Well I made it to Death Valley. It wasn’t too bad a drive. I beat the heat by starting out early from Bishop. It took me more than 2 hours to get there and that is only because I kept stopping to take pictures both outside and inside the park entrance. One thing that I notice right away is that approximately 90 to 95 percent of the ground is rock. I was under the impression that it was mostly sand…wrong. I got a campsite at Stovepipe Wells. Not much as far as amenities but it does have electricity and I have access to the pool and the showers. I hooked up with a ranger and he told me that 2 of the better photo opportunities would be the dunes at night and Zabriski point in the morning. I figured I would do the dunes tonight and do Zabriski point tomorrow, Saturday morning. I had about 5 hours to kill before I had to get ready for the dunes, so I visited a couple spots.
Badwater was the first. This area is the lowest point in the states. The ground is covered with salt crystals. From far away it looks like you are approaching water in reality it is salt. This probably played havoc with al lot of the miners.
The second location was Painters Palette. It gets its name from the different colors in the mountains. It actually does resemble a painter’s palette because of all the clusters of color in close proximity. It’s really impressive looking and I could only wonder how pretty it looks after a rainfall when the sand is removed from the outside of the rock.
As promised, I went to the dunes at about 5:30pm and already people were getting ready and walking all along the dunes. I had to hurry and try and find some spot that wasn’t walked on. Note to self get a damn lighter tripod. I’m lugging this 18 pound tripod and 2 bags of camera equipment and trying to maneuver in the dunes. Let me tell, no easy feat. I swear to god I must have had the heaviest tripod because mine would sink half way in the sand even before I attached my camera and that’s another story. Note to self, get a friggen camera backpack and not carry 2 camera bags one of which is an ice cooler converted to a camera bag. I can’t believe how hard I was huffing and puffing moving from one location to another. The dunes were pretty and I had plenty of time to observe them because I had to stop and catch my breath every few feet or so. I think I took some decent photos at least I hope so. One last surprise near the end when I was making my way to my van, the moon popped out. It was gorgeous, so big, and incredible.
When I got to the van it was 7:00 pm. I was too tired to go to the restaurant and get some food so I had to come up with another solution. There’s a little store where I was camped at and they served fountain soda. I brought some seven up with me so I figured I’ll go to the store and see if I can get a cup with some ice in it so I can make myself a VO seven. The guy at the counter said sure no problem, help yourself. This was a big mistake, I was just going to get a small cup, but since he was so generous I took a 24 oz cup and filled it with ice. When I got to the van, I naturally filled it half way with VO and filled the remainder with 7up. Now that my beverage is solved what to eat, I recalled that I bought some cookies in Bishop, my dilemma is solved. For dinner I had cookies and VO. Not bad, but definitely not as good as pesto pizza and VO, that was the best.
The next morning I woke up with a slight headache, I could only attribute that to the desert heat. I will say one thing, I slept well. Algis out.
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