Death Valley

Thursday, March 3, 2022

After three years in Las Vegas we finally made our escape. We had only planned to be around for a year but COVID interrupted our plans. Our current plan is to travel around the United States for about two years and see lots of National Parks. After that we have high hopes that we’ll be able to return to the European Continent. We had an amazing itinerary planned and would really like to complete it.

In the morning we stood for apartment inspection. An agent snooped around every corner of the place and declared that she was unable to tell us if we were entitled to our security deposit back because someone else had to come and inspect the carpets. Seriously???

We had loaded up the car the previous night so we were able to make a fast getaway. Normally we travel pretty light but it seems we acquired a lot of new stuff during the last three years. The car was packed to the gills but we were in great spirits for the short, two hour trip to Death Valley.

The first thing we did was to buy an annual park pass. The pass, which costs $80, would allow the two of us to visit any National Park for 12 months. The pass also includes National Forests, National Wildlife Refuges, Bureau of Land Management Sites, Bureau of Reclamation Sites and US Army Corp of Engineers Sites. It’s a bargain. At age 62 you can get a lifetime pass for the same $80. There are some perks for the elderly.

We’d been to Death Valley before in 2017. During that trip we traversed the park from East to West on our way to Yosemite National Park. We stopped at a bunch of places along the way and had a great time. This time, however, we planned to spend a couple of days and see much of the other parts of the park that we’d missed. Our first adventure was a hike up Golden Canyon Trail.

The trail is a long loop that connects with two other trails for a total of about six miles. It was a hot day, with the temperate holding in the mid 90s, so we decided to do just the Golden Canyon trail and double back. It was just as well since the entire hike turned out to be up hill. If you’ve never been to Death Valley you might be surprised. Yes, there is a huge valley in the middle but the sides of the park are made up of mountains created by geologic eruptions. There are striations of color everywhere. It’s quite beautiful. As advertised the center of the canyon was made up of rocks that were a golden color.

Afterwards we continued down the road and took Artists Drive. It’s described as a 15 minute drive through some canyons with a variety of colors. Along the way we found several places to park and climb up to some vista points. The paths were rather steep and gravely. We had bought some hiking poles for just this kind of thing but had left them in the car. We’d remember next time.

The highlight of the drive is a place where a long, undulating eruption, brought a variety of minerals to the surface each reflecting the sunlight in a different color. It is quite a spectacular sight. There is also a steep path to climb into the rocks but we were getting tired by then and decided to just enjoy the view.

Our last stop in the park was to Badwater Basin – the lowest point in the United States. It’s a large salt flat with an accommodating site from which to take pictures. I noticed that the sign seemed to be wrong. It said that the elevation was 282 feet / 855 meters below sea level. 282 feet converted to meters isn’t even close to 855 meters. A quick calculation in my mind said it should be less than 90. What the heck? It bothered me for the rest of the evening.

It turned out that our hotel was a much longer drive from the park than we expected in spite of the fact that it was as close as we could get. The drive was about 45 minutes and by this time we were rather tired and hungry. We passed through downtime Pahrump and only saw fast food restaurants and casinos. We were hoping for better. When we finally arrived at our hotel, about 15 minutes outside of Town, we were told that they were no longer providing their famous home made breakfasts and that in a few minutes someone would drop by our room with tomorrow’s breakfast – consisting of cold cereal, a small can of juice, a piece of fruit and a pastry. We were VERY disappointed. We were so tired that we ate our “breakfast” for dinner and went to bed.

Friday, March 4, 2022

There were very few interesting places to have breakfast this morning. Most of the “good restaurants” were in the casinos and we wanted no part of that. We finally settled on “Mom’s Diner”. It had good reviews. We weren’t expecting much.

We ordered some standard breakfast fare. The food was good but nothing special. I ordered the corned beef hash and eggs and could swear that the corned beef was the stuff you get from the can in the supermarket. Luckily for me I like that stuff. The meals was fairly reasonable at about $21. We got some gas and were back on our way to the park.

Our first stop of the day was Dante’s View. You ascend through a series of switchbacks that snake through a large canyon. Higher and higher you go until you are well over 5,000 feet. You are rewarded for your patience with a panoramic view of the entire basin. On the far side are large, snow covered mountains and in the middle the vast salt flats that stretch for miles. There’s a steep path to a higher elevation for even better viewing. This time we remembered our poles. Given the fresh cool air and the sweeping vistas we hardly noticed how steep the footing was. As we approached the peak our expressions changed as we saw two more even higher peaks to climb. We declined to go any further.

We wanted to use the restrooms before heading out to the other trails so we went back to the visitor center where we had purchased our park pass the day before. I couldn’t help myself. With picture in hand I ran straight over to the information desk and asked the ranger about the sign at Badwater Basin. She smiled like she’d heard this one before and said, “There’s probably a decimal point there”. When I blew up the picture as far as I could I could see a faint decimal point indicating not 855 meters but 85.5 meters. Mystery solved!

Our next stop was Natural Bridge. We reached the turnoff and discovered that the next mile and a half to the parking lot was on a poorly maintained dirt road with deep ruts and large holes. The road was really only suitable for an SUV but we trekked on. We were relieved when we finally parked that the car was still in one piece. The hike to the rock formation was just over a mile but we found that it was uphill the entire way. Dante’s View had done a number on our legs and we were dragging most of the way. When we finally made it we took a few half-hearted pictures and started back down the trail. When we got back to the car we were both exhausted. We ate a couple of energy bars, rolled down the windows to let the cool breeze in and took a nap.

By now it was about 2:30 pm and we had checked off all of the items on our itinerary. Death Valley is considered to be a “dark sky” park, which means that it is an excellent place to see and photograph the night sky. To kill some time we went back to one of the sites we’d seen in 2017: The Harmony Borax Mine.

Borax was mined from 1883 until 1888 in Death Valley. It was a labor intensive process. Because of the great distance the minerals had to travel to get to markets the borax was mined and refined on site. Each load was pulled by a “Twenty Mule Team”, which became the symbol for the Borax industry for over a century.

By the time we finished at the Borax mine there was still more than three hours until it would be dark. We were tired and had noticed the the sky had become quite cloudy. It would be a bad night for viewing. We decided to head back to our hotel. Along the way we stopped at a supermarket and picked up some prepared food for our dinner.