Fernanda & Karl - Road Trip, Day 17 -- Website by Now Interactive Solutions

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Monday, September 3, 2007

Road Trip, Day 17

Driving deeper into the desert
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Nevada, Death Valley, California

Today we drove from the deserts of Nevada into the deep desert of Death Valley. Crossing into California is interesting, because it is the same desert, yet it seems somehow cleaner, better taken care of; Nevada only has this desert, so they drive their trucks over it, build their casinos on it, throw their trash in it. California has this part of it that is desert, something special. Or maybe the heat was getting to me and I was hallucinating.

And what heat it was! From the already hot desert, the temperature just kept rising as we drove deeper into Death Valley (and deeper is the correct word: Death Valley has the lowest point in North America at 85.5 meters BELOW sea level). Death Valley in the summer is something so stupid only Germans do it. All the tour buses were full of 'em (except for one with Italians). The German in me came out, as I was excited to go to minus altitude, and see how hot the temperature would get. I had the GPS unit showing altitude, and the car thermometer showing the temperature. We drove all the way to Bad Water, the lowest point in the park -- and in fact the continent -- stopping along the way at the Devil's Golf Course, and doing Artist Drive on the way back. I kept hoping for the magic 122° F, which is 50° C -- exactly halfway to boiling. We were up to 118° F at Bad Water. Fernanda was wilting when we got out here. We didn't even walk too deep into the salt flats. There were lots of tourists here, most of them German. On the mountain beside it way up was a sign saying "Sea Level" where sea level was.

As we left Bad Water, the temperature hit 120° F. Then along Artist Drive it hit 121° F, and then around 12:30, we hit the magic 122° F. I got out to cavort in the heat.

The heat was painful -- if you were on the sunny side of the car, it hurt your eyeballs. The breeze coming in was hot. It was better to have the windows open only a slit than to have them wide open. And yes, we weren't bothering with the air conditioner. What fun would that be? Plus the thermal differences would more likely lead to head-aches and discomfort. Anyway, I maintain, more so now than ever, that 50° C in the dry desert is much more palatable than 30° C in 90% humidity. For the last 60 miles or so of the park, which is uphill, they advise not running the air conditioner lest you overheat your car.

So 50° C reached, and it not even being the absolute hottest part of the day yet, we were ready to leave. But it's a big park -- the biggest, in fact, outside Alaska -- and we had a long way to go, and it was uphill, and the temperature never went below 40° C. We stopped at the visitor's center in the middle of the park, and NOW they want us to pay the park entrance fee or show our pass. I had to walk back OUT into the heat to the car to get the park pass -- the rangers can't be bothered to man the entry booths in this heat, but make an innocent visit to the visitor's center, and they're all over you.

So, a long drive later, we were finally out of the park, but not yet out of the desert. We stopped to look at a dried lake bed just after the park up close. Up mountains, down mountains, the temperature never fell below 36° C, and mostly stayed above 40° C.

We drank liters and liters of water and gatorade. We weren't really hungry and didn't stop to eat lunch. Late in the day we stopped at Lake Isabella on the south end of Sequoia National Forest for a swim. A little later I also took a quick dip in the river. We drove through Bakersfield, got on the freeway and drove up north, heading to Sequoia National Park. We finally stopped just short of it in a sprawl kind of city along the freeway where they have a bunch of motels. We got a deal at the Motel 6, but somehow again we ended up without wifi. The motel has a pool, so maybe that was all we saw. We took a delicious dip in the pool, had dinner at this Apple Annie restaurant which was good, and then went out hunting for wifi so we could figure out what exactly we were going to do tomorrow when we eventually get to Yosemite. We ended up parked in front of the Quality Inn, trying to find lodging in Yosemite.

So, a long, hot day. Tomorrow, yet more National Parks. Oh, and in this day of milestones, 50°, 85 meters below sea level, we also hit 6400 km, aka 4000 miles. Unlimited mileage, baby! [Actually, due to some accounting error, I was off by 1000 miles from Arizona on -- actual mileage passed this day was 5000, or 8047 km, not really an interesting number... 6400 km was done entering Arizona couple days back.]

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Previous Entries

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08/29/18

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09/17/07