Blogs from Death Valley National Park, California, United States, North America - page 13

It's time to leave this mad place and head north west to Yosemite, however we didn't make it! We had decided to drive through Death Valley, the lowest point in the States, something like -200 metres below sea level. The valley is long and dry with a large salt flat in the middle and was indeed very warm even for winter. Unfortunately we found out that we couldnt drive through the north of the valley, and also that all the mountain passes across Yosemite were closed, oh dear. So instead of spending the rest of the night driving, we followed the long diversion south and stayed in Bakersfield for the night.... read more

Today we headed into Death Valley from Beatty. Death Valley is a long expanse of scorched earth, big rock formations, sand dunes, and salt planes all surrounded by a long strip of mountain ranges on each side. It is one of the hottest places on earth and has the second hottest recorded temperature in the world: 57 degrees C in July 1913. In July the average high temperate is 46 degrees Celsius and in January is 18 degrees C. The reason why the valley gets so hot is to do with the geography. For a start it is extremely dry, as the moisture in the air moving towards the valley precipates completely by the time it gets there as it travels over a number of mountains. The second reason is that being surrounded by mountains, the ... read more

Planning for our trip...that is what we have been doing lately. We have made so many changes to our itinerary already, and are still trying to figure out airfare. We want our trip to remain spontanious, but also want to spend as little money as possible on tickets and transportation. As I am writing this, I am actually sitting in an i-net cafe nestled right at the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. My husband is climbing Mt. Whitney, the tallest Mt. in the contiguous United States! He stared this morning at 3am, and hopes to be done by 3pm. There is snow up there though, which could slow him down (I made him rent some cramp-ons yesterday...just to ease my mind). So, I thought I'd take this opportunity to set up our travel blog instead of ... read more

"We won't know how good we were as parents until our grandchildren are raised." --John Bradshaw After a futile attempt to sleep in the van, we found a place that was serving breakfast, and had an early, early breakfast. Our next stop was an RV park for a shower and a cleanup session. Then we were off to Death Valley. When we were young, we can remember watching Death Valley Days and the good old 20-mule-team Boraxo wagon train. Those are great stories. We stopped at the National Park Service Visitor Center and we chatted with some of the rangers. One of them said it was one of the nicest days of the year that he could remember. We left Death Valley and continued to the town of Pahrump and settled in at a motel. ... read more

Death Valley is nothing but rocks, dirt and beauty. During our visit the temperature usually ascended into the 90s as we descended into our air conditioned trailer. We would wake up before sunrise to be able to get in some hiking before it became too hot to be out. Our first full day in Death Valley we started off as tourists and driving to some of the usual sites. We started with “The Devil’s Golfcourse”. Located in what was once a salt lakebed, then on to a drive on a 9 mile one way rough dirt road called “Artist Drive” which winds into some beautiful pastel colored hills. We saw all shades of brown, red, pink, blue & greens thanks to the different mineral deposits. It looks as if someone splashed huge buckets of paint on ... read more