Baking in Death Valley

Baking in Death Valley - Part 2

Our last stop was Badwater, the lowest terrestrial point on the planet at 282 feet below sea level. The forecast was hot and windy. We walked down to a salty, flat path and attempted to take some more perspective photos. The kids were co-operating slightly but were constantly thirsty and asking to go back to the car. Eventually, we acquiesced. With a brief stop to look at the site of the Borax processing plant, we headed back to grab the trailer and move towards cooler climes.

Our drive was four hours to Joshua Tree National Park. We started in the Mojave desert and made our way south to the Sonoran desert. Our drive featured a stop for gas paying $7.70 a gallon, Taco Bell for dinner and a very scenic drive past Joshua trees in the Mojave National Preserve. The mountains kept appearing throughout our drive. At one point, there was a giant area of sand dunes at the base of one of the mountains. The sunset over the mountains was quite lovely. We finally reached our dried lakebed near Joshua Tree National Park. The kids were tired and looking forward to getting away from the heat. Even at 9:00pm when we arrived, the temperature had only dipped to 29 degrees Celsius. We consumed a ridiculous amount of water today. All of our personal water bottles and medium sized water bottles have been emptied despite filling them whenever we accessed the visitor centre.

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