Death Valley and Lone Pine

04/08/14 to 05/08/13

We drove for two hours or so through the Sierra Nevada in the direction of the Death Valley.  We could see the landscape changing dramatically. Little by little, lakes dried up, huge grey stones disappeared and green trees vanished to make way to a dry, dusty, orange desert.

We found a free campsite (with nobody else apart from one weird man staying there) and as it was around 5pm and still very warm, we decided to stay there for the night (rather than go deeper into the valley).  Usually at this time of year campsites in this area are closed as it is too warm, there is no shade and therefore dangerous.  The thermometer of our car indicated 110 degrees Fahrenheit almost all the time in the Death Valley (44° Celsius).  Luckily there was a tap and we wetted our T-shirts to cool down.  It actually worked for a couple of minutes and then by the third minute our T-shirts were dry again.  Some small birds flew around us, desperate for food and water.  Even if we tried to scare them, they came very close and one even landed on Flora’s finger (the other one just kept trying to attack Dave). We saw the sunset and the sand dunes, rocks and skies changing colour.  The warm wind started to blow stronger and stronger as the sun dropped.  Our tent (the cheapest one we could find) was too weak for this type of weather, so we decided to pack it up and to sleep in the car.  We made sure that all the doors of our car were locked because being in the Death Valley under a hammering heat with a potential serial killer next door felt like a credible and perfect scenario for a horror film.

During the night the temperature dropped a little bit but 100°F (38°C) was still uncomfortable for us especially in a car.

As you can imagine, we woke up at the crack of the dawn (before it got too hot again) and explored this amazing and vast landscape.  We started by seeing the Mesquite sand dunes, an old borax mining village (yes, Chinese workers used to live out here before the days of air-con) and Badwater Basin (the lowest point in the western hemisphere at 86 metres below sea level).  Then we turned around and drove through the one-way Artist’s Palette and made a quick stop at the Golden Canyon. 

This was a very outstanding drive but as soon as we walked out from the air-conditioned car, we felt the real conditions of being in a desert and the hottest place on earth (135°F or 57°C is the hottest temperature ever reliably recorded on earth and it was here at Furnace Creek in the Death Valley).   Even if we stopped for a short walk of just a few metres from the car, we made sure that we had a bottle of water with us.  You might think it impossible for the Death Valley to sustain life, but in the sand we saw some tracks of birds, lizards and snakes.  They usually come out at night when it’s cooler and there are other animals to hunt.

After exiting the Death Valley we entered Nevada and stopped for some gasoline and supplies (mainly water) at a small town called Lone Pine.  This had some old ‘wild west’ character and some fun buildings so we took a pit stop here before heading further east towards Las Vegas.