Day 5: Death Valley National Park (Miles to Date: 1120)

After our experience with uncomfortable beds and rustic cabins at Sequoia, the rooms and beds at Furnace Creek Ranch Resort were a welcome relief. We had a lovely time in the large, warm spring water pool last night before going to bed. It was the first time we had felt really clean for several days! We had planned to get up really early to try and beat the heat of the day, but fatigue meant we were slow to get ourselves together and get out of our room. As soon as we were ready we headed to the Visitor Centre to find out whether there were any Ranger Programmes planned for the day, which there were not. So we settled for Jack and Emily completing their Junior Ranger books, getting sworn in as Junior Rangers and finding out where we should go for the day.

We watched a brief film, which was more of a montage of cheesy photographs with a boring voice over, covering the history and geology of the Park. The Ranger's advice for us was to spend the day in the pool, which with the temperature expected to reach well into the low 100s, seemed to make sense. We decided to ignore this advice and head out to Stovepipe Wells. According to the Park Service map there was a place called Mosaic Canyon, which sounded a fun place to visit. To get to it we passed through Stove Pipe and headed two miles up a bumpy dirt-track road, which made us think what would happen if we got a puncture out here in the blazing hot desert sun with little passing traffic? To our relief we made it to the end of the track, dismounted our car and headed off down a narrow canyon, watching out for sidewinder snakes and scorpions. This canyon is full of twists and turns, which is fascinating enough, but it also has walls of marble-like rock with spectacular colour banding for the first quarter of a mile or so of its passage. It was quite an easy walk, although we did have to clamber over some slick rock surfaces, and even in the hot midday sun it was well worth the effort.

After this steamy excursion we headed back towards Stove Pipe, passing through to the other side a mile or so to Mesquite Sand Dunes. These dunes are close to the road so are easily accessible, although the largest dunes, including the 140 foot high “Star Dune” are some mile or so from the car park. The proximity of these dunes to Hollywood means they have starred in several films including scenes from Star Wars. It is too hot for us to venture more than a couple of hundred of feet from the car before beating our retreat. As they say “Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the Midday Sun” and having spent seven years here in the USA some of our “Englishness” is rubbing off so we decided to spend the afternoon in the comfort of our air-conditioned room and wait for the heat of the day to dissipate.

We had dinner around 6pm and left to do some more sight-seeing around 7:15pm. By this time the sun was starting to disappear behind the mountains and the fierce daytime temperatures were beginning to abate. We only had an hour or so of good light left so we headed south down the valley to a loop-road to a place called “Artist's Palette”, which we were told was best viewed with the sun setting. It is around 10 miles around the loop and by the time we reached the best view point the sun was hidden behind the mountains and indeed the evening light did made wonderful spectacle of the colours in the sandstone cliffs. The range of colours was truly an artist's palette of reds, yellows, browns and greens. As we admired the rocks of the “Artist's Palette” the sun began to set, and provided us with another dramatic perspective of the desert landscape. The shadows resulting from the late day sunlight brings out the three dimensional perspective of desert, with its gullies, canyons and arroyos, that are “bleached” out by the day time sun.

We still had time to fit in one more place to visit before the light disappeared. So we leapt back into the car and headed down to “Bad Water Basin”, which has the distinction of being the lowest point in the USA. We thought that our next destination Las Vegas was the lowest point, but this is only from a morality perspective, but this is the lowest point relative to sea level. Having spent the previous few days at 7000 feet above sea level coming down to this point made breathing a whole lot easier. Where we were now standing would have been at the floor of a large glacial lake some 10,000 years earlier. With the disappearance of the glaciers the lake began to evaporate under the intense sun, to the point where it completely vanished leaving a dry, arid salt basin.

The temperature was now becoming bearable so we decided to hike out on the salt beds. If you so desire you can walk miles, right across to the other side of the valley. We were less ambitious and walked about half a mile, which seemed more than far enough. By this time the light was very dim and the surrounding mountains were no more than silhouettes. The white of the salt reflected back the remaining light, and with the moon and stars starting to appear, the whole scene was rather surreal. Every other visitor had decided to return to their cars so we were the only ones left out on the salt beds, and this solitude of being out there made us all feel closer to our maker – so we held hands and contemplated for a few moments before heading back.