{"id":8067,"date":"2019-04-15T09:00:25","date_gmt":"2019-04-15T16:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?p=8067"},"modified":"2019-04-15T09:15:11","modified_gmt":"2019-04-15T16:15:11","slug":"journey-to-the-valley-of-death-part-1-of-2-hopefully","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?p=8067","title":{"rendered":"Journey to the Valley of Death &#8211; Part 1 of 2 (hopefully)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Bob Sparrow<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_8069\" style=\"width: 275px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?attachment_id=8069\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-8069\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8069\" class=\"wp-image-8069 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Manson.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"265\" height=\"190\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-8069\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Manson Family Death Valley Hideout<\/p><\/div>\n<p>I\u2019m writing this blog prior to heading to <strong>Death Valley<\/strong> with five couples from our \u2018hood. I thought it would be important to provide a little history of this unique <strong>National Park<\/strong> as well as make sure I tell people where to look should our neighborhood safari not return \u2013 it is called Death Valley for a reason!<\/p>\n<p>It actually got its name from a group of pioneers in Utah headed to California <strong>in search of gold in 1849<\/strong>. After listening to a guy who \u2018thought\u2019 he knew a short cut, but didn\u2019t have a map (or too many living brain cells apparently), a group of pioneers split off from the main party (well, it really wasn\u2019t much of a party) to take this \u2018short cut\u2019 to the California gold through what was to become Death Valley. After losing many weeks and members of the group, as they were leaving this valley, one of the pioneers looked back and said, <strong>\u201cGoodbye \u2018death\u2019 valley.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_8070\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?attachment_id=8070\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-8070\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8070\" class=\"wp-image-8070 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Underground-city-300x145.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"145\" srcset=\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Underground-city-300x145.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Underground-city.jpeg 322w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-8070\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Death Valley&#8217;s underground city<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Aside from the many gold-hungry pioneers that lost their lives taking the shortcut, the \u2018valley\u2019 has genuinely earned its macabre moniker. <strong>Mother Nature<\/strong> has played a role by taking lives with her cold winter nights with freezing winds, flash floods and of course the distinction of holding the record for the <strong>hottest place in the world \u2013 134 degrees<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>It is speculated that there is an <strong>underground city<\/strong> beneath Death Valley, where many people died digging and living in these subterranean tunnels. As late as 1996 a family of five visiting Death Valley from Germany <strong>disappeared,<\/strong> never to be seen again. But that\u2019s not that unusual, there are many stories of people disappearing using their GPS to try and navigate the desert as there are many areas where <strong>cell reception is non-existent<\/strong> \u2013 it\u2019s sort of like a <strong>black hole<\/strong>, the <strong>Bermuda Triangle<\/strong> and the <strong>Twilight Zone<\/strong> all rolled into one.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_8071\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?attachment_id=8071\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-8071\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8071\" class=\"wp-image-8071 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/borax-300x120.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"120\" srcset=\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/borax-300x120.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/borax.jpeg 354w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-8071\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Borax Twenty-Mule Team<\/p><\/div>\n<p>There\u2019s more, California\u2019s last <strong>lynching<\/strong> took place in Death Valley and there are several old mining <strong>ghost towns<\/strong> in Death Valley where ghosts still reside. The <strong>Armagosa Hotel and Opera House<\/strong>, once a hotel for the <strong>Pacific Coast Borax Company<\/strong> is now haunted. Close by, 100 pound rocks move across a dry lakebed by themselves, leaving a trail. Oh yeah and Death Valley was also a place that <strong>Charlie Manson\u2019s<\/strong> gang hung out, so it\u2019s got that going for it;<\/p>\n<p>So why are we going to such a god-forsaken place of death? It\u2019s a beautiful, interesting place; the <strong>colors of the rocks, sand, mountains and flowers are incredible<\/strong> this time of year; and we are staying in a four-diamond hotel and playing golf \u2013 so over the years there has been an effort to remove the \u2018Death\u2019 from Death Valley.<\/p>\n<p>But still, if Suzanne\u2019s next blog is about her missing brother, you\u2019ll know where to start looking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Bob Sparrow I\u2019m writing this blog prior to heading to Death Valley with five couples from our \u2018hood. I thought it would be important to provide a little history of this unique National Park as well as make sure &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?p=8067\">read more<span class=\"meta-nav\"><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8071,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[813],"tags":[3055,3054,3056,172,3053],"class_list":["post-8067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel","tag-armagosa-hotel-and-opera-house","tag-borax","tag-charlie-manson","tag-death-valley","tag-twenty-mule-team"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/borax.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p31aN0-267","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8067"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8074,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8067\/revisions\/8074"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}