching across the north and northwest is the Lava Mountains, and to the southeast, the Almond Mountains close off the valley. The valley is literally surrounded by mountains and is probably one of the most secluded areas in the Mojave. While we were Google Earthing the area, we were only able to find one little road entering the valley. But, could we find it when we were actually there?

What’s interesting about the Golden Valley is that it’s relatively untouched, there’s awesome potential to find wildlife and archaeological artifacts. If this visit proves fruitful, we will come out again later in the year. Very little is written about the Golden Valley, everywhere we looked on the internet (flashes of websites), even Wikipedia, bestowed the same description. But one of the things the Golden Valley Wilderness is best known for its wildflower display. It’s June now, so we’re at the tail end of it, but as you can see, there are still flowers around.

But the road started getting a little too rough for our Toyota Highlander, and we decided to explore the areas around Red Mountain, in an area still considered to be a part of the Golden Valley Wilderness. In particular, we were going to Joe’s old stomping grounds, when he and his friends knew a local legend who lived around here. They called him Virgil Ramey. The ‘Steam Man.’

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