Death Valley in December

Dec. 5, 2009

Death Valley

(if you do not click this hyperlink then you will have nightmares for the rest of your life)

Hogan and I decided to explore a little bit more of California on our last weekend before driving back to the east coast. So we took another day off (we had quite a few saved up) and spent three days touring some national parks in southern California.
We left early in the day, driving through some super-intense Central Valley fog. The fog was seriously awful in the winter. There were times when you couldn't see 20 feet in front of you. I remember having to honk whenever I wanted to take a left turn because I couldn't see if anyone was coming. Then we drove for a while, and on one of those small one-lane highways through south-eastern CA I got my first speeding ticket ever. The cop was driving the other direction, so I wanted to do the whole "I'm pretty sure you don't understand Doppler shift" argument, but decided against it.
We eventually made it into the park, but it is so expansive that we drove for a while just to get to the first worth-while sight. Our first stop was at the Sand Dunes.

Frolicking amongst the 50+ foot sand dunes

Naturally, we decided to somersault our way down some of the dunes, but I made the mistake of not emptying the contents of my pockets first. The only real damage was my camera, which can no longer fully zoom, because I still have Death Valley sand stuck in it. Oh well. Worth it.

Sometimes I'm dumb

Shoes were a poor choice

After rolling down sand hills, we hit our next attraction: Badwater Basin. It's a huge valley completely covered in salt flat. It is really cool to see, because there is just NOTHING that could live down there.

LOWEST POINT IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE

It was just salt flats as far as the eye could see. It was nuts. There were some little pools down there, but they were super-saturated with salt. It was sooooo different than anything I had ever seen before.

Reflections are CRAZY

We walked in the salt flats for a while, but then decided to head back to see a few more things before the Sun set. Driving for a while, we saw Artist's Palette, which was really interesting. It was a rock-face with a lot of different colored sands - like 5 different pastel-ish colored rocks. Then we went to a really cool spot to catch sunset.

I started running out of poses

The sunset looked pretty damn awesome

Know what the best part about the desert in December is? The nights are friggn freezing. I'm glad I brought a winter hat and gloves, otherwise that would have been a pretty rough time putting up the tent and cooking dinner.
The next morning we got up and took a short hike through some small "canyons," which were actually glacial cuts in the rock that formed small tunnels without tops. It was really fun, but still somewhat cold. Come on, I thought this was California!

Hogan may look like a drifter, but I can assure you that he is not

We didn't spend too much more time at Death Valley, because we wanted to check out Joshua Tree National Park, and the days were definitely getting shorter, so we had to use the sunlight while we could.