Leaving the glow of Las Vegas behind, we found ourselves driving through a real desert on 2-lane roads that stretched into the horizon onto Death Valley. Death Valley is renowned for two things:
1. It is the driest place in North America
2. It is the hottest place in North America
What we found out empirically, that there is a strong third attribute. It has a sense of humor. While we were there, the temperatures fell below freezing on our first night camping and it rained on our second.
To be fair, we did visit in the middle of winter, not in the summer when it's a scorching 125 degrees in the shade, and the ground rocks heat up to over 200. But perhaps that's not such a bad thing. We were not alone - the campground at Furnace Creek where we stayed was full on both of the nights we stayed, and we could not even get a place for a third night there.
Driving in, we had hoped to stop at Devil's Hole on the way - a small detached part of Death Valley. However, due to getting a little lost, we bypassed it. How can you get lost in such flat terrain, you may ask? Easy. The map had no street names in the desert, nor did the actual roads at the intersections, and the map was not precise enough to figure out which road to take. We got the to the park all right, but not the way we intended. In fact, after setting out to arrive with plenty of time to spare, we actually got the ranger station check-in just minutes before they closed for the evening. Fortunately, there was enough daylight for us to start setting up our campsite - mainly a newly-purchased tent and sleeping bags borrowed from Amie's mom.
I never knew quite how big Death Valley was. It is definitely a site be seen by car - in fact, you would have to drive for more than 4 hours to get from one end to the other. By land area, it's the biggest national park in the U.S. Three days were enough time to get a good start on seeing what it has to offer, but we could have easily spent three more there without running short on activities.
My top choice was a hike to Telescope Peak, the high point in the park at over 11,000 feet. This would be especially cool considering that our starting point could well be the Badlands, the lowest point in North America at 282 free below sea level. Granted, it would have seemed more impressive if I had not visited Israel two years prior, where my swim in the Dead Sea put me slightly under 1200 feet below sea level. Plans would not come to fruition, however - the mountain trails were snowed in. So here are the places we went in Death Valley, in chronological order:
Our arrival in Death Valley nearly coincided with the full moon. The nighttime brightness was easily sufficient to enjoy a stroll among the rocks, and so we joined about 120 others for a ranger walk / talk for the full moon at Golden Canyon. Park Rangers tend to be enthusiastic about their parks, and our guide was no exception. He was astounded at the crowd - expecting no more than 20 folks to brave the nighttime cold. Golden Canyon seemed rather gray by moonlight, but I could still pick out the terrain of the Javas from Star Wars, much of which was filmed on that spot. The canyon we walked used to have a paved road in it until mother nature did away with the pavement in a flash flood in 1979. There were few traces of asphalt remaining, and in a few years there will probably be none. After the organized hike ended, the group split up and we ended up hiking up a side canyon where the silence was total once we took a couple of turns and paused. Unfortunately, the sky was overcast (as it would continue to be for the trip, denying us the sky of stars we were so looking forward to), but it was still bright enough to walk by in the "sun". It didn't occur to me until this walk, but it's important to notice which way the canyon runs as it's rather difficult to see in the shadow of the rocks. The general rule of thumb was that if you can't see the moon, you can't see. The only exception was when a fellow tourist decided to blind everyone for a while by taking a flash picture of us. Darn tourists! ;)
Setting up our campsite, going on the full moon stroll, having dinner, and arguing about "car camping" versus "real camping" pretty much rounded out our first night in desolation, and we retired to a cold night at Furnace Creek. I would recommend the Furnace Creek campground if for no other reasons that it's central, has good facilities, and is near the visitor center and the Death Valley Ranch with it's $2 showers that we would discover the next night.
Day 2 started by driving to the salt lake bed at Badwater - the lowest point in the US. The terrain is much like the moon, with cracked ground that goes on for miles, but covered by salt. It looks like snow, but without the cold and with a distinct salty taste (it's 95% table salt). We hiked out a ways, eventually finding a weather station and collecting some salt samples en route. The crystalline structures were intricate - once again very reminiscent of snow flakes. On the lake bed, we threw a frisbee a bit before disagreeing whether running for the frisbee and tossing it around irreparably damaged the salt bed. I'll let the reader decide who was on which side of that argument. ;)
Next we drove to a place aptly named Natural Bridge. Here a short hike takes you to a natural land bridge formed by a strange shape of the canyon. There was great hiking and rock climbing to be done there, but the rocks were rather fragile and tended to come apart as sand when applied too much pressure to. Alas, it was enjoyed more of a visual than tactile experience.
We drove by Devil's Golf Course - my best guess at its name was that the patches of salt as seen above are large and somewhat resemble sand traps. It was not much different from the Badlands, so we moved on.
Our next destination was a drive through the one-way Artists Palette, which I am sure would have looked more colorful in full sunlight, but we took what we could get. Still, you could see how the various minerals in the soil caused colors that do not come out very well in these photos. The reds and pinks of iron intermixed with grays, greens, silvers and browns that only a geology buff could identify the sources of. It was our first and main drive-through site in Death Valley, though we did take the time to make a couple of stops to get out and hike. It's just not the same if you don't get to touch and walk upon the rock.
This was followed by the most pathetic site of the valley. It is called Mushroom Rock, and not only is it in prominent bold on the map handed to us by the rangers, they even highlighted it as a "major site". The recommendation was prefaced by the fact that the rock used to be twice the size (weather doing its job over time), but really, compared to the huge mushroom mounds in central Turkey or the like, is this worth bold-facing on a map?
Death
Valley was populated during the late 19th and early 20th centuries for one primary
reason: borax. Why else would over 30,000 people try to survive in an environment
most approaching hell? Borax was discovered in the late 1800s, but transporting
it to the closest railroad station involved a 130 mile trek through treacherous
heat. The solution was to refine the borax to the purest form possible at the
site, and haul it the 130 miles using the famous 20-mule teams that hauled huge
wagons of borax and their water supply. Actually, they were composed of two
lead horses and 18 mules. We learned all about the history of Death Valley though
the brochures we got, but mostly by a visit to the wonderfully informative and
free Borax Museum at the Death Valley Ranch. It is housed in a small building
with good explanations on their exhibits and a large outdoor corral which had
many items from the period, which are still in very good shape given the dryness
of the environment. Here I am with a 20-mule water wagon; the borax wagon was
much larger with 7' solid rear wheels.
We took the car through the 20-Mule Team Canyon, and it was hard to imagine getting teams of 20 mules and horses to turn the corners in those tight quarters. It's no wander that operations ceased about a decade after they got going.
The last
site of the day was a pilgrimage to what was reputed to be the best site for
watching a sunset in Death Valley. It was called, ironically, Dante's View,
even though most folks looked up and west towards the mountains and setting
sun, not down into the pits of Death Valley. Clouds precluded a full sunset
view once again, but we got to do some hiking at the altitude and were rewarded
with sights of many plants (they could grow at this elevation) and vistas overlooking
much of the valley.
Appropriately enough, when we returned to Furnace Creek, there was an evening slide show about rain Death Valley. The enthusiastic park ranger had us convinced that if it was going to be cloudy, it might as well rain. Rain, infrequent as it is, still forms Death Valley more than any other phenomena, and the vegetation after a heavy rain (Death Valley averages 2" annually) is colorful and totally un-desert-like. I don't know what kind of premonition the ranger had to offer the talk that evening, but I was woken at 5 am by Amie after she heard the patter of rain on our tent. Not enough to wash us out, but definitely sufficient to dirty the car and scare us into taking our shoes inside the tent. Sadly, I couldn't find the ranger to ask him for a stock tip. Main lesson learned: Death Valley is so dry because most storms come off the Pacific, and as the weather moves West to East, the rain gets pushed out as the storm has to cross three mountain ranges en route. The westerly side of the mountains tends to be green and fertile, while the eastern side is dry and barren.
The evening was wrapped up by having dinner by a camp fire (as Tom Hanks so aptly put it, "I! Have made ... Fire!"). Then we treated ourselves to the ultimate of luxuries for a Death Valley camping trip - a hot shower. Furnace Creek Ranch next door had paid showers ($2 well spent!) and a pool that was fed by natural springs nearby. The spring water was in the 80s, and the warm dip felt rather good on a 40 degree night.
Time seems to fly when exploring national parks, and so it was that we awoke to our last day in Death Valley feeling like we had barely started our exploration. After breaking camp and packing, we set off for the Harmony Borax Works, a site we visited the night before, but which was too dark to really explore. What we found was an interpretive trail by a well-preserved borax processing facility where we got to apply our newly-formed borax expertise. It's amazing how much processing equipment was set up in the desert, but the hardship of hauling made that the only feasible alternative.
The Salt Creek interpretive trail, our next stop, was meant to be impressive in the fact that it had a creek running through it - water in the desert! I have a feeling it would have been a lot more impressive had it not rained the night before with threatening clouds still overhead. Still, the thoughts of fishing in Death Valley had not dawned on me before.
Our ultimate big adventure of the Death Valley trip was a hike through Fall Canyon. We set out at 1 pm on what was advertised as a 3 mile hike to a dry fall, and with some careful rock climbing, you could get to the top and continue on for 4 more miles. This seemed like cake. Going in, however, proved to be all uphill, walking on gravel that was loosely packed and yielded when you tried to take a step forward. Thus progress was rather slow, like walking on sand, and we finally reached the dry falls after hoofing it for well over two hours. As it was getting on towards dark, Amie decided to turn back, while I clambered up the rock face and went on to explore a bit further. We met up on the way back down, which was a very pleasant downhill as the gravel yielded to soften each step. Here are some views from the hike - reputed to be the most beautiful narrows in Death Valley, and rightly so.
If you are a park authority, please skip the rest of this write-up. ;) For the
rest of you, I think you would have joined me in collecting some of the more
picturesque samples of rocks from the hike. It's not like Death Valley would
run out anytime soon. Below is a picture of the rocks we chose along the way.
The white-looking chunk on the left is actually salt from the salt bed, and
the beard at the bottom is sand from the largest sand dunes on the continent.
By the time we came back to the car and started driving, it was well on towards dark. Our last stop in Death Valley was on the huge sand dunes at Stovepipe Wells. It's amazing how fine the sand there is - it feels almost like talcum powder. I could not resist taking a sample of it home. Amie and I threw a frisbee back and forth until it got too dark to see it to commemorate our trip to Death Valley. And then we were off.
One of the amazing parts was that after three days of camping, we looked remarkably human.
There are two main routes from Las Vegas to Lake Tahoe - a more direct though
mountainous I-395 and the longer but straighter I-95. Amie was intending to
drive on I-95 due to fear of snow in the passes and her motion sickness, but
various people we encountered in Death Valley convinced her otherwise. As we
found out later, it was lucky of us to drive on I-395 on the day that we did
- indeed there had been a storm two days before which slowed passage considerably,
but it was cleared out the day we went and the roads were in perfect condition.
We drove by the eastern side of the Sierras - a beautiful sight, had it been daylight to observe it. As it was, setting out at 5 pm, we only got to glimpse the mountains in an eerie blue light of a nearly full moon. It was gorgeous. Unfortunately, that lighting does not yield easily to picture-taking, but take my word for it. Seeing huge hills next to you, with snow reflecting the light of the moon was a sight we could not get enough of the entire evening.
Our plan was to drive until early evening, but Amie felt awake enough to drive on. When we started looking for a place to stay, we made the unfortunate discovery that all motels and hotels were overpriced and full. Only then did it dawn on us that Mammoth Mountain - a ski resort in its own right, was less than an hour's drive away. It was an hour in front of us, so we drove for an extra two hours to pass by Mammoth itself and beyond its sphere of influence. The drive concluded for the night at the tiny town of Walker, California, by the Nevada border, where we were one of only three rooms occupied (of 16 rooms), and the rate was not in the $100 range as in the towns before, but a quite reasonable $30. To give you a sense of the type of motel this was, the proprietors told us that there was no need to "check out" - just leave the keys in the room and the room unlocked. They would not be around after 9 am as all of them went to church for the morning.