Today we drove out a dusty 4X4 washboard road to the Racetrack Playa, by way of Teakettle Junction. The road was so rough our top speed was about ten miles an hour the whole way. The gorgeous desert floor stretched out before us, meeting with nearby mountains, the tops of which were dusted in snow. Veritable forests of tall yucca plants towered over golden cholla and creosote bushes.
At Teakettle Junction we found the weathered old wooden sign pointing to the Racetrack Playa. More than twenty kettles draped off the sign, placed by travelers before us, their names inscribed on the kettles.
At the Racetrack Playa, we finally saw the mysterious moving rocks we'd read so much about. The playa, which is a dry lake bed and the flattest surface occurring in nature, was cracked and dry today, meaning we could walk on it. For reasons scientists cannot discern, huge rocks slide around on the playa surface, leaving strange tracks behind them. Some go for hundreds of feet, turning 90 degrees, or swerving in circles. But no one knows why or how they do this. We saw a number of these awesome rocks, and stood out on the playa until the sun set, hiking around on the cracked surface and finding more and more mysterious rocks that had moved, leaving long trails behind them.