Cont on into Death Valley

Well, so we went from Yosemite and all the greenery of the trees on to pass through Death Valley in the next stage of our journey. We started out the morning at about 10,000 feet just leaving Yosemite, and then lowered elevation until we hit the lowest point in the US, Badwater which is almost 300 feet BELOW Sea level. It certainly felt like it, it was very hot and close feeling. The travel through Death Valley had a beauty all its own and we passed places like Artist's drive, Mormon Point, Devil's Cornfield and Devil's Golf Course (again with the devil's reference...). It was a neat experience but we were glad we had a car in great condition becasue except for the occasional car it was a lonely drive.

We dropped about 4,000 feet within the first few miles of leaving Yosemite. A joshua tree. Pretty funky trees if you ask me. Sorry it's not the greatest picture I was trying to get a big one while driving. Most in this area were small and scrubby.

Wouldn't you like to live here?

There was a little, um, village jsut before the sand dunes and devil's cornfield where we gassed up. It was grossly hot. And we still lower into the depths of death valley to go...

A suprising Oasis here. Some resort or something. Not sure how popular that would be.

We drove through artist's drive and it was very pretty. I'm disapointed the pictures don't even show all the colors. There were browns, blues, greens, oranges and reds all striped here. You should google it. A very cool little detour off the main road.
The long road ahead of us...

I think our faces say it all in these pictures. It is hot, close, and uncomfortable. But pretty cool to say that we've been there and started out at 10,000 that morning.

I wouldn't want to drink the water their either.