Baking in Death Valley

Friday, May 27th – Death Valley National Park to Joshua Tree National Park, California – Day 106 

Our alarm was set for 7:30am this morning to get a good start on the day. We ate some Sesame Street cereal and then quickly packed up. Our campsite near Death Valley had hit 29 degrees Celsius by 9am. The Furnace Creek visitor center was a 30-minute drive away. On the way we passed Zabriskie Point and we stopped to walk up a gradual rise to look at the scenery. The temperature was now 34 degrees Celsius before 10am. The mountains and rock formations were beautiful. The kids’ energy was already being depressed by the heat but they were still keen. 

On our drive we saw 20 mule canyon, made famous on the box of Borax you may purchase from your local grocery store. This was the place in the early 1900’s where they mined borax, put it on a 20-mule team to bring to a local processing mill and put it on a train out of Death Valley. Gen is a big Borax fan, so we stopped to take some pictures. If it wasn’t for the trailer and a sign warning against unexploded ordinance, we would have taken a closer look. 

 The visitor’s centre was a fantastic temperature inside, beautifully air conditioned. The kids started to work on the junior ranger booklets while we filled water bottles, got passport stamps, bought a t-shirt and plugged in my laptop to charge. The displays were informative. Death Valley has the highest recorded temperature, at 57 degrees Celsius, the lowest terrestrial point at 282 feet below sea level and is the driest place in the United States. The visitor center was 190 feet below sea level and when we exited the temperature was 42 degrees Celsius. 

We ate lunch outside on a shaded bench and finished the junior ranger booklets so the nicest volunteer could go through them to ensure the kids have filled their junior ranger obligations. He asked questions of their work, suggested a youtube video to watch a sidewinder snake move, gave John a stuffed coyote to occupy him and had them pronounce the names of animals and places in the park. He was fantastic. The kids were sworn in; even promising to respect ancient history when it comes to their parents’ musical choices. 

 We parked the trailed under a shaded canopy and succeeded in bumping into the steel girder framework not once but twice before the end of the day. I’m not sure how we managed such a colossal screw up, but we did. I will take the blame. This trailer is getting more and more beat up the longer we use it. We are debating whether to sell it or keep it and it keeps getting banged up. 

 Our first step was the Artists Palette scenic drive. The kids listed off a dozen colours that they saw as we drove along the edge of a mountain range. The road was fun to drive and required our car to dodge, dip and curve around a path carved into the rock. 

Next stop, the Devil’s Golf Course. The landscape was surreal in that the ground looked like it had been ripped up. Salt was present throughout the battered ground, and it was fun to take a stroll over the hardened pieces of earth. Gen and the kids were not happy with the temperature. She took some perspective photos while the kids waited to run back to the air-conditioned car. In fairness, the temperature reading on the car topped out at 51 degrees Celsius. 

To be continued....