December 17-18, 2013 Shoshone, California

The weather is still beautiful, in the low 70’s and sunny.

John and Judy hiking the Shoshone Loop trail.  View of the Resting Springs range across the valley.

Pretty cloud patterns. Downtown Shoshone, it was really crowded the lottery has reached 600 million and the tickets are not on sale in Nevada so lots of people drive over and wait in long lines to buy tickets.

Sue and John with the line behind us. Today we hiked down into China Ranch date ranch.  John and Judy hiking on the Mesa trail above China Ranch.

It was overcast most of the day, the sun tried to come out a couple times. China Ranch is an oasis in the desert, it is always such an incredible sight to see all this green when you have approached through the dry, desolate desert.

John and Judy on the cliffs above the ranch. We got closer to the ranch. It is even greener in the summer, many of the trees have lots leaves, but not the date palms.

We went into the gift shop. I bought dates. They have tons of different varieties. I got the gourmet dates, you can see the empty spot on the shelf. John and Judy got date shakes.  We got a tour of the processing area. Here they put the dates in the hopper at the far end. It shakes and the debris fall through a screen. They lay wet towels below that and as the dates go down they get washed. They they are sorted, weighted and packed up.

Steve is showing us the many kinds of dates. They keep the bins covered because birds come in and dine on the  dates. The dates on the trees are also covered to protect them from birds. They call the covers  skirts. You can see the desert badlands behind the palm trees.

A colorful rock in the otherwise plain desert pavement , desert holly. The trail was these rocks painted white. We discovered that they were only painted on one side, the side away from us. In Death Valley at a place called the race track that is a dry lake playa there are rocks with paths like this behind them. They move, but no one has ever seen them move. They postulate that when the playa is wet, esp frozen the wind blows the rocks, but like I say, no one has seen them move. This rock in the trail looks like it came from the racetrack.