Death Valley

A new first for us!! Our campground at Furnace Creek Ranch was at -190 ft below sea level, what a sleep even with out a snorkel!! No cell service and no internet, what a lonely feeling! No contact with the outside world. Death Valley, California is a place that everyone should experience but we do recommend doing it in the winter. The hottest temperature ever recorded was in 1913 and it was 134F in the shade. The hottest ground temp was 202F. It was very windy while we were driving around and we needed jackets. However, it was warm in the sun.

.

We took the bikes and drove to Badwater which is the lowest place on the North American continent -282 ft below sea level. It is so interesting travelling around this continent of ours. We went off the main road to traverse the 20 mule team canyon, Artists Drive, artists palette and the mosaic canyon! All wonderfully interesting.

The Mosaic Canyon was a 1000 foot climb in 2 1/4 miles on the trike and then a 1/4 mile hike on an old dry creek bed into the canyon. Beautiful, scenic and well worth the effort. It was a mixture of smooth marble like terrain as well as the mosaic walls polished and weathered by time. Another ride we went out to Stovepipe Wells

and passed some interesting natural phenomena along the way - Devils Cornfield and the Sand Dunes.

Also there are the remains of a Borax operation from the late 1800's. The Chinese laborers actually scrapped the borax off the desert floor. The immensity of it can only be realized if you are there looking out at the vista.

We did a ride one morning to "Scotty's Castle" to find out the name is a misnomer as Scotty (Walter Scott) never did own it. It really is an interesting story, too long to tell here. We took the tour of both inside the mansion and underground. Scotty's friends the Johnsons who were the real owners were many years ahead of the times as the technology they used was phenomenal in and around the "Death Valley Ranch". Scotty when he was young was part of Bill Cody's "Wild West Show". A very interesting gold mining con artist who had a lifelong friendship with the Johnsons. They took good care of him and his family financially and he kept them and their guests entertained with his stories.
The desert floor was covered in a lot of areas with yellow daisies from a recent rainfall.

It doesn't take much to get them growing.
What we found to be awesome was keeping an eye on our GPS we were below sea level on most of our rides in Death Valley.