December 2, 2013

• Epic Road Trip, day 18, part 2

  

  Ah, Las Vegas. We drove through here to grab a couple of geocaches. This shoe photo qualified me for a virtual cache, but I also wanted to get a couple of traditionals, so we stopped here and found the container hidden in the statue's left hind foot.

  

  Then we drove to our first sighting of sand dunes. I figured we were getting close to Death Valley so I didn't even slow down for this picture.

  

  There's a great deal of nothing in this part of Nevada. As far as the eye can see, there is nothing man-made but the road and an occasional strand of barbed wire strung up between metal posts that look like they've been there since the first World War. Still, the nothingness was interesting and different so I got another picture before driving on into more nothingness.

  

  Oh, whoa. Ok, out in the middle of no where, and by that I mean, we've been driving for an hour and haven't even seen another car, there is one building. It's was HUGE. I think you could have fit 3 Costco warehouses inside it. And, well, we didn't stop at it.

  

  That wasn't the kind of nothingness we wanted to see. We drove on. There is no one out here but us and the sun.

  

  It was blistering hot.

  

  And really, really lonely. We loved it. Just a straight road coming and going, and a lizard that would not stop talking. You also can see my murano glass pendant my friend sent me after her trip to Italy, the blue tag granting us access to Custer State Park in SD, and the orange tag allowing us into Dead Horse Point State Park in Utah. You can also see Jack, the Nuvi I borrowed so Kendrah could use it to guide us to wacky roadside attractions while I used GeePS to guide us to geocaches.

  

  And of course, Unhappy Frog was with us. So... we weren't really lonely inside the car, but outside it was desolate.

  

  

  We arrived in Death Valley. No guard shack was there to check our National Parks permit and we just drove on in. Signs warned us to not use our A/C as we traversed the Valley so we rolled down the windows, blasted the stereo instead of the A/C and watched the scenery fly by. Which was almost as interesting as watching sweat droplets form on the backs of our hands. Weird! Weirder was when we stopped at a rest area. I was nervous about a pit toilet in the heat but it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected. While I waited my turn, I had to laugh at the pee chart they had posted in a kiosk outside the toilets.

  

  Thankfully we were well hydrated (we went through between 3 and 5 gallons of drinks each day, I've never bought so much juice or so many bags of ice in my life) and after the break we jumped back in and continued on.

  

  And on.

  

  The sand dunes were gorgeous! Stopping at a parking area there was the first time we'd seen people for hours, and there were a lot of people here. By then, 30 people seemed like a lot. It wasn't, like, Disneyland lot, but after being alone for so long, it seemed crowded.

  

  The bits without people was absolutely gorgeous.

  

  The kids, who thought 104 in Utah was too hot, ran up and down the dunes. I heard that it was about 120 degrees at the time. The sand that got between my feet and sandals was so hot I had to shake it out with each step. It felt like heaven there. I had a bottle of juice in one hand and my camera in the other as I wandered around capturing the antics of my kids.

  

  

  Here's Kendrah trying to block the sun.

  

  

  

  

  People stopped to stare at the kids as they ran and flopped in the sand. No one else moved at more than a snail's pace in that heat.

  It was fun and I have a few more pictures to share, but it will have to wait for another post.

  • 10:26 pm
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