World Exploration: Death Valley

Day 2

She said yes!

Sunrise at Death Valley. <3

In the morning, I took Lauren out to the top of a sand dune to watch the sunrise. Turns out hiking across dunes is pretty hard. Our feet sank several inches into the powdery sand with each step, and some of those dunes are steep. We spent about 20 minutes marching towards the tallest dune, but had to settle for a lesser dune. The giant one was deceptively far away.

The sunrise was a prolonged affair, with the sun's rays touching the western mountain faces. The clouds to the east lit up in white, while everything else was still gray. Using a gorrilapod and the time delay feature on Lauren's camera, I posed her in front of the inevitable sunrise. Once I had her in the right place, I leaped in front of the camera and proposed. I had prepared a speech and everything, but it all went out of my head when the actual moment came. I think I just said the standard "Lauren Michelle Brooks, will you marry me?" The camera got a good shot, and Lauren said yes :)

We laughed and cried and all that fun stuff, and then took photos of the sunrise and each other.

Before the sun appeared over the eastern mountains, it's pink rays lit up the western end of the valley. Very cool! The sunrise turned the edges of the eastern clouds white, and left the rest in shadow. The sand dunes marching to the east, into the melting-butter glow of the delicious sunrise. Aww, how cute! Just a close-up of the ring. Rubies in the center and sapphires on the sides, set in white gold.

After the sunrise (and breakfast) we drove out to the race track. It's a vast, uncommonly flat lakebed accessible only by way of a 27 mile dirt and stone 'road.' The signs recommended using a four wheel drive vehicle with high clearance. We had the Prius. At 10-20 miles per hour, we were able to make it down.

The lakebed is called the race track because it is scattered with largish-sized rocks and smallish sized-boulders that appear to race one another. According to the literature, no one has ever seen the rocks move, but move they do and they leave rock hard trails (impressions in the lakebed) behind them. One theory is that when it (rarely) rains, the surface of the lakebed becomes very slick, and the intense winds push the boulders. This being death valley, the trails left by the rocks are quickly dried and hardened, looking as if they have always been there...until the next rain, and they move again.

It was a long drive, but worth it. The feeling of isolation and the vastness of the landscape was inspiring. There's a rocky 'island' in the center of the lakebed, and all around it the wind howled something fierce. On the island itself, though, there was hardly a breeze. The weather was really great out there, something like 80 degrees with constant wind, and a nice hard, flat ground to lay out on and catch some ultra-violet radiation!

The road was worth driving just to see all the cacti. They covered the hills as far as the eye could see. Also, I match my Prius. I found one single red wildflower in all of Death Valley. Luckily, I captured a shot of Lauren in front of it, two desert beauties :) Joshua trees were everywhere, and the weather was perfect. Red barrel cacti were scattered through the joshua tree forest. Lots of color for us to enjoy. In addition to spotting the single red wildflower in all of Death Valley, I also spied the sole chipmunk, modern-day carrier of the plague! Adorable. An infographic showing an air-view of the racetrack. It's quite large! Richard having a staring contest with a rock. The rock won, but it cheated. Lauren stands on the island, sheltered from the howling wind. This is my second favorite photo that we took. We're huddled over one of the racetrack rocks, and although you can't see it, the mysterious trail is stretched out behind us.

It's a good thing we had the Twilight Zone radio dramas to keep us company on the three hour drive back to a paved road. Thanks to that road, and the Prius' poor status as an offroad vehicle, we had to call it a day once we returned to Stovepipe Wells. That only leaves us one more day to explore!