Blogs from Death Valley National Park, California, United States, North America

The two bus loads of binocular equipped Germans perched at the top of Zabriskie Point looked like Afrika Korps scouts sent by Rommel’s ghost to locate prime 88 artillery sites on Death Valley’s flat expanse for some future installation. Germans appear to be the tourists de jour in all of the US National parks that we have been to to date. Flush with Merkel muscled geld they leave no stone unturned in their search of the elusive American dream. Ein land. Ein Volk. Ein Euro. I have to be honest. The only reason a guy my age is even likely to think of going to Death Valley is because of all those hours spent as a child in front of the black and white Zenith listening to Ronald Reagan going on an on about brave cowboys ... read more

At 08:30 we left the hotel for a drive through Death Valley National Park. We took the I15 south to Baker California and then headed north along the 127, through Shoshone. We stopped at the Zabriskie Point Lookout near Furnace Creek and then at the Furnace Creek Visitor Centre (where it was 106 degrees Fahrenheit). We stopped to look at the sand dunes at Mesquite Flat near Stove Pipe Wells Nevada and then Rhyolite, a ghost town, before heading back to Las Vegas on the 95. After dinner in our room, we drove along Fremont St and stopped and went in to the Gold Nugget Casino to play roulette.... read more

After 1800 miles and 29 hours of driving, we reached the stunning Death Valley National Park. Intermittent sheets of rain pounded on our car top as we drove from St. George, Utah through Las Vegas and up through Indian Springs where the rain was so hard, all vehicles had slowed to a crawl. The evening TV weather reported severe flooding in Las Vegas that would continue into Wednesday! Our timing was fortunate. And, the storms produced magnificient clouds that can be seen in our photos. The heat in the valley is stupifying and can be escaped in the air conditioned lodgings, visitor center, restaurants and general stores inside the park. Or one can drive into the surrounding mountains and hike in pleasant summer temperatures. We stayed two nights at Furnace Creek Ranch -190 feet below sea ... read more

Tuesday 24/07/12 – After feeding and talking with the cows next to our tent this morning, we headed onto another crazy freeway. We headed towards San Francisco and by the time we made it to the Golden Gate Bridge the clouds and fog had lifted and we could see all around the bay. The bridge was pretty cool to ride a bike across, it was kind of like big stacks of Lego. There wasn’t much traffic either as we planned the route so we would miss the morning rush hour. We rode across the bridge with the occasional glance at the bay, city and islands. We headed through the city, across downtown and onto the Bay Bridge which connects San Francisco to the Eastern suburbs. This bridge was two layers and went for over 7 kilometres, ... read more