Desert Wanderings

A month ago, before my illness, we were out exploring the desert and back country between Lone Pine, CA and Las Vegas, NV. Starting up where we left off, here’s the latest entry chronicling our most recent adventure. Additional posts will cover our visit to the ghost town of Rhyolite and our drive through the very rugged Titus Canyon. The entire series is viewable on a single page in reverse date order for easier viewing.

Before we left Las Vegas, we spent one afternoon on the unpaved desert roads northeast of town, looking for interesting rocks and minerals and enjoying the sheer desolation and stark beauty of the trail we were on. Spied soon after we were off the main roads, this image served to emphasize the remoteness of the area we were in, just 20 some odd miles from Vegas.

Death Valley, 23 November 2003

When we left Las Vegas we decided to drive up the length of Death Valley, a route we had not taken before. We have crossed Death Valley from east to west but had never driven it lengthwise.

We first stopped for photos at the lowest spot in the continental United States, a spot known as Badwater. It is almost 300 feet below sea level, and Sheryl commented on how interesting it was that the highest spot in the the lower 48 states is just a few miles away at Mt. Whitney (over 14000 feet high).

A little further north is a large area of crystalized salt known as the Devils Golf Course. A very harsh environment, as the photo, below left, shows.

Close to the top of the valley is a region of surprising beauty, known as the Artists Palette. The hills along this area are brightly colored. These colors are caused by the oxidation of different metals (red, pink and yellow is from iron salts, green is from decomposing mica, and manganese produces the purple). Additional information available at wikipedia

We spent the night at Stovepipe Wells, reaching the tiny desert oasis shortly before sunset, which left enough time to relax for a while at the large sand dunes right outside of town. We captured these interesting tracks that we first thought belonged to a bird, but later read may have been left by large beetles.

I finally tried something I had been interested in since I got my GPS unit a couple of years ago. It seems that one can take a screen shot of the display of one’s recent travels, as recorded by the GPS and overlay that track over a map or photo of the area visited. I had thought there would be serious issues with scaling, but it turns out that it’s not too hard to get the map and the recorded track in sync. Check out the results for our trip up Death Valley! click on the image for a larger version