A Valley of Death

Day: 340

Waking up slightly before our 11am check out, slightly hungover, Daniel and I quickly gathered our stuff and headed back to the Hybrid to get to Death Valley.  The plan was to get there, find a camp, do a little exploring, and  wander aimlessly in the dark when the sun goes down.  A few hours of driving and eating fast food and we made it into the valley just after two.

Unfortunately for us, after a quick visit to the Badwater salt flats (the lowest spot in the western hemisphere, -282ft), we made our way to the Devils Golf Course where the sun started dropping rapidly in the sky just after 4:30pm.  We shot a few new pictures of Daniel for his myspace page and as the sky went black we headed off to the campground; now completely engulfed in darkness.   A leisurely dinner of tuna sandwiches, mac and cheese and beers got us to 6:15pm.

We had now been up for only 7 hours and were sitting in the pitch black drinking beers trying to figure out what to do in our current alert state.  Some meandering got us to a ranger presentation on the U.S. national parks and that kept us busy until 8.

Then I found WiFi outside of the ranger station and we we’re able to check emails and stuff.  Daniel, being the pimp that he is, has a hard time not responding to the ladies for a couple of days and needed to check who was after him today.

We really just did nothing for the next couple of hours until we could manage to sleep, hoping to get up somewhat earlier tomorrow and try to catch more of the park before the sun sets on us.