Death Valley!

California has redeemed itself today.

Our first stop today was Rhyolite, Nevada. Rhyolite is a ghost town!! Oooooh!

As we drove into the ghost town, we noticed we were being followed by a line of... you guessed it: seven black Porsches. Um, that was pretty bizarre. They all went into Rhyolite and parked together at the far end of the town. As we were wandering around a little while later, they all passed us again in a little convoy, on their way out of town. It was kind of weird.

Anyway, ghost town pictures:




We were unable to find any ghosts, so we were soon on the road again and headed for Death Valley, which is on the Nevada-California border but is mostly in California.


We walked around for a bit in a very desert-like sandy, dune-y part, and Mark tried to jump down one big dune and fell halfway down. It was funny. We found some desert wildlife there:


The thing about Death Valley is, it's the lowest elevation in the western hemisphere. (Trivia: Coincidentally, the highest elevation in the continental United States is less than 100 miles away.) The dunes we played in were at about sea level:


and at one point we were significantly below sea level, as this sign says:


...and by the end of the day, we were more than 5475 feet up, looking down on the lowest elevation, which was 282 feet BELOW sea level. As a result, I went from wool socks and sneakers to bare feet and sandals, shedding my sweater for short sleeves, and then had to put the wool socks back on again for the high elevation. Apparently the rule is that there's a temperature difference of five degrees for every thousand feet of elevation. I believe it!

Hmm..what else...okay, a region called "Artist's Drive" where all the rocks were distinctive colours, like purple, blue, pink, green, and stuff.


Zabriskie Point, which had nice views and a big bus-load of tourists who I took pictures of:


Mark wanted me to mention that "Zabriskie Point" has some sort of connection to a Pink Floyd album or something. I guess that's neat if you're obsessed with Pink Floyd.


...and finally, our grand finale for the day, seeing Badwater Basin, the lowest elevation in the western hemisphere, from the top of a nearby mountain. The road to get there was so steep that we had to drive up in first gear. Oh, and the series of tight, twisting switchbacks was also a nice touch. The view was worth it!


Overall Death Valley was incredibly cool.