Badwater Before the Storm

This tale is true.

 

The participants are not actors.

 

Things like this couldn’t be made up…even by me.

 

I woke at 2am…as I thought I would. Duke was ready to go…as I thought he would…and let down immensely when I left him behind. For a brief second I considered bringing him.

 

I’m glad I didn’t.

 

After a brief stop for coffee at Dutch Bros. I was on I-5 headed towards Sacramento to pick up Oachs and Buttermilk…and our pork roast.

 

The ride down was smooth and I rolled into our designated meeting spot fueled up and ready to hit the road at 5am.

 

I thought my wife packed a lot of stuff….but between the those two guys…there was enough gear for an Himalayan odyssey…only we had no Sherpa’s to pack it.

 

Time to get creative.

 

20-minutes later, we had smoothly, (with the exception of that one time we pushed from one end and shot Buttermilk’s 500mm lens and bag out the back end onto the concrete, making him whimper like a girl.) loaded the vehicle.

 

Gear packed (smashed) in, it was time to pack the last items…

 

Us, and the roast.

 

Stephen and I loaded up pretty easily…because we had the front seats. Buttermilk somehow squeezed in with the crock-pot wedged firmly next to him for safe keeping. Even un-cooked the odors of garlic, Kaluha and meat were noticeable. In 12-hours we would our first shoot in the bag… we would be safely in camp gorging on fork tender roast

 

All that was left was plugging the cord into the inverter.

 

AND…

 

Nothing.

 

Blown fuse.

 

OH….No.

 

Oachs has another inverter!! He’s thought ahead…we will not be denied.

 

Plug in that roast!!!

 

AND…

 

Nothing. Inverter #2 down.

 

DOH!

 

5-minutes into the journey and panic has already set in.

 

We make an emergency stop at a supermarket for coffee (to clear our heads) and to look for a fuse of a higher caliber.

 

We find coffee but it doesn’t clear our heads…what if we can’t cook this roast?!?!?

 

One hour into the journey we decide to stop at the first Wal-Mart or Radio Shack we see when stores start opening at 8am…there we will solve this predicament we find ourselves in.

 

6:30am we see a truck stop…and come to the realization that if ANY industry knows about the fine art of on the road food preparation it’s the great American trucker. We pull in.

 

Inside the store we find a higher quality inverter…maybe this is our solution?

 

Inside my vehicle again, we give inverter #3 a go.

 

AND…

 

It works. It really works!

 

Not on the high setting, that shuts it off…but…on the low setting it works.

 

How much power do these things take?!?!?

 

We decide that eating at 8:30 instead of 7 will still be alright…cooking on low it is.

The main point is…we’re cooking…we’re cooking a roast in a crock pot …while driving to Death Valley.

 

All is right with the world.

 

15-minutes later the inverter overheats and we’re no longer cooking the roast.

 

Panic ensues.

 

Stephen tries to cool the device in the A/C to see if this will help.

 

It does…and once again we’re cooking.

 

The only issue now seems to be that the inverter overheats like clockwork every 15 minutes…at which time it needs to be cooled in the A/C so it can operate briefly again.

 

The next 8-hours Stephen babysat the roast…cooling the inverter as required every quarter of an hour. If we were in a spot that needed road directions when the roast went down, I would do the cooling while Stephen navigated. Teamwork is never letting a roast go without heat.

 

This whole process worked awesome. We knew it was working well too…because we were starting to smell the roast…and we could hear Buttermilk whine as the heat from the crock-pot began to singe the hairs on his right leg. We felt for him…not only was he sacrificing his flesh for the stability of our dinner…but the odor was far more enticing in the back than in the front. He was far more pork-drunk than we in the front.

 

Cloudy skies overhead, brakes slightly scorched, we rolled into Furnace Creek campground around 3pm.

 

It was 82 degrees outside.

 

At the crazy suggestion of the ranger, we took a campsite at slightly higher elevation…because he warned of ‘possible showers….which led to a muddy campground.’

 

Showers in death valley? For real?

 

They’ve had .07 inches of rain since last July….and according to the pamphlet they handed us at the campground…some years they get No rain at all.

 

How bad could “showers” in DEATH VALLEY be really?

 

We set up our tent…and went out to scout locations…

 

This is when the ominous skies began their descent into the valley.

 

We had already decided we wanted to try the Mesquite Dunes on Friday…and give them a chance to score some evening wind, and erase the footprints from the hundreds of tourists we saw wandering amongst them on our drive in.

 

We drove out towards Badwater to find our location for our first evenings shoot. Roast cooking nicely in the back.

 

Rain drizzled ever-so-lightly onto the earth. HELLO DEATH VALLEY “SHOWERS” I scoffed to myself.

 

4:10pm we rolled into Badwater Saltflats..

 

Badwater hasn’t had any water (good or bad) for quite some time so foot traffic and wind has all but destroyed those salt ridges people are accustomed to seeing in photographs of the area. It takes a long walk out before you start to find anything of interest. We didn’t bring out any camera gear for this initial run…so when we returned to the car, rather than wander back out on the saltpan we elected to drive further down the road in search of better options.

 

4:45pm We hadn’t found any better place, and the very small portion of sky that wasn’t filled with storm clouds was changing colors, and threatening to become dull.

 

Back to Badwater.

 

Rain began to fall a bit harder.

 

Stephen and Buttermilk weren’t overly impressed with Badwater…so they opted for roast detail while I ran (literally) out on to the salt flats to find SOME place to shoot. I was beginning to fear that this could very well end up being the only thing I shot the entire time here…and maybe the ranger might be right. That sky was getting more threatening by the second.

 

After running for about ¾ of a mile I found a few spots that looked interesting and started cracking off shots. The patch of color you see here is the ONLY patch in the entire area…dark clouds are looming over the rest of the park. I got off 5-frames before the rain hit and the color faded.

 

I was glad I went out. I was also glad that the roast was still cooking.

 

Once we were all back in the vehicle…it was time for dinner. We all agreed that the roast could probably use a good hour on high to really make sure it was cooked.

 

Back to Furnace Creek…to the store to ask the clerk for one of the most bizarre requests he’s probably ever heard.

 

“Can we plug out crock pot in here? Our car isn’t strong enough to power it on high…and it could use another hour.”

 

“uh. I guess.”

 

The roast cooked…and we went next door to the saloon to enjoy some beers, and wait for our roast…and talk about the weather.

 

sign up for updates on the website www.brianruebphotography.com Workshop dates are filling up very quickly for the first sets The Yosemite and SF workshops are almost booked.

 

 

Done