Day 4: Death Valley

Everyone was up already at 6 in the morning. However the jet lag seems to be finally disappearing. Also our facial skin damages have nearly been defeated. It was a chilly morning outside the cabin, but yet beautiful and sunny. We had a quick breakfast, packed the car and started towards Death Valley. We stopped to wash the car windows to be able to get as good pictures as possible while driving.

There were mountains to the right; Sierra Nevada is a majestic sight, absolutely breathtaking! I instantly named this scenery as one of the Absolutely Must See Things in the US. I could again almost hear the hooves of the cowboys' and Indians' horses while they were galloping over the spiky bushes. I time-traveled back to my childhood to those lazy Saturday evenings, when I and mom used to watch old Westerns on TV. This was exactly the same view. It felt like nothing had changed in these deserted places for hundreds of years. Seeing the mountains always makes me feel a bit small and to think that no matter how great the man is, these mountains will stand here. No matter what. It also makes our worldly problems feel less magnificent. Kinda soothing, you know?

The temperature started rising, first slowly and then suddenly it was close to 35 C degrees. When we turned to the road leading to Death Valley, I was hoping we had enough gas to take us to the next gas station, which was still tens of miles away deep within the valley.

In the car there were constant ooh's and aah's and wows as we went upwards and downwards between the mountains. It was getting really hot as the temperature was already about 40 C degrees. I took so many pictures of the beautiful landscapes that we passed, that the memory card of my camera might be getting full soon. We got to the first gas station and as soon as I was starting to feel relieved, we noticed a note attached to the gas pump.. "temporarily out of stock". Arrrggh! Ok, we still had enough gas to get us to the NEXT gas station, which would be the last one in the valley before exit. We visited the small store of Stovepipe Wells and bought some souvenirs; I found a pretty copper thumb ring and a bracelet, the boys got sheriff's stars (naturally), and Jani bought himself a key chain with some pictures of Death Valley.

On we went through the magnificent scenery. We finally made it to the next gas station, took a tankful and paid for an entrance fee to the DV National Park. After this point we drove to Artists Palette to enjoy the spectacular colors of the wilderness, and then forward to Dante's View, which is supposed to be the number one attraction in DV. At one glance we saw the highest point and the lowest point of 48 states of the US. Definitely worth all the five starts!

Artist's Palette; look at the huge number of different colors!

Dante's View; the number one scenic view in Death Valley. 

With too little to eat and drink we finally drove out of the park. Horribly tired due to the awful heat (the max was about 47 C!), but at the same time overwhelmed by everything we had seen during the day, we proceeded towards Las Vegas. When we finally got to our destination, the Hard Rock Hotel, we were still wondering whatever became of the man whom we passed on the road riding his bike. Everything was so far from everything that it was hard to imagine him actually getting somewhere by bike. Hope he's OK though.