December 23, 2003

Amargosa Desert

I spent yesterday in Beatty trying to get the !@#$%^&* wireless connection to work. I check around town and the Geek guy that set up the system at the library and the medical clinic evidently is on vacation or at least he never came home. I kept checking his residence and when he wasn’t home this morning I decided to head out. I took the road south and turned off at the road that goes to the Amargosa farm district. I had never been down that road before so I thought it would be the right time now. You can see scattered groups of trees that mark farm or at least settlements in the valley. I drove down the road passing many abandoned farms and a few small irrigated pastures. I only saw one old pivot and mostly old wheel lines. I must be missing the good farms. I stopped at one where I saw the only person. He was a farmer for one of the biggest (not sure what that means, fat?) lawyers in Vegas. He said that they get 8 cuttings off the alfalfa fields. I asked how hot it was in summer and he said 118 wasn’t uncommon. He was farming with old swathers and tractors without cabs.

I drove by the school and see that the school mascot is a dust devil and they call themselves the ‘Sand Blasters’. At the north end of the valley I came by some huge sand dunes and I could see several RV rigs parked out there. I am sure that it will get a lot of use this week as the sand rails and quad guys come out to play. Playing on the sand can be a lot of fun. Thirty some years ago I had a chance to go out on the Yuma sand dunes with a friend. At that time there were jeeps with huge tires and a few vw dune buggies. The Yuma dunes go for miles down into Mexico and it was very easy to get lost. The sand hills in Amargosa valley are only a few miles long and wide.

The Amargosa Desert Memorial Cemetery is a bleak place. The plastic flowers are blown against the fence along with the tumble weeds. It is interesting that there is an address to the cemetery on a wood plaque. The address is 907. I wonder if anyone gets mail here….

Further down the valley I came to a huge dairy operation. One of the only white guys working there, a maintainence man, said they milked 11,000 cows and produced 230,000 gallons of milk a day (not sure of these numbers, but I think I got it right)

. They have three milking barns of 60, 40, and 80 cow capacity. He told me to go to the new one (first year of operation) which is all stainless and automated. All the guys are Mexicans who clean and put on the cups. The cups all come off automatically when they are finished milking. I stayed through a couple of milking runs and the cows know just what to do. This is truly a factory operation. The guy told me that they straight cut the crop and feed it directly to the cows during the summer. They get nine cuttings here and put up some hay as well. They have a steady stream of trucks bringing in hay to supplement their production and to make it through the short winter. He said the extreme heat does stress the cows some but they still produce well.

I have left a lot out about Devils hole which I thought was appropriate for Christmas time. I have to go now and set up camp and explore the upper reaches of the gulch.