Well, More of Death Valley. Diana's Brother and Fam came out to be with us in DV for a few days, and all of the previous pics and the previous post occured when they were around (sorry P&R, I still need to get you those photos of y'all). After they departed back to civilization, we hung out a few days and saw more of the stark Majesty of Death Valley. As you can see from the pictures, it is indeed very stark, but beautiful because of it. In one of the pictures you can see the old wagon train that use to haul borax out of Death Valley to a train depot -135!!- miles away. Yes, in the heat and such. The wagon train weighed 36 tonnes and carried 1200 gallons of water with them to survive. We also did alot of side trail hiking as evidenced by a couple of pictures. A person can go for seemingly ever on some of the back canyons until you reach a tall waterfall (dry) or other obstruction. Another benefit of the time of the season we were there, (February) is that with the rain and runoff, the streams were running and the native fish, which have evolved to handle the high salinity of the water, were out and about. Again, this was an instance of lots of available surface water, and none of it usable/potable by us human folk. I guess that is part of what makes the Valley so Deathly, it can kill you quick if you are not prepared. As we departed we stopped at Zabriski point and the color gradients in the rocks, and the stark contrasts made the intervening hills and outcroppings almost look painted on. I have used fractal generating software to model mountains and some of them looked more 'real' than the real hills you can see in the pictures. Weird. After this, we are off to Parumph, Nevada for supplies, then back to Tekopa, CA for overnight, then off to the Mojave Desert National Preserve.
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