Death Valley National Park

Good morning, my friends. We're at our last stop for this trip before we head for home. We expect to be home a week from yesterday. For now, we're enjoying this beautiful and colorful landscape inside the largest national park in the contiguous United States (the "lower 48" states), covering over 3.4 million acres (roughly 5,270 square miles) across California and Nevada. It is not the largest in the entire U.S. (Wrangell-St. Elias in Alaska is), but it is the hottest, driest, and lowest. (I've linked to my post from our visit to Wrangell-St. Elias last July, if you're interested in reading about it.)

As for yesterday's drive, the colorful landscape came into view shortly after turning west from Pahrump yesterday.

It''s a mostly straight drive to reach Death Valley.

That's Telescope Peak off in the distance, within the boundary of the national park.

Just before reaching Death Valley, one reaches the Amargosa Opera House.

Amargosa is essentially a ghost town now, but one can see the historic Amargosa Hotel and Opera House there. It's been a few years since we've visited this area. Resident artist Marta Becket staged dance and mime shows from the late 1960s until her final show in February 2012. The Death Valley Junction Historic District is on the National Register of Historic Places and is now owned by the nonprofit established by Becket for the preservation of the property. To the side is a motel. Given the presence of cars there, I'm thinking it's still possible to rent a room.

Just before crossing the border into California, this sign warns...last chance. If you need fuel, fill up now because it's just about to get a LOT more expensive. We planned ahead and filled up in Pahrump.

Continuing on...I never stop marveling at this beautiful and interesting landscape. I'm posting these images in the order I took them. I'll only comment if there's something in particular I want you to see.

Oh yes...and watch for bighorn sheep. We have seen them in Death Valley, but that was many years and many visits ago.

Also, we saw stands of wildflowers blooming along the side of the road. We'll see more today.

Finally, we reached the park entrance.

And here we are. Welcome to Death Valley National Park. I took this picture because I wanted you to notice the green things growing on that alluvial plain. Clearly, the area has seen more rain than usual this year.

See the green in the hillside in this next image? That indicates the presence of copper.

As we approached our final stop at Furnace Creek, we saw more colors in the hillsides.

Coming around the final bend, we could see the salt flats.

For a weekend, there aren't many people in the campground, and we found a space we liked right away. Growing right here at our site are a few wildflowers...our old friend, the Desert Sunflower.

And these are growing virtually everywhere. It's hard to avoid stepping on them. My phone tells me these are "Brown Eyes." They're tiny. About the diameter of a dime.

It's surprisingly warm here for this time of year. We were in the high 80's yesterday, and we're expecting warm temperatures again today. Smitty had to cool his tummy furs on the steps.

Later, he moved closer to his food bowls.

Later, we were treated to a pretty sunset. To the southwest, it looked like this. You can see The Inn at Death Valley in the lower left corner of the image below. We'll head over there this afternoon for some prickly pear margaritas and some sort of light dinner.

To the south, it looked like this:

To the east, it looked like this:

Turning a little toward the north...

To the north.

And finally...to the west. Beautiful.

So we want to get out early this morning. The plan is to drive south to Badwater Basin. In previous visits, that's been the best place to see wildflowers, and it's probably one of the more interesting drives in this large park.

So far so good, although our weakness here is going to be battery power. We've had full hook-ups everywhere we've been. Here...we're dry camping, with no hook-ups. Our batteries won't hold a lot of charge from our generator, and so we're having to be careful about power consumption. I only mention this because that will be the limiting factor for my blogging efforts. I'll attempt to stick with my usual morning schedule. If you don't hear from me, you can assume its because I'm powerless...which is almost always true anyway, but it's especially true when I'm depending on battery power. The solar units on our roof are helping, but they only help when the sun is shining. At night, running fans to keep us cool is draining our battery. 

Okay, so that's enough for this morning. I'm hoping I'll have lots of wildflower shots for you tomorrow. And if we're going to "get out early," then I need to get going. 

Every Little Thing in the Desert

Good morning, my friends. It was another quiet day here. My day started as it usually does...with slow-stitching. I took the first stitches on Block 7 for the Snowmen & Reindeer project.

Later, we were incensed to discover that our new neighbors include four cats. And that's not all. They have a woofie too! Well. There goes the neighborhood. To quote The Big Lebowski, "This aggression will not stand, Man."

It's a good thing we're leaving tomorrow. I'm not sure we can take the outrage. Smitty is downright apoplectic, as you can plainly see.

It seemed like a good morning to get outside with my DSLR and macro lens. The desert is fairly uniform here...mostly rocks and creosote bushes. I first walked around to the flowers near the office. These are some I showed a few days ago, although closer up this time.

This is some red lantana.

Some more purple lantana.

African daisies.

This is a red flaming Katy.

My phone tells me this is a pincushion flower, but I don't think that's right.

My phone says this is a flame violet.

Not sure what this is, and it hasn't bloomed yet.

This is a kind of succulent: mesembryanthemum cordifolium if you want to know its snotty botanical name.

The bees liked it.

Here's our friend, the desert sunflower.

This next one is a common stork's-bill. The flowers were tiny.

This is a seed head from a creosote bush.

This next one is called a London rocket. These are growing everywhere...a weed.

Here is a flower bud from a creosote bush.

Outside our RV, I picked up this pine cone.

This is the butt end of the same pine cone.

And this is the top end of the same pine cone.

The pine cones come from the tree with the bark you see below.

Out in the desert, this flat red weed caught my eye.

This is the "bark" of a creosote bush.

This is just some old dried and rotting wood. I just liked the shape of it.

I dearly wanted to get closer to this guy. I took several pictures, just hoping I could get something. My phone tells me this is a common side-blotched lizard.

His skin is so pretty. I found a better image in the public domain.

(Image credit: "Common Side Blotched Lizard" by gtrwndr87 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.)

This is just some weedy grass that caught my eye.

This is my favorite image of the group. This is a White-lined Sphinx Moth. They look like a tiny hummingbird (about half the size), and they flit from flower to flower just like a hummingbird would. I've only seen a sphinx moth one other time when we were in Breckenridge, Colorado, but I wasn't able to get a picture that time.

So that was my photography outing for the day. 

Our trip is winding down. Today is our last day in Pahrump. We're still planning to spend a few days in Death Valley, but from there we'll head for home. I haven't yet worked out our route. We're waiting to see what road conditions are. I've read several times that we're likely to see a superbloom of wildflowers on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountains, but a lot of snow was dumped there last week, and so we're watching to see what the road conditions are. If we need to, we can back track to Nevada and go north that way, but we're really hoping we can head up US 395 in California. 

As for today's activities, Mike made waffles for breakfast. That’s lways a good way to start the day. We need to get some fuel. Diesel fuel will be very expensive in Death Valley, and so we want to fill our tank here in Pahrump. We'll also pick up whatever groceries are on our shopping list. Happily, we have enough food to get us through our days in Death Valley. (I might have said "Death Valley Days," but then I'd be dating myself.) 

With all that going on today, packing up, and getting ready to go tomorrow, I'll take tomorrow off from blogging. There was a time when I couldn't blog in Death Valley because there was no wi-fi, nor any cell phone signal. I don't know if any of that has changed since our last visit, but it doesn't matter. Our Starlink system has set us free from the need for either. As long as we have a clear view of the sky, we have internet. And all of that to say that I'll be back to check in with you on Saturday morning.