Death valley
Trip Start
Aug 10, 2007
1
74
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Trip End
Dec 27, 2007
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Death Valley,
California,
United States
Monday, November 5, 2007
We had a motel room that dated back to the 1940's and we slept soundly, taking a moment to imagine which "cowboy" had slept in the bed we were sleeping in?
In the morning we spent a few hours having a look at Lonely Pines before heading off to Death Valley. The town was very interesting with buildings dating back 150 years. The town has a population of 2 060 people, so is typical of small town America.
Back in the day of western movies the town was very popular. The hotel we stayed in was always full of actors, directors etc. from the big Hollywood studios. Just outside town a "western town" was constructed and was used by actors like John Wayne. The town has a film museum that contains many artifacts from that era. All in all, an amazing, interesting town.
We bought some supplies for our journey, filled the car with gas and hit the road, taking highway 190 east.
We reached the Saline Valley and stopped at the view point called Father Crowley, to see the east side of death valley stretched out as far as we could see. Highway 190 enters the park from the west side. We were excited to see a massive pile of volcanic black rocks at the view point as they were exactly the same as the volcanic rocks in New Zealand.
We drove down towards the valley and stopped to take a self-portrait at the Death Valley welcome sign. Just past the park entrance was something I have wanted to see for 15 years - Joshua trees! Ever since the U2 album (called Joshua Tree) was photographed in Death Valley, I have wanted to see the Joshua trees in person. They were amazing and we spent quite a while studying them, and took a lot of photos as every tree is completely different.
Stovepipe Wells is a village almost slap bang in the centre of the park. On our way there, to pay the $20 park entrance fee, we stopped off at the Mosaic Canyon.
The canyon is famous for it's polished marble walls and odd mosaic patterns of breccia. The canyon is twisty, and in places, it is necessary to walk in single file as the canyon is so narrow.
We scrambled through the initial half mile and then came out into the wider path, with Tucki Mountain stretching out before us. We did not hike Tucki as we did not have the time to do so, but we did have some fun taking photos in the canyon, especially in the narrow areas.
In one particular spot I set the camera on the tripod pointing down into a narrow turn in the canyon path, pressed the shutter button and raced down to stand next to Jules. I had 10 seconds to get to Julie, which sounds like a lot, however I had to get down a 6m hill of smooth marble stone, without falling on my nut. I scrambled down, the shutter dropped and when I looked at the photo I was not impressed, so we did it again, and this time I took a new route down, and the photo was much better.
So we headed out the canyon and down to Stovepipe Wells. We paid our $20 and followed the road to the Tawny sand dunes.
The dunes rise 100 feet above Mesquite Flat. The dunes are composed of minute particles of quartz that are blown down the Mesquite Flats. We wondered on the dunes for a while and then jumped in the Charger to go and find the Ubehebe Crater.
We headed north and came to the turn off about 30 minutes from Stovepipe Wells. We drove along a rough road (happy to be driving a hired car) and parked at the crater.
The Ubehebe Crater is a 600 feet deep crater that was formed 3000 years ago when a massive volcanic explosion, caused by the violent release of underground steam pressure, left a huge hole in the ground - the Ubehebe Crater.
We drove southwards towards Furnace Creek and Badwater. Furnace Creek is the village where the RV's camp and it has two hotels. Outside the Furnace Creek hotel we stopped to take a photo of the 20 mule team wagon. When minerals were being transported out of Badwater, wagons were pulled by 20 mules at a time.
The afternoon sun was starting to disappear, so we rushed to get to Badwater before we lost the light.
The Badwater Basin is 882m below sea level, the lowest point in the western hemisphere. We arrived and walked out onto the salt flats. We walked for about 5 minutes and it didn't seem as if we had gone very far. We decided to not go any further as we wanted to see Artist's Drive before dark.
We set up the tripod and took a self-portrait shot, and it looked weird. The photo looked like I had superimposed us on a background, it looked fake! As we turned to return to the car, we noticed a sign on the mountain facing us. As we got closer we saw the sign read
"sea level". The sign was attached to the mountain side at sea level, and as we gazed upward we were amazed at how low we actually were.
Artist's Drive is a 9 mile loop road that cuts through multi-hued volcanic and sedimentary hills. It was an incredible drive, the hills were reflecting all sorts of different colours. We kept "ooohing" and "aaaahing" as we drove along. The colours were absolutely stunning, to see green, red, gold etc. reflecting off the rocks was awe inspiring.
By the time we had finished the drive, it was dark, so we headed into Furnace Creek to find a hotel room. We were so tired that we hardly even blinked at the $150 room charge! We had dinner in the hotels restaurant and went to bed early as we wanted to see the sunrise from Zabrinskie Point in the morning.
