Sunday, December 04, 2011

Tribal Travels, Musings, and Jawbone Canyon Chapter 7 by R. Cane

We found ourselves ambling thru Death Valley - a favorite trek of grandmother's who loved Scotty’s Castle.

Scotty's Castle Death Valley
I was often the official map-navigator - a cherished connection to the travel and magical highway numbers, when I saw a feature on the Death Valley map called Ubehebe Crater. The map photo and blurb said it was a huge Crater where an ancient meteor struck lo, many millenniums ago. I found the name amusing , so I suddenly began an impromptu chant out loud …. "We-got-the-Ube-hee-bee-jeebies" … in a sing-songy way ... over and over. Well this didn't go over all that well with my captive audience, who I believe were the first to actually get the 'Ube-hee-bee-jeebies'! Just to make me quit - we made a rare diversion, and went to the crater - but only on the promise I wouldn’t chant anymore!

The Crater was astounding- what amazing power to make a hole a 1/2 mile across and 600 hundred feet deep .. the glassy sand was quite slippery - micro-beads of lava glass ... and while it was tempting to go down into bottom of the crater, after a few steps in the nearly liquid-esque and highly slippery lava beads, it was immediately clear that getting back up and out of the crater might be quite problematic... and I had a flash thought – this crater might be one of the reasons why this was called Death Valley'!!

With that thought in mind we were quickly back in the truck and on our way … and well over the 'heebie-jeebies'!!

[Editor's note: This story was written by R. Cane and is part of a 10 story series]

Ubehebe Crater Death Valley

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

A friend was just about to walk down the aisle to get married and we asked if he had the 'Heebie-Jeebies'?... 'No' he replied, 'we had a blood test, and it was negative!' We still laugh about it!