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Published: March 16th 2007
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Sand Dunes
The family walking back from consulting the wiseman of the dune! RHYOLITE
After waking up in Beatty, Nevada (which seems to have some beef with Bank of America -check out the following picture) in the same parking lot I ended my last post. We started the day off by watching three, yes three, episodes of Robot Chicken while we waited for Beatty to awake from it's sleepy desert slumber. We had only one stop to make before starting our adventure in Death Valley and that was to stop by Rhyolite, an extremely strange ghost town, which I'm sure wasn't so strange while it was a working town, but got very weird after it died. Hence how legends are born, no? Live a mediocre life, but in death the stories get exaggerated and transform into incredible tales. Rhyolite's tale is too strange to tell, but you can read it yourself on this picture of the plaque that tells the story of Rhyolite! Not only is it a small valley with a bunch of buildings in ruin, but it also seems to be the depository for some strange sculptors art work. Now there are about a half a dozen pieces of art in this town ranging from a giant naked LEGO woman to a
spectral reincarnation of DaVinci's last supper. This small little ghost town with it's sculptures and broken rundown buildings, phone booths, and vehicles really gave a feeling of futility of humans trying to leave some lasting legacy on their surroundings. To use a metaphor, it was like a wave crashing against a solid piece of granite. Granite: 1, Wave: 0. Besides the crazy art, the other thing that caught my interest was that I found an abandoned mine and let me tell you, nothing (not even the barbed wire and an ominous sign) was going to stop me from exploring the depths of the earth. That is until I encountered the giant Iron Gate that they bolted into the rock. Sighing in defeat, I took one snap shot at the adventure I could not have and left dejected, on my way to Death...Death Valley that is.
DEATH VALLEY
Now Death Valley is aptly named. We had read that the temperature was going to be in the 90's the day we were visiting, but like all good tourists, we scoffed and thought, “No way, that's crazy talk, what place on the face of this happy little planet would dare have temperatures
that high in March, sheesh!” Well, that place would be Death Valley with the western hemisphere's lowest elevation (282 feet below sea level), lowest humidity (consistently and mostly below 1% ), and is surrounded by mountains in the 5000ft + elevation range. This crazy and impressive combination has made Death Valley one of the hottest and deadliest places in the world. It holds the worlds record for hottest temperatures on the surface of the planet. 134 degrees Fahrenheit to be precise, in the summer some rocks can reach temperatures of 200 degrees Fahrenheit, definitely hot enough to cook on. Our visit was no exception to the insanely high temperature. The temperature reached the high nineties and baked Andy and I for the whole day. Our plan was originally to visit Death Valley and than move on to Mount Whitney and be in Las Angeles at a reasonable time. This didn't happen. Death Valley is an extremely large national park (5,000 square miles - 1.5 times the size of Yellowstone a park that takes a couple of days to see fully). Not wanting to rush through such a phenomenal (and exhausting) park, we took our time and walked on to the
The Lowest Man on this side of the Planet
Note where that the green circle is where the sea level is. massive salt flats to the lowest point in the western hemisphere and than climbed 5000 feet to “Dante's View” over Death Valley (which was a spectacular sight and much cooler than down in the “Death Oven”). We sat on the sand dunes of the park and watched the sun set and went on a little tour of the Borax Mill that was in Death Valley (home of the famous Borax 20 Mule team and Borax Bill of Death Valley Days, a show slash/advertising campaign that ran from 1906 to 1975 through various different medias (for more information click
here) . One thing that was upsetting about Death Valley is that there are a couple of “Oasis” spots that are very much decked out like country clubs for the comfort of the visitors, but it just looks so out of place in the dry, hot death oven of the valley. But I'm sure it is comforting for most visitors to know that there is an “Oasis” from the baking, killing heat of the salty valley of doom. A couple more comments on Death Valley and that is, I think it would be totally cool to hike across it in the summer. Now
it sounds crazy, but let me finish. I would do it at night, walking when it was cooler and sleeping in the day and I could make stew and cook it on the rocks, it would be the most craziest adventure ever had, EVER! I think it would be sweet, but leave me a comment and let me know what your thoughts are. Finally I have a great idea for the next big video racing game. It takes place in the National Parks and the roads in Death Valley would be awesome, they are very windy and on the edge of steep cliffs and some really sweet straight aways!
By the time we left Death Valley it was getting late, so we let Mount Whitney, the continental US's highest peak, go and made our way into Las Angeles to crash and hang out with my friend Triffin at his new (at least to me) Hacienda. After some long driving and luckily no rush hour we pulled into his house in Sherman Oaks around 11:30.
From the Death Oven to the City of Angels,
Luke
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Angie
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Thoughts on the Death Valley Hike
I just saw a documentary on PBS the other day. It was all about people who try to tempt fate by fooling around in Death Valley. Anyway, some guy thought it would be a good idea to try to hike it in the summer, at night, and try to live off the land. Well, he got lost, disoriented, (you know it is still 90 degrees at night in the summer there), lost his water, and 2 weeks later some other guys found his remains mummified in the desert, 20 miles off course. So I would say, not such a good idea. But it does sound like fun. Maybe try it somewhere less dangerous.