Corporate America Runaway

Photo: Death Valley California

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500 Miles Through the Valley of Death

We bid Vegas farewell with a drive down Las Vegas Blvd. It’s not often that someone from the Midwest and the East Coast get to drive their car down Las Vegas Blvd…so we thought we better do it while we had a chance. Sure, it would have been better in a convertible with a scarf tied around my head like Jackie O…but our Jeep Cheroke and my baseball hat would have to do.

We made a big decision today; one that would cost us time and miles. A decision that made us sweat. Instead of heading straight towards San Francisco, we decided to head to a destination below sea level, Death Valley. In order to make it to Death Valley, we had to drive about 200 miles out of our way which basically meant that it would take us one day longer to get back to San Francisco. Even after 2 weeks of cross country travel, I wasn’t hating the car and driving yet, so the thought of seeing Death Valley seemed like an opportunity we should seize.

So – instead of following the mass exodus out of Vegas towards LA, we went north instead, deeper into the desert, deeper into the heat. I woke up this day with a terrible sore throat, it had bothered me for days, but today I couldn’t ignore it, I was sick. I’m sure Kathleen was really happy to be stuck with me in a car for 500 miles as I was hot, sick, grumpy, and hacking…but she had no choice!

We drove to the small town of Beatty, outside of the entrance into Death Valley and picked up supplies. It honestly felt as if we were going into this vortex for days and never going to come out. We made sure we had a full tank of gas, we bought numerous bottles of water, sandwiches, chips, M&M’s (you never know when you are going to need chocolate), and we washed our windows…we were ready to enter the Valley of Death…it sounded incredibly ominous as if I were a kid again entering a haunted house. The road was narrow and like a roller coaster – little dips that put your stomach in your throat. I imagined that the road had actually melted and that’s why it ended up all warped…hmmm…maybe I actually had a fever with my cold. Death Valley is actually a National Park, so I got out my Annual Park Pass, ready to flash it to the person taking money at the ‘gate’, but there was no gate. There wasn’t even a person. There was simply a vending kiosk that requested you to pay your fee. I was actually a bit freaked out that this park was so brutal that they didn’t even have a welcome gate and employee/ranger. For a moment I did wonder if we were driving straight into hell. We took a look at the map and plotted our course through the valley, rolled down our windows, cracked open our waters, started munching nervously on M&M’s, and entered the park.

Here are the facts; Death Valley is the lowest, driest and hottest valley in the US. It is the location of the lowest elevation in North America at 282 ft below sea level. It holds the record highest temperature in Western hemisphere and world’s second highest temperature overall at 134 degrees. It certainly makes you want to put on sun screen – which of course I forgot to pack.

It was a desolate drive. You could see the heat rays coming up from the ground making everything in the distance seem a bit fuzzy. We both wondered in amazement what crazy settlers would have ever stopped here and decided to try farming. There weren’t many that did it – but there were some that tried. There was a small oasis with a campground (ewwww…who would camp here?!) an actual visitors center where rangers dished out helpful info about how to get around and reminded everyone to drink a lot of water. They pointed out some good things to go see that required a bit of off roading; once again, thank goodness we had a Jeep.

Our first off-roading stop was the Devil’s Golf Course. A short drive off the main road into what appears to be a dried up field of coral. When you looked closely – it was all salt formations. I went to go tee off, but wondered how I would ever find my ball in this sea of white! Actually – I have no idea why they called it the Devil’s Golf Course – since it obviously wasn’t a golf course…but it was definitely worth the off-roading stop.

The valley is surrounded by canyons, but since we were watching time, we skipped the canyon viewing since we had already seen the ‘grandest’ of them all. Instead we went to the salt flats….which is pretty much how it sounds. A perfectly flat part of the park that was dusted in salt, making the whole valley floor appear bright white. This was also the lowest point. Years ago this area was actually full of water, however the water dried up, and the salt remains. It’s not going anywhere anytime soon. We walked onto the flats where I felt like I was literally cooking – at least I was seasoned…salt…duh. Bad joke I know. However – my curiosity did get the better of me and I tried to find a little ‘clean’ part of the salt that I could break off and taste. I still feel like I have an iron stomach from traveling India and Africa…so a little salt off the ground couldn’t hurt me! I have to say that it didn’t really taste like salt to me…maybe it just needed a little margarita mix.

We saw all the sites we had time to do and drove a long route out of the valley. The sun was beating down on me and I wasn’t doing well. Poor Kathleen was stuck with all of the boring driving, so when we arrived back in civilization, we stopped for Dairy Queen and I took over the wheel. At this point we had to haul ass to make some mileage. Granted – I’m not the person to put in the drivers seat when you have to haul ass, so this should be a good indication of how tired Kathleen really was! We lumbered along on the hi-way and eventually took some scenic routes to try to avoid going into LA. The route took us along side Edwards Air Force Base. Of course being girls, we had no idea what they did at Edwards – but after much discussion we determined that it had some association with space shuttle landings. I know more about shoes than I do about rockets. We googled it and learned that it was the home of the US Air Force Test Pilot School. Too bad we couldn’t stay around this area for the night, we finally could have met some eligible men on this trip!

The sun was going down but we decided to continue pushing past Mojave towards Bakersville where we would stop for the night. As we were driving a lovely back road enjoying the scenery, we all of a sudden noticed a beautiful carpet of orange. Kathleen looked in one of our guide books and realized that this carpet of orange was actually poppy fields in bloom! The orange flowers basked in the sunset were an amazing site. It made the drive all that more scenic.

We finally pulled into Bakersfield around 8PM, checked into a Motel 6, picked up some Wendy’s, and some Bud Light – and celebrated our 500 mile day. Only one more day to go before we hit our destination of San Francisco. I was a bit sad that it was coming to an end, but happy we survived DeathValley!

Tags: Death Valley, Death Valley National Park, Devils Gold Course, road trip, Salt Flats

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 24th, 2008 at 7:46 am and is filed under America, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.