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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A Desert Forest

Saturday, May 28th – Joshua Tree National Park - North to Joshua Tree National Park - South, California– Day 107 Our campsite was a large open dirt area with some scrub around the outside. In the dark we had managed to park beside the pile of horse poo and shaving. Horses were allowed in this site. Gen stepped in the middle of a pile. The Joshua Tree National Park visitor centre was a five-minute drive away. The town of Joshua Tree was packed with college age millennials communing with nature. There was a market with kombucha, organic greens and a few small tortoises. It was all very pleasant but very busy. The laundromat was at the edge of the market, I charged the devices and did the laundry. Gen bought some produce from a guy loading a truck. I even snuck in to buy some watermelon kombucha. The drive into the park was ten minutes followed by a ten-minute line to show our pass. A quick stop to fill up our water bottles and we were into the park. The amazing thing abo

Canyonlands is Another Planet - Pt 3

Thursday, May 12th – Moab, Utah – Day 91 Our day was shortening already, our next hike, the Grand View Overlook was closed due to a search and rescue operation. Apparently, falls and accidents happen quite a bit at National Parks; Gen looked up the top ten most dangerous parks and Canyonlands wasn’t there (it was number 12). We got a recommendation to hike the White Rim Overlook trail, a 0.9-mile easy hike. The kids were running out of energy. They made it most of the way and then decided to stop to climb a rock. Gen and I continued the short distance to the canyon edge to see the sights. Canyon after canyon after canyon was what we saw. We stopped to sit and marvel at the scenery as the shadows started to lengthen. On our drive back, we saw the sun set and we stopped at the visitor centre one more time to see the view from just across the road. I couldn’t get enough canyons; I was in love with the park and w

A Desert Forest - Part 4

We finally decided to move to our last destination before the sun set. The Arch Rock Nature trail was next. We reached the parking lot and saw the rocks in the distance, we were debating what we wanted to do. We just started moving and once we did, we found ourselves racing down the trail to the rocks. The kids wanted to play monster and once they started running, everyone else was running as well. We had another poo-mergency with no restroom in sight, the evidence is buried in the desert. There was more climbing on the rocks. We took pictures of the sun setting and took a quick look at the Arch rock before starting back to the car. Gen was behind the wheel, an hour later we were leaving the park’s south entrance. We stopped at the Ranger station to freshen up in the bathroom and fill our water bottles before heading to our campsite. Luckily, the site was the overflow campsite for the park so was minutes from the outside of the park. We

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