WALKING THROUGH THE VALLEY OF DEATH

In December, with his finals done and dusted and behind him, Ryan surprised Charlotte and I with a trip to Death Valley. I never imagined that I'd take a walk 282 feet below sea level, but at Badwater we did just that.

The cliff marking sea level...if you look very closely!

We knew that we would be walking on the lowest terrain in North America, but, it didn't really click just how low lying the salt flat is, until we caught a glimpse of the sign marking sea level on the cliff that overlooks the salt flat. It seemed as though someone must be playing a trick. 

We walked along the tourist packed boardwalk, which delivered us to the salt flat. I've never been anywhere where I could see so distinctly the difference in elevation. We stood on the impossibly flat basin floor with mountains towering behind us, and Telescope Peak soaring 11,000 feet upwards in front of us; an immediate climb from minus 282 feet to 11,048 feet. Definitely a disparity you don't get to see too often. 

Since we understood Death Valley to be one of the driest places on earth, we were surprised that one of the first things we found was water. (Not sure why it was such a shock, the place is named after water, after all.) The namesake of Badwater, a pond of water four times saltier than the sea is situated right by the car park. Too salty for the horses that were once brought to drink there, it hosts an endangered snail species, and that's about all it's good for. 

                     

We were pleased that none of the other visitors ventured much further than the boardwalk; it meant we had the whole salt flat to ourselves. I walked barefoot along the salty terrain. It was a weird sensation; it felt like walking barefoot on powdery snow, but without your feet ever getting cold.  

We walked out for a couple of miles with the salt flat stretching out endlessly, a jigsaw of pressure ridges, and cracks from evaporation. By the boardwalk the salt was packed down tightly underfoot of tourists, but further out on the basin, much of the terrain was untouched. There, the salt crystals looked like miniature stalagmites, perfect, tiny, little formations. 

We rounded off the day with a quick stop at Golden Canyon and a drive through the Artists Palette loop. It was beautiful. It may not have been green but there we saw about every other colour under the sun. There's so much more to explore, and I can't wait to revisit Death Valley. But since I can't be dealing with temperatures that come close to the two hundreds, that will have to wait until next December. 

When I lived in England, I spent some summer's visiting friends who lived in Utah. I always had a lovely time, but nicknamed the Beehive state 'the land of brown.' Compared with the rolling hills around Harrogate, I found it so ugly. Years later, after moving to New Mexico, Utah seems green and lush. A couple of years later still, we made the trip to Nevada from the Land of Enchantment for the first time. I fought back tears as I took in the brown, dead, desert landscape surrounding Las Vegas. Albuquerque with it's pine trees seemed so green in contrast with the barren rocks and mountains. It might as well have been the moon. I'm happy for a new perspective though. A drive through Death Valley and Vegas doesn't seem so barren after all.