Day Fourteen - Friday, May 15, 2009

Leaving Las Vegas - We were ready to return to nature after 24+ hours in Las Vegas, so off we went to experience Death Valley National Park. On the way we drove past the Air Force Nevada Testing Site and had flashes of Afghanistan training opportunities. The Site is quite large and totally fenced off, of course, and the mountainous terrain made us think that here might be some of our soldiers and airmen and women training for battle. So close to Las Vegas and yet so far.

The desert turned into rolling countryside with rocky cliffs and dark grays and blacks dominating the rocks. The sagebrush and cactus and tan dirt colored the wayside with the occasional outburst of yellow flowers along the road.

We entered California on SR 127 and turned onto scenic route CA 190 to get into Death Valley National Park. The aptly named "Funeral Mountains Wilderness" guided our way into the Valley! The mountains had a patchwork quality about them. The colors seemed to stop discretely when they met each other rather than fading into each other. The effect was quite different from anything we had seen previously on the journey. The colors expanded to include a green that I love - the color of copper patina - plus rust and orange on the palette of grays and browns and white (borax?) and red tinges - plus the roadside yellow flowers now took on the color of the gold double lines in the center of the road! And there was more black lava and horizontal rock as well as extreme upheavals leaving intriguing angled layers of centuries' old rock to entertain our eyes. The moonscapes seem to cry out for the "20 mule-team borax" commercials from the old television show "Death Valley Days," and memories of Ronald Reagan's movie and television career emerged from our data banks! We skipped the gravel road turnoff for the 20 mule team canyon and went on to Dante's View - a peak of over 5,000 feet overlooking the lowest point in North America - the Badwater Basin at -282 feet.

The view was extraordinary! Across the valley were snow topped mountains and in the basin of the valley was a snow-like flat which of course was salt. The salt had a deceivingly flat appearance as we learned when we went down to the Basin later in the morning. Meanwhile from the peak we enjoyed the view and the wildflowers that bloomed everywhere - yellow in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, white (ditto), purple, and red. Plus rust colored bushes/grasses along the roadway and then lavender in bushes in profusion!

As we returned to lower altitudes, many of the flowers had faded from the heat. The ideal time to visit Death Valley really is March and April if you want to see the wildflowers in full bloom at the lower altitudes, but we got a good flavor of what it would be like given that our trip was about a month too late. We did great a "great" experience of 106 degree temperature, however!

Along the roadways are vast rock beds laid down by the rushing waters of floods that hit the Valley from time to time. It looks as though dump trucks full of rocks have strewn their contents everywhere. The colors are as diverse as the mountains from whence they come - red, gray, brown, green, peach, and more. For something that looks so rugged and wild, the colors and the immensity of the rock beds are beautiful.

We were reminded again of the Painted Desert - that pastel area in Arizona that we have visited twice. But Death Valley is a painted desert of another color - deeper and richer shades of red and rust, peach and orange, green and copper, a richness that rivals the autumn tree colors in New England. (Sorry, no blog from that autumn 2008 trip!)

And then we reached Zabriskie Point - a tough climb in the high temperatures but well worth it. Again the view was quite different from anything we had seen previously. The mountains were a swirling of colors - reminding me of a diet frozen yogurt bar I used on some previous diet - probably Weight Watchers - colors of cream and cocoa swirling in graceful swoops - or is that scoops?! The view was quite extraordinary and enjoyable despite the heat.

We stopped at the Furnace Creek Visitor Center and encountered another knowledgeable and helpful Park Ranger who gave us tips on what to try to see in the time we had for our visit. Off we went to the Badwater Basin - the lowest point in North America. This is where we realized that the salt does not lie flat on the earth. Rather it lies in flat plates with uplifted edges where the heat has dried and peeled the surface. It is very white - except of course where the tourists have created a path. From the Basin we turned back to the mountain and saw a sign 282 feet up on the mountain that said "sea level." What an amazing experience!

On the way back to Furnace Creek for lunch, we drove the Artists' Drive through the mountains. This is a one-way road (fortunately) that takes you through incredibly colorful mountains on a series of twists, turns, and dips as you climb up from below sea level to several thousand feet above sea level and then down again. The colors of the mountains include every color I have used in describing them over the past two weeks and more. The swirling and patchwork patterns reappear in the same as well as new color combinations. The flowers accentuate the rocks with more fields of yellow, lavender and white bushes, and white lily-like flowers along the road again. At the Artists' Palette, the mountains explode with colors arranged as on an artist's palette (duh) and incorporate all the hues with white and the copper patina dominating.

After lunch the reality of travel time hits us again so we shorten our list of sites to see and head to the Stovepipe Wells Sand Dunes. The dunes are purely sand - no sagebrush or shrubs growing in the sand - just the beautiful golden tan of the stereotypical desert of the Sahara. And then on to find the charcoal kilns which eventually get scratched from the agenda in favor of an earlier arrival at our hotel in Ridgecrest CA.

We found the Death Valley National Park to be so different from our expectations. We expected the heat and the flat wide white valley. We did not expect the mountains and the colors and the incredible and extraordinary and awesome vistas that the park provided. So once again we find ourselves recommending it to our readers and adding it to our list of places to return should the opportunity ever to available to do so.

Ridgecrest CA is on the edge of the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Center. This is another huge military installation - so large that the local economy no doubt is highly dependent on it. It provided a quiet place for us to decompress from the explosiveness of the day's experiences and to prepare for the next phase of our journey - a week in the San Francisco area focusing on Jennifer's graduation from the University of California, Berkeley with a Ph.D. in political science.