Day 33-34 - Death Valley

The Manson clan has again entered Death Valley!  This time it’s the good ones! High in the mountains surrounding Death Valley is the place where Charles Manson hid away with his “family” and was finally caught.  A few days ago we passed the prison where he is being held.  I think that is enough of following “cousin Charlie” as John calls him!

 Death Valley has a hellish entranceway.  We passed through a few more sad sad dusty dilapidated towns (I had to include a picture of the school yard with what I think is the baseball diamond).  Everything is dust…not a spec of green to be seen!  Cuts back on the job of cutting the grass I guess.   Then over yet another mountain and into the valley (we had to disconnect the Jeep for this one and drive separately because it was so steep and it was 107 degrees today). 

 Getting out of the Beast we were overcome with the hottest strongest wind you can imagine.  If Jack wasn’t steady on both feet, he would fall down from the blowing wind.  I believe it is the hottest I have ever been.  There are a couple of villages within the national park.  The first was Stovepipe Wells consisting of a store/gas station, motel, saloon, campground (closed for the off season – high season is Oct 15 to Apr 15 as it is too hot the rest of the time.  I can attest to that) and the motel pool.  Since the saloon was not yet open, we were thankfully able to pay to use the pool.  What a great treat! The campground didn’t look much different than a dust/gravel parking lot surrounded by more dust/gravel parking lots!!  Not a green bush or tree in sight.

 This is the hottest and driest place in the world and has the craziest landscape I’ve ever seen.  Miles and miles of dust/gravel with a sprinkling of dried up bushes  surrounded by beautiful mountains.   John figured we were driving on the moon. We drove on to the only other village, Furnace Creek and set up camp.  This campground had a couple of green bushes and a beautiful view of the mountains!  But no other services (or even cell coverage!)…107 degrees and no air conditioning.  Needless to say it was difficult to sleep.

 Up early since we wanted to do a few hikes before we melted.  Death Valley has the lowest point in North America (282 feet below sea level)…that part of the valley is crusted up salt.  Another few hikes and view points…someone here had a sense of humor…we expected the golf course was named Devil’s Golf Course and you can see what we came to – doesn’t look fun!  Then we went to check on the 2 hotels in the valley.  One is exceptionally nice.  Such a contradiction to the rest of the valley – a beautiful garden and pool as well.  I’d like to stay here sometime…its only 125 miles from Vegas…hmmm.  The other one is more casual and actually has a real golf course (the lowest elevation golf course in the world).  Too hot to play but the beer and burger here was exceptionally good and the drive thru (golf carts only)19^th tee café was quite cool. 

Sprinted out of the valley to get out of the heat.  Jack was happier when we got on the main freeway – so many trucks he was squealing in delight but it was so windy – even John was white knuckled at the steering wheel.  He kept commenting that this is a disgusting part of the country and why would anyone live here!?  I tend to agree.  I would have given up on driving in this wind long ago – we were blown all over and with every second car being a semi – I thought we were going off the road for sure. We are now a couple hours away from our next destination…Disneyland.  Yay!  From one extreme to the other.  The lowest and driest place to the happiest place!