Going For Gold

Death Valley

I purchased a road map of California back in Auckland and planned (not so) meticulously my route around Cali for the 11days available. Today taught me some sort of lesson about this. I figured I'd have no time for Death Valley so concentrated on some other national parks. Where I hadn't looked so carefully - a glaring hole in my plan; no thru-road to cross the mountains to Sequoia National Park, and by the time I'd realised, I was about 140miles away from correcting the mistake.

So instead, I ate a sandwich and stared at the map and formulated a new plan.

I spent the day mainly crossing Death Valley Park. I didn't see a tree from Nevada to the other side of the park - jus scrub, sand, rocks, large crows - and a bunch of cool stuff.

The "Devils Cornfields" were some sand-dunes - a little too ho for me to hang around on, but on my walk back I saw some kind of cyclone. Weird thing was, there was NO wind around me but still something caused the sand to swirl up around 20ms from me - impressive - I got a video too!

A short while on, I abandoned the A/C for open windows, the roadsigns frequently remind you of overheating. It was around the 30degree mark I think - very dry, but the sun was so strong you couldn't stand around long without shade.

I hadn't expected much of this Valley except desert, but it made me stop the car to take pictures nearly every 10minutes - the views and the raw size of the place just makes your jaw drop - at it's lowest point you reach 0ft (sea level), and at other points you go beyond 4000ft.

The sign thanking you for visiting finally went by the window, and so with it the first trees I'd seen all day started o appear. The scenery rapidly changes over the next 100 miles North West to some of the best I've ever seen. Nearly every twist and turn in the road offered something new - something I was gonna have to get used to over the next few days.

After some tea in a town called Bishop, where my accent was really starting to get me noticed, I headed a little further North into the Inyo National forest - an area I will definitely return to to look at with a little more time. But soon arrived in a little town I visited last year with 3 friends and my snowboard in the back of an SUV.