Day 18: Death Valley & White Mountain

Miles travelled: 6722 to 7169  (total of 447 miles/ 719 kilometres)
Weather: Sunny
Highlight of the day: White Mountain Bristlecone Pines

[Check back in the next few days for photos!!] 

8:23  On the road.  Today we will drive 447 miles through 4 states (Utah, Arizona, Nevada & California).  Luckily the van is a dream to drive, power steering, excellent acceleration & breaking and air conditioning.

8:46 Cross from Utah to Arizona.

8:14 (Time change) Cross from Arizona to Nevada.  Drive through Las Vegas on freeway without stopping – no time.  See hotels while passing.  Another time perhaps we will do Vegas (or perhaps not. . .).

12:03  Entering Death Valley.  We have lunch at the appropriately named Furnace Creek (very hot) then back track to Zabriskie Point to take photos. It’s over 100 F / 40 C and we pass a man cycling with no hat and wearing shorts and a teeshirt! The view from Zabriskie Point is barren and lifeless.  Neither of us like Death Valley.  In fact we actively dislike it and decide to drive through it as fast as possible.  Disa’s family love Death Valley and frequently visit it so I can only assume we were suffering from desert fatigue and had we seen it under different circumstances would have loved it.  Be this as it may I will now say some very nasty things about this thoroughly unpleasant, horrible place  (Erik, Mary, Maria & David may wish to skip the next bit). It’s horrible. Way too hot and it’s only spring. Dead, uninteresting land with only horrible mesquite bushes to break the monotony.  The Visitor’s Guide to Death Valley tells us that the traditional people, the Timbisha, lived in harmony with the land and developed a way of accommodating the hot conditions.  They left!!  Every summer they headed up into the mountains to escape the heat of Death Valley.  What wonderfully sensible people!  We salute their ancient wisdom and will follow their lead.  Immediately!  Right Now.  At 85 MPH!!   Interesting fact. Death  Valley is the hottest place and lowest point in USA and after you get out of the valley there is another plain then the Sierra Nevada mountains including Mt Whitney, the highest mountain in continental USA. Every July (ie. High Summer) an ultra marathon is held from Badwater (86 metres below sea level) in Death Valley to the Trail head of Mt Whitney (elevation 2,548 metres), a distance of 210 kilometres in 46 degrees C temperature.  Think I’ll enter next year.

3:00 We stop at Father Crowley’s Point to take last photos and farewell Death Valley (good riddance).

5:55  Arrive at Schulman Grove Ancient Bristlecone Pine walk in the White Mountains.  Do 3 mile walk surrounded by hundreds of bristlecone pines and with the snow capped Sierra Nevada mountain range as backdrop.  We LOVE the ancient bristlecones!  We LOVE the snow capped Sierras!

7:50  Arrive Grandview campground – we are the only campers so far – two more arrive overnight.