Death Valley

Day 24 Photo Album

September 26, 2009

In a burst of energy after a restful night, I shed my morning ablutions and even coffee to set out by 7:30 am from Lake Isabella.  The morning light on the mountains was spectacular.  It made me realize that if I lived in this part of the country I’d sleep from 11 am to 5 pm and enjoy the sunrise and sunset with the deep night sky. 

After the sun sets the temperature drops down to 50 or so and it takes a few hours to get really hot after it rises.  I feel absolutely fantastic here, even in the middle of the day at 105 degrees.  I’m beginning to think I’ve become too water logged over the years.

The drive over Walker Pass is winding, but rather gently so, and beautiful.  New kinds of trees, Joshua, that look like cartoons waving and flaying their arms about, saturate the Pass.  The geology is ever changing and many different colors, from black to white.

For the first time in many, many days, my creativity seemed to open out and experience the landscape in the expansive way I’m familiar with.  I was happier than I’ve been in ages.  Walker Pass was the doorway to an even greater sense of peace I discovered in Death Valley. 

My route was 178 east onto 395 north then 190 east.  Most of this is through mountains with the elevation rising and falling from sea level to over 5,000 feet.  They’re called mountains, but it feels more like canyons married to above timberline with a touch of just plain scrubby hills. 

The mountains jut upwards with revelations of their past, their varied layers, hidden secrets bared for all to see.  Huge mounds of loose dirt cascade down to the road in a solid color as if to say, “nothing is solid.”

I enjoyed imagining that I was driving at the bottom of the sea.  Here, in this space, the water used to hide these amazing mountains.  Those wing-shaped rocks I just saw in the Pacific Ocean had foundations like this.  I was swimming in my car.

Stovepipe Wells is nearly at the end of the park and at one point before leaving I had considered staying there.  It is at sea level and in the wide open spaces around the sand dunes.  Now that I’ve seen it, I just may do that some day.  There was too little time to see too much.  But what I did see was great and in terms of landscape, my all-time favorite so far.

Crossing into Nevada there is one more pass to traverse, Daylight Pass, through the Amargosa Range.  I could have turned south on 190 and stayed in Death Valley, but didn’t.  I got to Beatty, Nevada, around 1:30 pm and decided not to stay there but to push myself as far south as I could go.  I’m heading for Williams, Arizona, to spend a few days at the Grand Canyon.  (Williams has really cheap motel rooms.) 

Passing through Indian Springs is a peculiar experience.  While taking a rest and eating some ice cream, I put a dollar in the slot machine and played poker, leaving with my dollar in tact.  There is a military outpost there and lots and lots of vehicles that are odd.  Wires, power sources, gates, fences, “no” signs everywhere (as my brother calls them). 

As soon as I left Beatty, the road becomes a straight line forever.  Okay, a slight jog here and there.  Las Vegas and surroundings break things up with its huge sprawl.  At Boulder City, just outside of Hoover Dam, I contemplated staying overnight to spend a bit of time at the Dam in the morning.  But their motels were too expensive and I still had a bit of juice, so I kept going.

Hoover Dam has security checkpoints before you can enter.  My car is loaded to the gills with so much stuff there is no available space, even on the front seat.  But he gave me and my car a look and said, “to the left, have a nice evening!”  Tons and tons of people walking around the dam and the parking lots were not even full.  It is really an awesome feeling driving through it.  Such rugged mountains and all the immense structures hovering over the cliffs.  The things we do are pretty remarkable.

That being my last exciting encounter, I put the car back in cruise control and drifted on into the sunset.  As I watched the landscape I became aware of a familiarity:  this is the edge of Grand Canyon territory and it looks like it.  More plains between mountains and the rocks take on a more consistent red tone. 

As the sun set I found myself in Kingman, Arizona, and a low priced motel available.  It’s clean, huge, and has lots of plugs.  One thing that I’ve noticed in my motel stays so far is that they don’t give you many plugs. 

I’m tired but very glad I made it this far today.  My plan is to settle in Williams for a few days and spend some time at the Grand Canyon and Sedona.