Death Valley & LA 5-7 Nov

Thurs 5th
Today was a day in which we did practically nothing except to relax and recharge our batteries. We have seen so many amazing things we are feeling quite exhausted. So we only drove 30 miles closer to Death Valley to give us a better start tomorrow and then after a little bit of shopping we did very little!!

Fri 6th
Up early, we drove the 30 miles or so to the start of the Death Valley National Park. The road took us past the nearly dried up Owens Lake. Apparently it used to be a great lake for wildlife but, in the early 1900s when the mining claims round the area started failing, a man from LA conned two local land owners into selling him their water rights on the Owens River. He then built a huge pipe that transferred most of the water from the river to LA over 200 miles away to help him sell land down that way with plenty of water. Apparently there are still cases going on in the courts about the water that is still diverted to LA from the river. You can see from the photos the autumn trees around Lone Pine (where we started), they are Aspen and in the background is the Sierra Nevada Mountains (where Sequoia and Yosemite NP are). As we drove east the road become more and more desertified, with volcanic pumice boulders and course bushes. Along the edge of the road a grass with the appearance of having a yellow fluffy head (like a feather duster) grows, it billows gracefully in the wind. Soon we started to climb into some mountains and then, one by one, and then slowly more frequently, the odd shape of Joshua trees started to dot the landscape, and then all at once they were gone and we descended down into the Panamint valley and the start of the park. We crossed the 5 miles or so of the Panamint valley on a road that followed the rolling landscape, it was rather like being on a fairground ride that took you up and down and up and down. Sometimes the changes in direction were enough to make you leave your seat, it was quite fun!! We climbed the Panamint mountains, the 4th mountain range between Death Valley and the sea, which is why it hardly rains in the valley because the clouds have shed their load at each of the mountain ranges on their way in land, and then down the other side. We could see sand dunes in the distance and the terrain became incredibly flat.
We turned off the main road onto a 2 mile dirt track to go to Mosaic Canyon, a thin, winding slice through the mountains that has been carved by flash flood water. The road's wave like surface caused us to slow to around 10 mph and the van rattled and shook, we thought we might fall apart, but eventually we crawled to a halt at the exit from the canyon. A walk up the canyon showed us the power of the water; white marble (that looks like snow in some of the photos), conglomerate and other rocks had been smoothed to a shine. The walls were gracefully curved and the ground littered with smooth gravel and pebbles like on a pebbly beach in Britain. It was quite hard going on the gravel with a continuous uphill climb and the heat started to get to us quite soon, so knowing that we had more to see and do, we turned back after about 40 mins. We stopped to watch a lizard and a few crickets but other than that we saw no sign of life. The return journey was much less arduous and only took us about 20 mins
After a quick stop at the ranger station to pay the park fee and pick up the free newspaper about the park, we drove a couple of miles to stop in a huge car park by the sand dunes. As we prepared to go out into the dunes (hats, water etc) a workman approached to tell us we were the first ever people into the car park. He had been working with a crew for 3 months to build the car park and we were the first vehicle to turn in after they removed the cones. So we have named the car park 'Robayo's Place' in honour of our great achievement and it will forever be part of our empire!
The dunes were hot, too hot. We tried to do some surfing on a seat cushion from the van but it didn't work and I ended up with sand in my shirt, shoes, trousers and worse. Between the dunes were areas with a crusty, cracked layer of salt and only spiny bushes grew. We could see hundreds of tiny tracks attesting to the abundance of wildlife in the area, they were mostly lizard and scorpion tracks, but some looked like a small rodent and others a coyote (that apparently are common in the area, though we haven't seen or heard any yet). The heat got the better of Tris and I and we returned to Robayo's place, left a small pile of sand on the roadside as we emptied out our shoes and clothes and then sat and drank ice cold coke... one of the benefits of having a van over a car is the presence of the fridge and freezer. We then ate cheese and biscuits, carrots and cucumber and ate a few crisps to replace our salt loss. Celso, on the other hand, was determined to get to the top of the tallest dunes we could see about a 1/2 mile from the van. He returned about a half hour later drenched in sweat, (it was even hot for him!) and very annoyed that he had a mark (tan line)from the vest shirt he was wearing.
At our next stop, Salt Creek, Celso refused to wear a shirt to try to get rid of his tan line, we walked along a boardwalk that traversed the salty surface of the desert. This area is below sea level and used to be a huge lake several thousand years ago. It is now the site of a creek, that has a variable level of water depending on the season, that flows along ancient paths and then just disappears into the sand. As the water flows it evaporates and gets more and more saline, at some times it has a salinity 5 times that of sea water but around the edges plants grow in their hundreds. Amazingly a species of fish called Pupfish, about an inch long, survive in this creek and have done so since the lakes that used to cover the area disappeared. There are about 11 different subspecies of Pupfish that survive in several different creeks, each subspecies is slightly different as they have adapted to the varying conditions in their particular creek, some are endangered, all are protected. We were lucky enough to see a large shoal (probably 30 individuals) in the higher reaches of the creek, as well as the huge footprints of one of their enemies in the crusty bottom of the stream - an egret or heron. It was really strange to see such an oasis of life in the hottest (on average over a year) place on earth.
Next stop was at the ruins of an old Borax mine, apparently the dried up lake is full of the stuff. The mine functioned for only 5 years in the 1880's and since it was such a long distance to the nearest railroad the raw materials were processed on site and only the pure Borax hauled out of Death Valley by wagons pulled by 20 mules. They hauled the Borax out and fresh water in, each return journey taking about 30 days so that several teams were required. Mainly Chinese workers, brought in from San Francisco, dug the raw material from the lake, poured it into large vats that were heated to dissolve the Borax and let all the other materials settle out. Then the liquid was poured into huge vats and the Borax crystallised out. Horrid, hot work for which they were paid $1.30 per day, but board was deducted and they had to buy their own food. Finally we drove on to visit the park's visitor centre only to find it full to the brim with folks visiting some sort of art festival... strange place to hold it, you would have thought, in the middle of Death Valley.
So instead we went immediately to a campsite and investigated a spot where we could go for a night walk to look for critters. After a fantastic steak (that has been marinating since yesterday in a wonderful concoction that Celso makes) with baked potatoes cooked on/in a wood fire with veggies and a cold beer, we sat out admiring the stars. I got my first view of the milky way (amazing) and so many stars that it makes the mind boggle. Then we went for a walk up into the hill with torches and a UV light, we spotted a couple of scorpions which glow in UV but very little else. We will be trying again later.
No luck with an y critters later and the moon came out

Sat 7
We got up early to do some more exploring before the sun got too hot. Our first stop was 17 miles to the south and 295ft below sea level at Badwater, so called because a man trying to get across death valley in the 1800's could not get his mule to take a drink from the water, he called the spring bad water and the name stuck. In fact the water is just extremely saline. Over the millenia salts have been washed down into the valley from the surrounding hills, but then the water evaporates. Water in the aquifer below the park feeds the Badwater spring and it bubbles up into the salt. At times throughout the year there are flash floods which then evaporate leaving amazing salt crystal formations. At the Devil's Golf Course (our second stop) we managed to walk amongst these amazing salt crystal shapes which were sculpted into sharp spikes so that only the Devil would play golf there. Next we drove the 4 mile loop road 'The Artist's Drive' along the base of the cliffs that enclose Death Valley, they are sculpted into the weirdest shapes and have the most amazing pastel colours from all the different salts, reds, pinks, maroons, blues, greens, yellows, whites and creams.
A quick stop at the visitor centre explained why Death Valley is so hot, told the story of how it got its name etc.
A 30 mile trip over the mountains that form the East wall of the valley took us to Rhyolite, a ghost town, once inhabited by 10000. It was a booming town during the time that silver was found in the hills around the valley, it had 3 banks, 3 railroads, a school, about 16 stores, a post office, a jail and a brothel. Many of the buildings were erected during the period 1905 - 1907 and were posh for their time with electricity, steam heating and some were multi storied. One of the strangest houses we saw was a house built in 1906 out of bottles, it was raffled off by the builder. Another building that remains largely in tact was one of the railroad offices, that after the town was abandoned in 1920 was also used as a casino. All of the wooden houses have been robbed out because wood is such a scarce commodity around those parts, some moved in their entirety to the nearest town of Beatty. The Rhyolite population since 1920 has stayed around about 20.
We then drove for about 2.5 hours through yet another valley of desertish terrain to get to Las Vegas. The valley had much more vegetation showing that it was not nearly as hot and dry as Death Valley (perhaps because it was much higher; around 2000ft; or perhaps because the mountain chains along its edges were more broken) but it was a harsh environment none the less. The ground was full of stones and sand, and the scrubby dry bushes grew in clumps occasionally interrupted by a Joshua tree or, what I like to call, a pineapple tree - a stumpy scaly type of palm with a top knot. We passed 2 of the most enormous prisons, and a sign that advised us that it was illegal to pick up hitch hikers! As we passed the road up to one prison the sign said 'Correctional Facility' and underneath 'Wildlife Viewing', with a big arrow - we thought that was quite appropriate.
Finally Las Vegas loomed out of the desert, it had lush green grass and a ridiculous array of electronic signs. We drove down The Strip to take a look at some of the casinos - they are completely crazy, out of one came a roller coaster, others have huge statues or waterfalls, it is like being in a great big theme park with immaculate buildings in gaudy colours. When we returned having parked up the van there was even piped music playing along most of the pavements. We watched people being punted around in gondolas at the Venetian, one guy singing opera to his passengers, we walked amongst flamingos, swans, guinea fowl and other birds in a huge garden at the Flamingo casino, walked through shopping centres in which none of the shops had any prices on the merchandise in the windows and generally watched the people become more and more drunk as night fell (it gets dark around 5pm here at the moment as the clocks have just gone back). More and more lights came on as it got darker and we found ourselves, instead of admiring the lights, thinking of the cost to the environment! At one point we were walking along the pavement behind a dancer dressed up in a bright red outfit, they looked like a Cancan dancer in frilly dress and high heels. An old woman with a walking stick poked the dancer's bottom on the left and right cheeks with the end of her cane, I looked at her and giggled. She was giggling too and said, 'He's so cute!', and I replied, 'I think it's a woman!' We walked on a bit and I was right, she was a female dancer, but she must be used to it as she didn't turn or react at all to the prodding. Nice to find a crazy old bat in a place like this, that old lady has some get up ad go!
The amount of porn around is quite incredible and fairly grotesque, not really our scene, but we had to try out a casino so we went into one where Tris could play games in an arcade. Tris is allowed to walk through any of the casinos as long as he is with an adult!! I tried my hands at craps, didn't have a clue what I was doing and gave up having lost $10 which was the stake I was prepared to lose. Tris spent $10 fighting monsters and people, riding motorbike and racing cars, playing air hockey, shooting aliens and having a great time in the arcade. Celso watched and spent nothing! I suppose we should have 'done' a show or gone to one of the museums or something, but we really didn't fancy it so we were back at the van by 8pm!! That's enough of Las Vegas for us, we shall drive round the rest of The Strip tomorrow to take some photos in the daylight but then we are out of here.