Death Valley Days, 1

In all our travels, we'd never been to Death Valley and Death Valley National Park. Just never quite on the way nor quite appealing enough to attract. But it's only a couple hours from Las Vegas, of which we had seen enough. And having been chased out of Utah by cold weather, we were ready for some 80 degree temperatures. We are into our 4th day here now. There is not a lot to do unless you're really into 19th century borax mining or some of the starkest landscape on the planet. It's the lowest elevation in the Americas and the hottest place on earth (and getting hotter). The palette of scenery runs through all 50 shades of brown and not much more. Bor- (as in Borax) is the root particle of such words as bore, boring, boredom, boringness, etc. But we're here, and we're doing it, and can now say, of La Vallee de la Mort, "J'y suis allé, je l'ai fait."

View from the mountains on the east side toward Badwater
basin; we were up here to do the ranger-led hike to the natural
bridge

And there it is; the canyon consists of really crumbly alluvial
conglomerate; one good downpour and the whole thing would
wash away

Same bridge, different view

Dry waterfall

Some bluish-green rock...chlorite?

Home of Mr. Tarantula

Another view of the bridge

Ditto

And the Valley