Day eight: Las Vegas
Bishop has a famous bakery, Eric Schat’s. All the bread and cakes are made on the premises and long queues form to buy there. We bought freshly made sandwiches for lunch and had a wander round the racks and racks of bread loaves of every flavour imaginable. We’d have loved to buy some, or bring home some of the cookies, but we doubted they would survive the journey plus we’d be so tempted to eat them.
After breakfast outside, French bread German style, served with maple syrup, cream and fresh strawberries and blueberries, as the owners hail from Mosel, we packed the car and headed off down Owen’s Valley for about 80 miles to Lone Pine to fuel up.
The temperature climbed steadily from 21C at Bishop. The air conditioning in the car cushioned us from the heat but the car windows got warm to the touch so we knew it was hot out there. There is nothing here. The base of the valley is covered with dirt and low wiry bushes then the mountains rise up steeply from the valley floor, barren, stony with the occasional patch of lingering snow. The road is a four lane highway with the different sides split in places by a wide verge. Watercourses are few and far between, recognised only by the emergence of a few trees and greener vegetation. There were a few towns along the route; Big Pine, Independence with the streets lined with American flags, and Lone Pine but all looking identical with motels, diners and gas stations.
The Alabama hills emerged in front of the mountains; brown and bare, they were used to film stagecoach films and more recently Star Trek: Generations. These hills are the tips of stone ‘icebergs’ with 90% of their rock below the ground. Mount Whitney, the highest point in contiguous America, loomed above them all with its telltale jagged teeth.
Turning off the main thoroughfare from Yosemite to Las Vegas, heading for Furnace Creek and Badwater Basin in Death Valley, we came across a dried up lake pale green against the yellow dirt the only sign of where its boundaries were.
Entering Death Valley National Park the road became twisty and hilly with little stumpy cactii, looking like dwarf prickly palm trees. Panamint Valley came into view like a vast beach that had mislaid its ocean. The temperature was climbing..88F…94F (34C).. as we dropped to the valley floor. It hit a high of 99F, passing a skinny looking coyote by the roadside, for once I wasn’t ready with my camera, before starting to climb the next mountain range.
Up 5600ft before dropping back down, a roller coaster of a road in places, and got our first glimpse of Death Valley. An even vaster area, temperature 105F at 1000 ft; we stopped at Stovepipe Wells general store…and bought ourselves a cowboy hat each. It was like getting out of the car straight into a fan oven as there was also a strong wind. We were at sea level, the temperature was now 104F and climbing… The sand dunes came up on the left, 1pm, temperature 113F (45C). The landscape gradually lost most of the scrub plants and we dropped even further. The contrast between this and the lush Yosemite valley we had been in just yesterday was extreme. And distance, I had no concept of just how vast this place is.
Our next stop was Furnace Creek where we stopped for lunch at the visitor center, they had some parking spaces in the shade. The visitor center also has the ‘official’ valley temperature, 115F on our way into the building, 117F (47C) on our way out. It’s also 190 feet below sea level.
18 miles further is Badwater Basin, salt flats you can walk on, so we did. It may look flat but the salts are uneven and pitted. And it was hot. Very hot, I loved it! The wind here was strong and hot — and I lost my second hat. It flew off my head as I turned round but this time I chased it. Foolhardy in a way as I’d seen signs saying to be careful on the salt as the crust was thin in places. We were close to ‘shore’ and it was only a few yards so I did manage to retrieve it when the wind dropped. We took some photos and spotted the sea level sign way up the cliff.
We turned round at that point, heading towards Furnace Creek again, before turning right on to Artist’s Drive, and at the end, Artists Palatte. Here the cliff faces are many hued tones of brown, red and green.
Next came Zabriskie’s Point, a short climb to an overlook of sandstone dunes, a miniature landscape all of its own.
Last but not least was Dante’s View, an overlook over Death Valley itself, almost directly above Badwater Basin. And what a view, the most spectacular so far and, for me, on a par with the Aletschgletcher in Austria. All too soon it was time to leave and head for Vegas.
Death Valley is an amazing place. Aside from the fact its baking hot, the landscape is ever-changing, from barren, featureless hills, to scrub desert, sand dunes, salt flats, multicoloured cliffs and winding canyons. Above all is its size, it’s vast but you don’t appreciate just how large until its taken hours to drive through it.
Las Vegas is a world removed from Death Valley. Death Valley is what nature has produced with little help from man. Las Vegas is the converse. Also sitting on a large plain surrounded by distant mountains, it rises out of the desert gradually and then you hit downtown and a complete assault on the senses: traffic after being practically alone on the roads, tall buildings and brightly coloured lights, it reminds me of Times Square in New York, and so many people. The pavements were crowded. We walked a ways along the Strip, didn’t enjoy being among so many people, watched the Mirage volcano and watched the crowds spend their cash on the row after row of slot machines.
