Death Valley

We have been in Arizona for over six weeks, and it is time to move on.  Our change of state was a dramatic drive over Hoover Dam and the new bridge over the Colorado River dividing Arizona and Nevada.

We are staying in Pahrump, NV for a few days while visiting Death Valley.  We walked to the casinos down the street for good, bargain food.  It is warm here, unlike most of our winter.  We found a dynamic Lutheran church here.  The sermon was on how when faced with the bad things in life and the sins we keep remembering, that we should not “nurse, curse, and rehearse.”  I tend to do that.  Good life lesson.

Death Valley is another place of a lifetime.  God has given us a wildly beautiful world.

This is from Dante’s View, high above the valley.  Don wondered if that could be snow—no, it is the salt flats.  The highest point in the park is the snow covered mountain, Telescope Peak, 11,048 feet and the lowest is Badwater Basin, -282 feet.

I wish I knew what causes the vivid green, purple and pink rocks on Artist’s Palette.

The wagons that were pulled by 20-mule teams hauling borax out of the valley in the late 1800’s.

No, this is not ice fishing on an unusually warm day on Long Lake.  This is salt, miles of it left when water run-off evaporates with no river outlet.

The salt crystals.

The tiny white sign half way up the mountain (you may need to click on the picture) is sea level, 282 feet above the salt flats on the valley floor, the lowest point in North America.

Some re-enactors who called out to the stopped cars, “Is this California?  We are trying to get out to California.”

I have been hoping to see cactus blooms and desert wildflowers.  No cactus here, but the flowers are lovely on the high slopes of the south end of the park.

The creosote bushes we have seen everywhere in the desert are blooming here.