We've done it again......
It's raining in Death Valley........
Moving on today to North Las Vegas......when we were there in the 80's it rained !!!
Sunday, 30 March 2014
Saturday, 29 March 2014
A Very Long Hike....Golden Canyon Plus.....29th March
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| Today it's a planned long hike, hence an early start......3 miles down the road from our campsite to Golden Canyon Trailhead....this photo shows a remaining piece of an old asphalt road through the canyon which has mainly been washed away by flash floods.... |
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| The trail is an easy uphill hike to Red Cathedral.....from here the trail gets more challenging but what goes up must at some stage come down !!!... |
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| Yes folks that is the trail at the base of the pinnacle, it has been a steep uphill to here....... |
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| One of my favourite pics.... |
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| The people you can see at the top of the ridge are a father and daughter that we met up with several times on the hike.... |
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| One of our lasting memories we will take away with us from Death Valley is the sound of silence....no background noise at all...it's hard to imagine as usually there are insect noises or noises of our modern world but here in Death Valley there is a perfect sound of silence. .... |
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| It's now downhill all the way through Gower Gulch..only another 2.5 miles....... |
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| Gower Gulch starts as a very wide wash and then some 2 miles later the canyon narrows dramatically ..... |
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| The dryfalls at the base of the canyon and a bit of mountaineering !! |
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| Back to the valley...... |
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| Ummmm...not down to valley level yet and still another mile back to the car park but we have had a great hike, lots of fabulous views and enough exercise to have worked off a few glasses of wine and snacks :) 6 miles and the temps today are higher than we have experienced so far, we are again singing "Mad Dogs And Englishmen" (yes we carried plenty of water) home for lunch and a rest !!! |
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| This pic taken from Zabriskie Point......the trail we walked this morning is at the back of the high point...... Well folks once again we must hitch up and move on tomorrow.....we have enjoyed our visit to Death Valley and have many memories to take home and share.... |
Devil's Golf Course, Badlands, Natural Bridge & Artists Drive.....28th March
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| The first of todays sights is 13 miles from Furnace Creek along The Badwater Road and a dirt road to The Devils Golf Course....the floor of Death Valley is a 200 square mile evaporating dish crusted with a variety of salts.....here the lumpy salt pinnacles look to us like a ploughed field on a frosty English morning, we couldn't work out why it is likened to a golf course even after reading the information boards..... |
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| The English ploughed field !..... |
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| Next stop 5 miles farther along the road to Badwater Basin and the lowest point in Death Valley and North America... 282 feet below sea level... |
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| This pond is 4 times saltier than the sea and shrinks in summer to a puddle but is home to tiny snails.... |
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| And here we are on the lowest point of North America standing on nearly pure table salt.... |
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| We lucked out and had the quarter mile walk on the salt almost to ourselves.....we did have a good chat with a geology student from San Francisco..... |
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| A 1.5 mile gravel road brings us to the Natural Bridge Canyon trailhead....... |
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| This was a mile uphill hike to the dry marble waterfall......we were singing at this point "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" this is our song for the next 2 days.... |
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| The natural bridge..... |
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| The Valley from Natural Bridge Canyon.... |
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| Our final sightseeing for today is the 9 mile drive along Artists Drive a dipping and curving one-way paved road that weaved through striking ravines and colourful rock formations....this and next few pics.... |
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| Lots of stopping places on route...we did also have one short but of course uphill hike to a view point ... |
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| We've had a really good day out and about in Death Valley and another day to come tomorrow.....boy are we going to need our thermals when we get back to Blighty !!! |
Panamint to Furnace Creek.....Pupfish & Borax Mine...26th/27th March
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| Moving-on day and a journey of 60 miles from Panamint to Furnace Creek on the east side of Death Valley.....part of journey is driving over the Panamint Mountain Range, elevation 4956 ft.... |
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| A slightly tense drive as we have 17 miles of downhill and our truck's brakes overheat after the first 1000 ft....only another 4000 ft to go !!......Yorkieman did a good job with the manual gears and only small amounts of braking...no doubt the high temperature had a bearing on this too.....we used some of the regular pull-outs to stop and let the brakes cool and slowly made our way down..... |
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| Dark rain clouds over the Eastern Sierras and seemed to be heading our way but by midday the sky was clear once again ... |
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| We made it !!! We are so pleased to see this sign :) |
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| From here it's plane sailing to Furnace Creek Ranch and our stay for the next 4 nights......Yorkieman is looking forward to his cold beer just like in Ice Cold In Alex !!! However today is one of those days that we all get occasionally and the beer has to wait..... cutting a very long story short after doing an excellent job of reversing into our very tight and small back-in site we discover we have a big problem as the sewer drain is 3 feet into the site behind us and our pipe doesn't reach even with our extra extension piece, crazy !!....Management of the resort don't give a fig, it's a take it or leave it we're full . The RV part of the resort is very low priority and sadly untidy and unkempt....probably the worst campsite we have ever stayed in.....a difficult evening of what shall we do but we dust ourselves down and pick ourselves up and re-hitch the next morning and manoeuvre the rig back against their fence and manage to hook up and set up a camp of sorts, at the end of the day we are here to see the sights..... |
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| We are now in sightseeing mode and first stop is 14 miles back along the main highway to Salt Creek....this is an easy half mile boardwalk trail along side of a small stream....we are really lucky to see the main attraction these little Pupfish who manage to survive despite the stream evaporating during the summer months..... |
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| Part of the stream and boardwalk... |
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| We now head back towards Furnace Creek and the site of the old Harmony Borax Mine Works.... This is one of the 20 mules team wagons, a feature of this particular mine....the borax ore was processed here, and then loaded onto the wagons and hauled 165 miles across the desert to the railroad town of Mojave.....it took about 30 days for the round trip..... |
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| This is part of the amazing salt flats at Harmony, it looks like snow but is very hard crystals.... |
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| A view from Harmony Mine back across the salt flats..... |
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| Furnace Creek Golf Course, the lowest golf course in the world at 214 ft below sea level.... |
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| A glimpse of the colourful rocks taken from the resort entrance.... |
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| Well preserved old mining equipment at the Harmony Borax Museum here at the Ranch.... |
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| Just for me... a train :) |
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| Colourful rock formations from the setting sun at Zabriskie Point a popular sunset viewing spot... |
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| It's a steep climb up an asphalt path to Zabriskie Point but the view is well worth the climb.....we shall return here another day for non sunset photos... Well we had a shaky start to our stay at Furnace Creek but settled now for another 2 days of seeing this stunning area....BTW we did also contact On Star the on board diagnostic system to check our brakes and all OK...... |
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