Monday and Tuesday recaptured

We are quite tardy in posting our Death Vallet experiences, but we do understand how it all happened.  Marty had to change her Gmail password and that was after she started working on the Monday/Tuesday blog posting but before she had signed into the blog.  When she went to post the blog it wanted her to sign in so when she did what was in the blog maker unposted was lost!  So, that's how it all happened, a whole blog lost.  Of course, what you will read here now won't cover the topics exactly as they had been originally.  Such is life.

Monday at Death Valley found us riding our bikes down to the Harmony Borax Works site and a walk on the salt flats and in the afternoon we headed to Desolation Canyon East.  This latter place is an interesting canyon for which the access road is unmarked, although the canyon's description is in all the guidebooks.  From the parking lot it was easy to become confused as to where the trail was because it was totally unmarked.

Above is the "trail" into Desolation Canyon

The walls of the canyon loom up on either side as you make your way back toward the end.  We had several areas where we scrambled up and then toward the end it seemed that it was all one big scramble after another so we turned back feeling satisfied that we had seen enough of the canyon.

Because we had done this hike as an afternoon adventure to see the colors in the rocks it was also more shady in the canyon and we really hiked in comfort compared to being out in the intense sunlight.

Tuesday morning we got another pretty early start (for us) and headed to Natural Bridge Canyon.  Again a good drive in off the road and into the canyon frollowing a path that led us up (you can see others on their way into the canyon in the photo above).

This canyon is much wider at the beginning stages and there was lots of sunshine when we started.  It warms up so quickly in the Death Valley that you don't really want to be starting hikes past mid morning unless you will be in the shade.  (Our daily highs were 96 and 98 degrees with 20% humidity.)

Not far into the canyon you pass under the natural bridge from which comes the name of the canyon.  It is pretty high as you can see with David and Paul passing under it.

This is perhaps a more dramatic view of the bridge with one side of the canyon in full sunlight and the other in the shade.

One of the geological features of this canyon are these dry water falls.  Actually they are what is created from falling water when a rain storm hits.  This huge one had about 6-8 flutes inside it making it look sculpted.  And given Paul's height you can see from the small orange spot (his shirt) that this was pretty high and wide.

After one goes about 3/4ths of the way into the canyon "dry falls" are encountered.  The first several are fairly easy to navigate as you can see from below.  However, on our return trip Paul and Marty slid on their bums on the lower section as it was highly polished.

Above is another dry fall which we scrambled over.  This was a very easy one.

Marty pauses after one of the scrambles up a dry fall.

In the end the dry fall you see above stopped us cold in our tracks.  Not only was it 20' tall, it was nearly perfectly vertical and although we might have been able to make it up, getting down would have been more than difficult.

This canyon was quite different from all the others we hiked in because we were steadily gaining in altitude and as we went higher we got to see and experience many more types of rock than before.  The green rocks were really that green and it was fantastic to be able to be in such a place.

In the afternoon, Dee, David and Marty did laundry (mundane but necessary) and visted the Borax museum at Furnace Creek Ranch.  Below are several photos taken with the iPad from the museum,

Early stagecoach used in the Death Valley region.

Wagon with wooden wheels!  

The borax production in the valley lasted fewer than 10 years.  According to what we read this was because borax was discovered elsewhere in California and most likely in a more human friendly place.  The famous 20 mule teams became the image for borax though and one of our futurre US Presidents became associated with the team on the TV Show, Death Valley Days.

We had high wind and dust storm warnings for the late afternoon and evening and so made the decision to head out a day early.  We had done all the hikes near the campground and so any additional ones would have required us to drive many more miles than we would have wanted.  Gas in the Valley was $5.50+/gal so we were very cautious about using more fuel than necessary.

There was high wind all night and blowing sand.  Neighbors with tents did all they could to protect themselves a little more, some moved their cars to serve as a wind block while others moved both tents and cars/trucks.  In the morning we all had a fine layer of sand covering the inside of our campers.

Wednesday we made our way out of the valley and climbed up into the mountains.  We crossed over into Nevada and dropped down into Las Vegas for shopping before heading across the Colorado river just over Hoover Dam.  We have spent the night in Kingman, Arizona in a Walmart parking lot with ab out 40 other RVs!