| Death Valley, CA |

Took the drive up I-95 North from the Las Vegas suburbs to the Rhyolite Ghost Town on the way to Death Valley National Park today.

It was yet another jaw-dropper in a wonderful succession of jaw-droppers. Stunning in both it’s beauty and it’s isolation.

One of those not a care in the world drives that I am getting incredibly accustomed to having in my life.

I became tired of the podcasts I was listening to and clicked on XM. Then quickly stopped the channel surf on the Springsteen channel and found myself in the midst of a live concert of his from Sunrise, FL. I think it was April of 2016.

He’s been a road traveling companion of mine for a while now. He wraps his uniquely American blend of music around his gravelly voice and has an incredible ability to make it seem as though you’re the only one he’s telling his stories to. And I’ve whiled away an awful lot of driving hours with him as my passenger seat companion.

I don’t recall what song was playing when I tuned in, but I definitely recall the next two.

For as I was staring at a wide open stretch of highway without another car in sight and nothing but mountain ranges softly topped by rain clouds surrounding me on all sides, came one of those songs that seems perfect for the time and place you find yourself at that very moment in life.

Highway to Hell, as covered by Springsteen.

Now for those who don’t know, the song was recorded originally by AC-DC. A band I’ve never cared for. Probably because AC-DC is usually played by guys wearing jean shorts and white tank tops, while they drink Budweiser and work on their cars in the garage.

Nothing wrong with any of those things at all, so if I’ve just described you, don’t take offense. Just not my idea of a good time.

But in this case…and in this time and place…played live…by the Boss…

Well that specific song fit the drive to Death Valley, pretty damn well.

So I cranked it up to an ear bleeding level, threw open the moonroof and let loose.

When that moment of musical ambrosia was over, Born to Run was next.

And life was, and is, good.

---

At one point in time Rhyolite was a booming mining town with somewhere around 4000 residents. But as sometimes happens in relationships, boom met bust and now it has a grand total of zero residents, and not many more buildings than that.

But it does have a sense of spooky wonder for folks such as myself and though there really isn’t a ton to see, I had a good time wandering around for a bit while making very sure to keep from making acquaintances with any of the current residents. Rattlesnakes.

Note: More photos available in the photo galleries on the main page

Rhyolite however was only a brief detour on the way to the main attraction of the day.

---

The road to Death Valley looks like….well, a road to a valley called ‘Death’ should look.

Consisting of a long approach to the mountains of eight miles or so, it’s perfectly straight and appears from a distance to disappear right into the base of those mountains.

It’s foreboding in a way that made me think of this road as a march to the valley that ultimately lies at the end for all of us.

After passing the long plank of an approach, I wound my way through the mountains and steadily down in elevation.

Unlike the majority of my forays in this trip, I watched as the car’s outside temperature gauge climbed northward, instead of south. From 62 degrees at the start of the park to the upper 80’s as I neared the first salt flats and sand dunes and dropped down to sea elevation.

I parked at the sand dunes, hopped out and got slapped in the face by the change in humidity. Almost like when you get out of a cool shower in the summer. All in all it’s a weird feeling because the drop in elevation of about 3000 feet occurs over a relatively short drive from the Nevada / California border.

Appropriately named, Death Valley, lies in, you guessed it, a valley.

Apparently it used to contain an inland sea of up to 600 feet deep. Eventually the sea evaporated and the unique lay of the land and the enormity of it’s surrounding mountain ranges led to it’s incredibly unique environment today.

I’ve seen plenty of high mountains and other distinctive types of natural environments both on this trip, and in my travels in prior years.

But nothing like this.

Depending on your location, you’re standing at some point between sea level and a couple hundred feet below. And surrounding you on all sides are barren vertical behemoths ascending to 11,000 plus feet.

Splaying out in all directions from ground level are sand dunes, salt flats and rocky wastes. Though life has found a way to grow in one of the most inhospitable places on the planet, not much life has. There’s a couple of oasis’s in the middle, but outside of that, you’ve got a few scrubby low level plants, a few wildflowers and not much else.

Full marks to the life that has figured it out, because though it was a little humid, the temperature for my visit was some 35-45 degrees below a more ‘normal’ Death Valley temperature of well over 100 degrees. Indeed the highest land temperature ever recorded was in the valley at a toasty 134 degrees.

The combination of incredibly unique environmental features coupled with the lack of life truly made the majority of the valley seem like visiting another planet. As a fan of outer space, it’s what I imagine Mars would look a lot like, if you swapped it’s red soils out for the earthbound colors here.

I toured the dunes and drove around the valley for a few hours, stopping every once in a while to get out and wander around in boyish amazement at the scenery before me and eventually made my way to lowest elevation point in North America, Badwater Basin.

As you might imagine, a few other folks were also interested in hanging out here. By a few I mean, hordes.

The parking lot was jammed to overflowing with cars, pickups, campers and everything in between. But this was to be expected and in having experienced a few of these day tripper meat grinders by now, I opted to drive right past that chaos, in search of a better entry point.

You see, the road less traveled tends to be far superior to the more traveled one in my experience.

And just 1/2 mile down the road I found my less traveled spot. A very simple pull off where I parked and thus, avoided the whole selfie crowd.

So while they were bumping and grinding, I wandered the salt flats completely alone, devoid of any sound and in probably my favorite spot of this entire trip, so far.

If the rest of the valley seemed like something from outer space, this spot was something from outer space.

The edge of the parking spot was full of spectacularly colored, volcanic rocky remnants.

Then you wandered into some wet sand caked with salt and from there it was into the crater like depressions of the salt flats.

I have no way to appropriately describe the bizarre, moon-like crater field of the salt flats, in a way that even remotely does them justice, so…

Absolutely remarkable, it was.

I walked out a mile or so and was completely and gloriously isolated right in the middle of this externality of our planet.

So I got down on my haunches, closed my eyes and hung out for a while.