DAY 1 - We set off on our trip first thing in the morning. It was a beautiful day, but the drive through the desert was monotonous. The road just seemed to go on forever.
We decided to spend the first night in Shoshone, a small town right outside of Death Valley National Park. It was supposed to be small and quaint, with one motel, a cafe, and a general store. When we got to Shoshone, this is what we found. Not exactly a hopping place. In fact, the only cafe went out of business a year ago, and so we had to get back into the car and drive 27 miles into Nevada to find dinner!
DAY 2 - We began our exploration with a drive up to a lookout point called Dante's View. It's at 5475 ft and provides a great view of Death Valley. It was 46 degrees and windy - we were glad we had brought ski jackets!
The area behind us is Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America at 282 ft below sea level.
There was busload of students who seemed to be everywhere - like ants crawling over hills. We made a quick getaway so that we wouldn't spend the day running into them at every interesting stop.
Next, we drove down to Badwater Basin. It was still breezy, but 20-25 degrees warmer.
Long ago a surveryor working this area could not get his mule to drink from the pool of water (it was too salty). He wrote "bad water" on his map, and the name stuck.
The salt flats look like snow from a distance, but up close you can see salt crystals.
Next, we took a hike in Golden Canyon. It was an easy walk through a caynon filled with colorful rocks. It was a beautiful, warm and sunny hike.
That's Henry in the photo below.
That's me way down there.
Look at the colors!
We had decided to spend the second night inside the national park, camping in Furnace Creek. It was late afternoon and the winds had kicked up again, so we thought we'd better set up the tent before it got dark. We set up our tent on a dry, powder-fine dust surface in a windstorm. What a mess! The wind continued all night, but it was kind of cool to listen to it as we slept.
Our first stop on the way home was an abandoned borax operations area. In the 1880's, parts of Death Valley were mined for borax; it was known as "white gold." 20-mule teams were used to pull these large carts full of borax. They became the symbol of the borax industry, representing strength, since they pulled 36-ton loads through the desert.
We drove a little further and stopped to walk the Salt Creek Trail. We found that there really is water in the desert! Due to the arid environment and resulting evaporation, the water in this little stream is very salty. Although it's too salty for humans to drink, a number of plants and animals have adapted.
We had two choices for the road home - through the low desert or over some mountains. We opted for the higher elevation route just for a change of scenery. After driving a while, we decided to stop and take a short hike. The hike began at 6800 feet, where it was 34 degrees and windy again. Yikes! The scenery was great, though.
The snow-capped mountains in the distance are the Sierras near Lone Pine. Mt. Whitney is one of those peaks, though we weren't sure which one.
This was a really interesting trip. Here is Henry's take on it:
"It was gigantic, mountainous, salty, exciting, unfamiliar,
historical, geological, beautiful, awesome and sometimes warm, cold,
gritty, windy, frustrating, and confusing. It was a perfect adventure! J"
Happy birthday, Henry!
