Death Valley Day 1

We weren't sure what to tackle here in Death Valley. Stupidly I hadn't realised that winter was the peak season here - not surprisingly since the average June maximum temperature is around 46C.

We filled up our nice 20L Jug'o'Water (enough for about 2.5 days in the heat) headed up the road towards Stovepipe Wells.

A short (long) 2 mile trip up a heavily corrugated dirt road brought us to Mosaic Canyon. You will not be surprised to learn that this is a canyon.

I don't think I've ever been in a canyon before, but it was fascinating to see the hard rock (marble) where it has resisted the water, and the masses of little rocks caught up in silt which still form the canyon walls.

The marble is super-smooth - I'm not sure whether this is from the passing of the water, or the many people who touch it as they go past.

Even though it's desolate, the landscape is stunning.

There are no clouds in the sky here in Death Valley. The sun is relentless. There is very little shade, even in the canyon. It's stinking hot in the sun, but surprisingly in the shade it's relatively cool. There was a slight breeze too which was lovely.

We saw this little lizard running around. He has HUGE feet, and a tail that he holds up like a scorpion's stinger when he runs around.

There's some guy with a tripod in this photo.

I don't even know what this is a picture of, but I still think it looks cool.

To be honest most/all of my photos from yesterday really sucked ass. Oh well. All pictures today presented to you by Kat.

After we'd finished at the canyon we wandered down the the Stovepipe Wells General store to ponder the heat. Boy it was hot. Hot, hot, HOT.

Somewhat foolishly we set off up the road to Titus Canyon. The drive there was fine, but the 3 miles uphill at slow speed really heated the Jeep up. So much so that when we got to the top, the cap popped off the water reservoir and we had a nice coolant explosion.

Hmm.

We went for a short hike, but it was so hot we soon abandoned it.

Returning to the Jeep I added some more water, and we set off down the hill. Everything seemed fine, until we started up the hill back to the turd. The temperature kept spiking up so we had to stop a couple of times.

Good thing we had a couple of beers to keep us busy while we waited. I added some more water, we let it cool down, and finally set off back up the hill.

Seems like initially I hadn't been revving the engine enough, so the main fan wasn't spinning fast enough to offset the heat. Finally we made it to the top of the hill, and everything was good.

Even though none of these photos are mine, we still get to have some still life. I've never seen cacti in their native habitat before.

Let me tell you that Death Valley is not to be treated lightly. Whilst there are always cars passing, and there's a good chance that you'd be fine (as long as you were sensible and packed enough water) it's not the sort of place that you'd want to get stuck.

Sadly, in that frame of mind we didn't venture out today. Perhaps we're just overcautious, but sitting around in the desert waiting for help doesn't sound like a whole bunch of fun to me.

I'm disappointed that we didn't get an opportunity to see more, or photograph more, but I guess it'll always be here. Even with the changes in our environment the desert is something that's going to remain.