While masks are worn indoors, COVID protocols are more relaxed outdoors.Īs the day cools, we take in sunset from Dante’s View, a legendary locale in "Star Wars" lore. We take the cue of the Lucas film crew from decades ago and, heading to the Ranch at Furnace Creek, an oasis complete with golf course, air strip, saloon, restaurant and 1950s hotel, take a refreshing dip in a spring-fed pool, naturally warmed to 85 degrees. The warm March weather, an antidote to the North Coast fog, prompts an unexpected sweat. She was the San Francisco elephant who played a bantha, a mounted steed of the Tuskens, filmed just north of Artist's Palette in Desolation Canyon. Team Lucas started filming Tatooine in Tunisia, but finished up in Death Valley, in part because it was easier to bring Mardji here. The Stenger crew wanders through Golden Canyon in Death Valley National Park. In the nearby Black Mountains, old Ben Kenobi lived in a hermit hut. In an unmarked gulch that runs along the north side of the Artist's Palette parking lot, Jawas carried off R2-D2 in Artoo’s Arroyo. Other scenes from "A New Hope" were filmed here as well, like when Luke was conked on the head by Tusken Raiders, dangerous sand pirates wrapped in rags with grotesque metal protrusions for eyes and mouths.Ībout 7 miles south on Badwater Road, we detour onto a short one-way road that leads to Artist’s Palette, a riot of colors splashed on the hills, with iron, aluminum, magnesium, titanium, hematite and chlorite serving as the pigments. They naturally gravitate to the many side canyons, narrow slots that zig and zag out of Golden Canyon, climbing, crumbling and sampling the rock walls. Three and a half miles south of Furnace Creek is Golden Canyon, one of the park’s most popular day hikes, where Jawas hid themselves before zapping R2-D2 with an ionization blaster in "Episode IV: A New Hope." My kids are about the same size as the school children who played the film’s Jawas, small and dirty creatures. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate But to see where he did turn Death Valley into some of "Star Wars'" most famous backdrops, we head 60 miles west to the heart of the valley in Furnace Creek, where 40 years ago, Hollywood transformed the desert into the central nexus of Tatooine.
While the roaring planes resemble the Millennium Falcon and imperial TIE fighters as they dodged deadly asteroids, George Lucas never brought his film cameras to this crevice, formally known as Rainbow Canyon.
So off we went.įirst stop after an eight-hour drive from the Bay Area: Star Wars Canyon in the Inyo Mountains, a narrow, deep crevice whose walls consist of successive layers of lava flows, oxidized into deep purples, reds, greens and browns, where military jet pilots from the nearby Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake test their mettle at breakneck speeds.Ĭ-3P0 meets a park ranger in Death Valley National Park. A national park the size of Connecticut, Death Valley has also served as Tatooine, the desert home of the Skywalkers, old Ben Kenobi and other characters in two films in the original "Star Wars" trilogy.Įncouragingly, the park’s lodgings, both public campgrounds and private Furnace Creek resorts, had just opened up after months of dormancy.
#Gas station scum map Patch#
And given our mutual interest in "Star Wars," I wrangled the kids to explore the patch of sand and rock that’s long been sacred among Force fans.
0 kommentar(er)
