Death Valley

December 19, 2018

It's fun to stumble across the eccentric.  We never claimed to be normal and I hope we never settle to it.  If you call us friends, chances are that you are a little strange too.  This is because quirkiness is the north to our compass.  We gravitate to it and are never, never sorry for it.  I'm happy to report that we did discover a beautiful story in the middle of Death Valley.  I only wish I had found this place 10 years ago.



We did go to Death Valley.  And truth be told, it deserves its own post.  I can't begin to describe it. A truly transporting experience.  But incredibly, our hotel experience was so surprising to me, that it nearly overshadowed my adventure there. In a good way! When does that ever happen? 


So here is another tip for traveling ...
When it comes to lodging, take some risks. 
You almost never die and it usually pays off.  I bet you don't remember a single night you ever spent in a Hilton  or Days Inn.  Those nights disappear.  They are gone.  They never happened. This experience, on the other hand, will always be with us.

In the tiny town of Death Valley Junction, population of three, is the obscure Amargosa Hotel and Opera House.  So as not to disappoint, I will tell you now that this is not a hotel review.  I won't even mention whether the furnishings were "dated" or whether housekeeping needs to "step it up".  I won't be discussing the continental breakfast or the lack thereof.  (Although...I will mention that it does have a community fridge and toaster oven.  Only because I wish I had known that!)  I won't be listing the hotels pros and cons because this is not a hotel.  This is a story.  And all stories have a beginning, so first, we have to go back.

 The Amargosa sits entirely alone at a desolate crossroads.  You need to know this because you need to get a sense of what Marta Becket experienced the first time she came across it.   This woman, a young gorgeous New York ballerina, was touring Death Valley in the 1960s and got a flat tire. She peered into the hazy windows of a tiny dilapidated theatre across the street (the only other building in the town) and saw her future.  She believed that her lifelong dream of running her own theatre was here, in the middle of this desert.  She rented the theatre and spent the rest of her life renovating it and performing for curious desert dwellers and occasional passersby.  In this remote desert, most nights would bring no audience, so this inconceivable woman spent six years painting an audience in the theatre.  When the actual seats were empty she danced for the kings, queens, monks, nuns, and commoners that she had thrown upon her walls.   Eventually, word did get out.  How could it not? Newspaper articles were written and documentaries were filmed.  She ultimately did get her audience and continued to perform in her theatre well into her 80s. Her last show was comically titled "The Sitting Down Show" where she performed, sitting down.  She lived a worthwhile life doing exactly what she loved, whether anyone noticed or not.  Marta, the spirit behind this town, died at the age of 92, last January. She was gorgeous, tenacious, talented and very quirky. Exactly who I want to be when I grow up.  

There is so much more to her story and I won't even try to relay it all to you.  I will just encourage you to look her up.  You will be fascinated, I promise.  I really wanted to get some great photographs of her paintings inside the theatre.  Unfortunately, it was very dark and difficult to do.  And in true Hill Family fashion, we just happened to show up on the day that someone was filming a documentary about the place.  So every time we turned around to take a picture during our tour of the theatre, there was a camera crew two feet away from our faces.   So just look it up!  Her murals are something to see.

Marta painted all the backdrops, made the costumes and wrote all the choreography for her one woman shows.

After she spent four years painting the walls, she spent another two painting the ceiling.

We spent one night in her hotel, an old Pacific Coast Borax Company dormitory which adjoined the theatre.  Though she has been gone for nearly a year, her marks are everywhere.  Like her theatre, she used the hotel walls as another canvas. She had promised to include, along the wall, the portrait of anyone that donated to help restore the building.  One particular portrait, halfway down the hall especially drew our attention. On the wall is a meticulously painted but empty frame.   The girls and I came up with all kinds of theories as to why she would paint a frame with such care and then leave it empty.  Had vandals painted something obscene which had to be painted over?  Had she died before getting to finish it?  The lady who ran the front desk finally gave us the real story, which was so much more endearing.  The donor wanted to stay anonymous.  So, in tribute to him, she painted a frame and left it blank.  Intentionally.  And 50 years later, it is still there.  An empty frame in the wall for a man that shared her vision.  I love this woman.  I wish I could have met her.

 The hotel is supposedly haunted, according to the local lore.  I'm a sap for anything creepy, so this was not a deterrent for me at all.  And while I didn't experience any covers being pulled from me in the night or hear the cries of children or parties in the great room, I will admit that the long halls ARE creepy.  The end of the main hall is  boarded up, painted and covered with a mirror.  Behind the mirror is the unrenovated, purportedly haunted section of the motel known as "Spooky Hollow".  Not going to lie....I walked briskly past that corner and didn't turn around while I did it.  So, no, I didn't see any ghosts, but I legitimately hoped that Marta was there in some kind of spirit, flittering up and down the colonnades. I liked to think about her there in all those hard won and loved details she left behind.  

Hidden behind this mirror, another long hallway...Spooky Hollow

I don't love hotels.  But this is not a hotel.  This is a story.  And I do love stories. From the hotel's infancy as a miner's dormitory to it's maturity as Marta Becket's dream.  Now that Marta is gone, the Hotel is still being maintained.  Only time will tell if someone else will love it like it she did.  So go now, while you still have the chance.  There is nothing like it.


So yeah!  I didn't forget.  We went to Death Valley!  Here's my temporary plug till I get around to visiting it again and giving it the attention it deserves.   I know that people are not typically dying to visit Death Valley National Park...but trust us.  This place is incredible.  A totally new and different brand of gorgeous.  We didn't have enough time to see it all and frankly, Marta pretty much stole the show for me!  But until I get back there to give Death Valley its true due, here are a few pictures to remember it by...