Advertisement
Published: June 27th 2011
After a much needed pancake breaky at the hostel in Vegas we set out to the lowest point in the US – Death Valley. I thought it would be hot…but never expected anything like it!! We drove to the visitors centre and caught it just before closing time and they showed us a couple of sights to see and where best to camp. First stop was the Devils Golf course – “…where salt has piled up into saw-toothed miniature mountains.”…was the Lonely Planet explanation – and as always it was pretty exaggerated. Mountains my arse, it just looked like a ploughed tatey field back at home!! Anyhow, we drove onto ‘Badwater’- the lowest, driest and hottest point in North America – 282 feet below sea level, the record temp being 134 F or 56.7°C …and man it was hot. We were there at about 5:30 in the evening so didn’t get the full force of the sun but it was still soooooo hot. We walked out onto the salt flats and Mary was feeling it real bad so we decided to walk back. On the way I started to go dizzy so we were glad it was late evening.
After
we got in the car, blasted the air con we headed to the campsite via the Artist Drive. This was beautiful, the rocks were so many different colours…but for some reason it looked better through your sunglasses. We found the rocky campsite, pitched up and had our let over pizza with salad...mmm camping finest cuisine. That night’s sleep was very broken, it was so hot we just sweated lying still, sticking to the airbed and praying for the wind to pick up. In the middle of the night you could hear the approaching wind howling through the valley but the excitement was short lived as the hot breeze blasted through the tent!!
Mary’s nightmare continued in the morning when the tent was surrounded by bees all looking for water. We got the hell out of there, back to LA to drop off the car.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.144s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 7; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0601s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
