To The Racetrack!

Day: 440

The Racetrack is something in California I have always wanted to see, but to get there it involves 30 miles of  4×4 driving through Death Valley.   Unfortunately on our trip to D.V. last year we took the environmentally friendly hybrid, and although it gets great gas mileage, it really sucks when it comes to 4-wheel driving.  This year it was one of my main goals for the short trip, the other being just wandering like a fool all over the driest place in the country.

The Racetrack is a giant dry lake bed that is perfectly flat, leaving the surface cracked and marbled.  The really amazing thing is that on one side of the lakebed rocks fall off the hillside onto the dried mud floor, when it rains the lakebed gets a thin sheet of water over it, and if the winds are strong enough they blow rocks (which are up to 80lbs) across the surface of the mud leaving the sun to bake the mud into awesome looking trails for the rocks.

All in all it makes for an amazing day to get up there and hike around checking this stuff out, especially when at the end of it you get to drive a little ways off the road, set up camp, and drink beers for a couple hours in the pitch black.  Finally going to sleep when you feel like you have stayed up half the night, but when you look at your watch you realize it is 8:14pm….