Death Valley

Just a short one about death valley which was as the name suggests full of nothing, but with so mush to see at the same time. It has the lowest elevation in North America at 282ft below sea level and covers an area of about 3000 square miles.

It was another trip into the Mojave desert, yes I know you want to say it again, 'mooohhhhhaaavvee', it's still rolling off that tongue. This place has some of, if not the longest stretch of roads of have ever seen. You reach these sections where you can see the end of the road disappear in the mountains about 20 miles ahead of you. It's really tough to explain all the different types of landscapes and vegetation that exist in that area, so I tried to plagiarise some from Wikipedia but then you'd all know thats not written me. The grammar and spelling for one would all be correct.

Here goes.

Death Valley is considered one of the best examples of the Basin and Range configuration. It lies at the southern end of a geological trough known as the Walker Lane which runs north into Oregon. The valley is bisected by a right lateral strike slip fault, the Death Valley Fault. The eastern end of the left lateral Garlock Fault intersects the Death Valley Fault. Located on the border of California and Nevada, Death Valley is the principal feature of the Mojave and Colorado Deserts Biosphere Reserve. Death valley also contains salt pans. Millions of years ago, there was an inland sea located over where Death Valley is today, but as the area turned to desert, the water evaporated, leaving behind the salt.

I know what you're thinking, that wasn't me either, you may be correct. So here goes again.

We started in the salt flats driving through the little sand tornadoes, which are harder to capture than you can imagine, before rising up towards the highest parts of the desert passing by these picturesque canyons and then back down into the basin leading to the lowest part of the park and ridiculously warm dry temperatures rising up into the 90's (Fahrenheit). That was not the only thing rising with the most expensive fuel we saw in California at over $5.50 g, about a dollar more than anywhere else we had seen.

All in all this was an amazing place to visit, or preferably drive through and just the perfect ending for California which we had spent close on a month visiting. It could have been way more, but we had more to see, so onwards towards Nevada.