The lowest point in my life

After a day of outlet shopping, and an evening of gondola rides, water volcanoes, musical fountains and a couple of things closed outright due to sudden, high winds (the pirate show outside Treasure Island, and more critically the Eiffel Tower at Paris) we were ready to get away from a city and back into relative wilderness. We went for one last lap down the eastern side of the Strip from The Venetian to Paris, found (with some relief) the Eiffel Tower elevators were open once more, and headed up to the top floor for what is arguably one of the best aerial views of Vegas, without hiring a helicopter. About the only minuses are the level of haze present in the air, and that from this altitude you really can fully appreciate what a dive Vegas is once you get a couple of blocks away from the Strip.

We returned to the Venetian to collect the car and check out, and finally left Las Vegas via a quick visit to New York, New York and Excalibur, heading via 160 West to Tecopa, then Shoshone, and finally into Death Valley from the south.

It was not at all what I expected it to be – in my mind, Death Valley would only be canyons, salt-flats and sand dunes but it’s a far more complex environment than this. Approaching from the southern end, you drive progressively lower through a long, wide, valley, and at the time of year were visiting, wildflowers were starting to bloom in a myriad of colours and shapes, including a truly weird thing which looked to be hair-like, bright orange spores or fungus, tangled around host plants.

Regardless of this initial surprise however, Death Valley’s primary claims to fame still have to be that it possesses some of the most freakishly wild and colourful looking desert country in the US, and that it is home to the lowest spot in the United States, and one of the lowest on earth – Bad Water, at 282 feet below sea level. Even more remarkable is that it’s only around 80 miles from Mount Whitney, the highest point in the ‘lower 48’. Bad Water has nothing, but in the nothingness is its beauty. We stopped at Bad Water, and experienced both the scenery and the slightly surreal sight of dozens of people wandering, often seemingly slightly dazed, off onto the salt flats as though being called to attendance at a religious cult.

A few miles on from Bad Water is the Devils Golf Course, which can perhaps be most accurately described as a coral reef made out of mud and salt. It’s a sea of small, jagged-edged hillocks crested with razor sharp salt crystals, all designed to tear your clothes, boots, and even you to bits if you fell on it. There’s nothing to stop you from walking out into it as far as you’d like, but after ten or twenty metres most visitors have had enough and turn back to the safety of their car. It’s apparent how Death Valley got its name – crossing from one side to the other would either mean blistering heat and razor-edged salt flats in summer, or those same salt-flats in a freezing winter, made worse by their weakening with rare amounts of rain, ensuring you crack through the buckling crust and sink into deep, thick, black mud like axle grease. As a visitor, today, it’s a sensation. 100 years ago it would have been avoided at all costs.

We drove on through truly alien landscapes featuring hills, mountains and canyons the colour of dropped tiramisu and choc-mind puddings, turning into Artists Point and, ultimately, Artists Palette where literally almost every colour of stone, sand and dust were on display, from the expected browns, blacks and tans through to orange, red, pink, white and green, then swung back onto the main road and to the small town of Furnace Creek, known as the place where the hottest temperature ever reliably recorded in the US was experienced – 56.7 degrees Celsius, on July 10^th 1913. Only one other place, Al’ Aziziyah in Libya, has ever beaten it, and then only by 0. 1^o C. I’ve experienced days in Australia over 45^o C, and truth is it doesn’t seem a hell of a lot more ridiculous than 40, so perhaps beyond a certain point, any measure is redundant, at least from a human experience. Regardless, I can’t begin to imagine what it was like back in 1913, with little water and no air-conditioning. They must have bred them tough in California back then. I’m sure they still breed them tough in Libya…

Thankfully when we were there it was a considerably cooler but even in March the environment has an ability to suck the moisture from you. We stopped in for a couple of ice-creams and drinks, sat in the shade for 15 minutes knocking them back, then realizing we were running out of time and had yet to line up accommodation, we headed off west once again, via a quick pit-stop at Zabriskie Point and the Mesquite Dunes (location of minor pick-up filming of Tatooine in the original Star Wars, for any fanboys in the audience) then continued on in gathering darkness over causeways across salt lakes, and up and down narrow, winding mountain roads, finally clearing the small town of Trona and onto Ridgecrest for the evening, completely stuffed.

Thankfully for the kids at least, the local Hampton Inn had a spa, so while they frolicked (I assume they frolicked playfully, as from my experience at least it’s impossible to frolic miserably or dispassionately) I knocked over a local Walgreens and came home with a swag of American junk food. Everyone was a winner. Well, except for Walgreens.

*note some artistic license has been used in the preparation of this blog. Ridgecrest Walgreens was not robbed that night, at least not by me.