Advertisement
Published: April 13th 2006
Edit Blog Post
After waking at Matt and Crystal's in LA to aforementioned pancakes (and Jenny being lovingly woken by Mia the dog sneezing in her face...more fun than an alarm clock!) it took a while to leave the tentacles of Los Angles behind. First there was the obligatory trip to Rodeo drive, where we felt appallingly undergroomed, but then decided we were just stars going incognito - then we contended with the freeways stretching out in every direction, with more and more suburbs and developments - but we managed it at last, and made it through the rows of identical lego houses and into the Mojave desert. The scenery was stunning yet again, amazing and beautifully coloured rock formations pushing up out of the dry scrub and dirt. As we traversed the desert the sprawling hills were like some vast alien landscape, and we quickly put the traffic and bustle of LA behind us.
We stopped for lunch in Baker, home of the Mad Greek Cafe, which we chose because the billboards which had started some 50 miles out of town kept telling us it was a good place to go. Willing victims of consumerism. We weren't actually that impressed with the
food, and although Jenny's famous shake had plenty of real strawberries in it, it also had plenty of stawberry syrup. And the avocado was great. Jenny would like to digress here for a moment. Ok so it's not avocado season. But California? I thought it was swimming in avocados! I thought people would be handing them out in the street! Have I been lied to all these years? Where are the avocados people, WHERE!?? Ok sorry back to the story. The restaurant itself was awesome: painted all in white and blue, with blue upholstered booth seats, statues and cupids and baskets of flowers everywhere, and the wall covered with greek slogans, welcome messages in many languages, and pithy quotes, including the one over the counter "We are not Burger King - You have it my way or you don't get the damn thing!"
Anyway, it was a fun place to stop. We hopped back on the freeways and made our way to Shoshone, which is the Gateway to Death Valley. It has a cute little museum, where we got some advice, a map of the valley, some directions to the hostel, and Jenny bought a postcard of a charming
Ju at the Mad Greek
Enjoying her Mexican lunch at a Greco American Diner....yup! ballerina who was famous for performing at a nearby opera hall (how could I not?). We also discovered a store/garage/arts stall that sold us gas and also potato bread, which is so yummy it ruled our lives for the next few days (more later).
Our chosen stop for the night was the HI-affiliated Desertaire Hostel, located in Tecopa, a small village named for a famous Indian Chief and noted for its hot Springs. At least we read and were told it was located in Tecopa - it took us half an hour and a third drive-by to actually prove that by locating it!
When we did we were very pleasantly suprised - small trailer cabin sized, with a female dorm at one end and a male dorm at the other, each with their own bathroom, and there was such a homey little seventies style well-equipped kitchen and pantry, and lounge in between! We felt we could stay there for quite a while, it was so quiet and comfy. There's a two story tower outside as well, providing a fantastic view of the desert. Soup and potato bread never tasted so good! The beautiful sunset over the desert dunes and
Evening in Tecopa
The sky and landscapes just blew us away in this beautiful tiny desert town. the quiet there were just the tonic we needed after our travels.
The next day we headed for Death Valley - via Shoshone to pick up more potato bread! It took about an hour to get into the Valley, but when we did, it was incredible. The scenery changes every second, with different coloured and shaped rocks pushing up in all directions.
We stopped at the Visitor's Centre to pay our entry, collect some postcards, and check out the fantastic exhibits on how the park was made, the people who discovered it, and the various tribes/people/animals/plants who have inhabited and found use for the Valley, then we headed to Badwater, inside the huge park - which at approximately 83 metres below sea level is the lowest, hottest and driest point in America.
It's incredible to stand there on the salt flats and see white stretching out in all directions, mountains on two sides and the valley threading between them - and far up on the cliff is a little sign reading 'sea level'. The Panamints to the west even had snow on them, yet we were standing in 30 degree heat (85 F) and it's not even
Sunset at Tecopa
It was hard, yet again, to put our cameras away with this kind of scenery summer! Apparently in the hottest months it goes above 120 Farenheit (which is more than 50 C.) It's open year round - my guidebook dares people to go during summer "for full boasting rights."
We felt it was hot enough as we recovered from our walk with lots of water and some potato bread with our frequently enjoyed marmite and lettuce - thanks to Cath! A little bit of home that we've been happy to have with us. Next up was a trip to the Devil's Golf Couse, where the salt deposits push up into razor sharp stagalmite shapes. Then a car ride through Artist Drive, which is a one way road passing through some of the most amazingly varied rock in the park. Every few feet there was someone pulled up on the wide shoulders of the road for a photo opportunity, and we found it hard to resist as well.
By now it was getting fairly late and we decided on just one more stop - the lookout at Zabriskie Point, which again showed us a view of the park against completely different arrays of rock, the fissures and rippled faces coming alive in the fading
Jenny and Ju at Badwater
We took turns with other tourists for photo ops, it was all very civilised golden sunlight. Fantastic. We fully recommend Death Valley as an awe-inspiring day out, and there is enough here to keep you for weeks. (Yup, another place on Juliet's list of places to head back to one day!) The National Park System here is very good, the maps and Visitors' Centres are excellent.
We were quiet and enjoying the late afternoon sun on the rocks as we headed east out of the park, Vegas bound! Looking as we were for our first state line, we arrived in Pahrump not knowing whether we were still in California or not, and found out from a real estate sign that we were in fact in Nevada - we had crossed the line without realising, and our Californian adventure was over.
An hour further, we came across a line of hills and saw the glittering lights of Las Vegas before us....
Advertisement
Tot: 0.129s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 9; qc: 50; dbt: 0.044s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Katy
non-member comment
happy easter!
Wow two posts in one day - stoked! Your car is so cute! Katy xxx