Death Valley ~ Day 2

Today's travels in Death Valley took us to quite a few places... This morning, we started by driving north to Salt Creek so we could see some of the pupfish that live in that salty creek. Check the picture out... See the white stuff on the hills and on the ground? It's essentially salts that coat everything.

The stream is apparently very salty , so very few things live in it. The pupfish though, have adapted to the salty and arid conditions of Death Valley. There is a boardwalk that circles out around the area where the creek runs above ground, and in several areas, we could see the pupfish swimming around. This is spring and that means it's spawning season so it was pretty interesting to watch how territorial the little fish were. (They're about the size of minnows!) The males stake a "claim" to a section of the stream and then chase all other males out of that area while welcoming the females in... From what we read on the information signs posted around the area, the pupfish thrive when there is water in the creekbed. Everything is hurried though. They have to grow, mate and spawn while the water is present. Once the water dries up, the tiny little fish bury themselves in the sand and go dormant until the next rain storm fills the creekbed with water again.

Next stop was the Harmony Borax Works which is just north of Furnace Creek. Back around the turn of the century (and earlier) they used to scrape the "raw" borax off the salt flats that you see in the distance behind the wagons in this picture and then process the stuff into borax in the processing "plant" that was up on the hill sort of behind where I was standing when I took this picture. Those wagons are what the 20 mule teams hauled the borax in... Something like 36 tons worth of borax and water (1,200 gallons of drinking water!). Back then it took 20 mules to move the 36 tons.. Today one semi truck can move 40 tons.. What a comparison, huh? We visited the Borax Museum that is on the grounds of the Furnace Creek Ranch after leaving the site of the Harmony Borax Works. Then off to lunch at the ranch...

After lunch, we headed south and then followed a graded dirt road a ways down to the Devil's Golf Course. Mom and I got out to take some pictures while my Stepdad sat in the van (with both back doors open so the breeze could blow through.). Mom and I walked out onto the "golf course" a little ways so I could show her how hard those bumps of salt and dirt were. The peak you see in the background is Telegraph Peak. It's the highest peak in the Panamint mountain range at a bit over 11,000 feet. By contrast, Furnace Creek is at about 190 feet below sea level and Scotty's Castle is at about 3,000 feet above sea level!

Next stop was Badwater. The lowest point in the United States. It's 282 feet below sea level! When (and if!) you hear the weather man tell you how hot is was in Death Valley, they got the temperature from the weather station next to the cliffs here at Badwater. If I remember right, one of the signboards here said that the record high temperature was 137 degrees! Luckily, today it was in the mid-eighties with a light breeze blowing. lol... There is a pool of water at Badwater that is so salty it is undrinkable. The story goes that one of the early miners tried to get his mule to take a drink from the pool, but naturally the mule wasn't cooperating. So the miner tasted the water and proclaimed it "bad".. Hence the name Badwater and it stuck...

On our way back towards Furnace Creek, we decided to take a detour on the "Artist Drive".... It's a narrow one-way road that winds up through a number of canyons that takes you past incredibly colored hill/mountain sides... Reds, greens, purples, golds and browns all swirl around on some of the hillsides. Almost like huge buckets of paint got splashed all over the hills. It's well worth the time to take that detour.. And the plus is that the whole route was paved! (I'm already catching heck from my stepdad for getting his car all dirty and dusty from some of the dirt roads we've traveled.. lol)

Last picture for today is one of a rock that we spotted alongside the road on our way back. I haveno clue what kind of rock it is nor why it's shaped so strangely. the thing stands there well over 6 feet tall. The base of it looks almost melted. The top of it has roundish depressions in it. (I don't know if you can really tell from the pictures I took.. lol) The rock stands about 20 or 30 feet off the road and there are no signs or anything around that tells what it is and why it's there. It almost looks like some really strange modern art sculpture, but after getting up there next to the thing, I'm sure it's natural. A lot of the other rocks on the slope around it have a similar texture and some of them even have the roundish depressions in them. If anyone spots this entry on my blog and knows what the heck the thing is, please leave a comment! LOL, Mom and I are curious about it!! Hmm.. Maybe we'll have to stop by the Visitor's Center and ask a ranger before we head out of the valley tomorrow morning....
Oh yeah.. Tomorrow we're headed for the Barstow, California area.... I'll try to take some more cool pictures to share on our way down there....



P.S. Tomorrow sometime we'll actually get to use our cell phones again! I am sure I'm going to have a bunch of messages from my trucker friend... lol