Las Vegas to Beatty via Death Valley
We set off at 8.00 this morning, taking about an hour to clear the traffic lights and traffic but we were soon in desert. The first picture shows us at a morning tea stop. In true western style, there was also a horse at this stop although it arrived in a truck.
We eventually arrived at the visitor centre at Furnace Creek in Death valley. As the photo shows, it was 103degrees Fahrenheit (39.5C). It's a fascinating area with a strong recent history of mining for gold and other minerals (we visited an abandoned borax mine). It has also been full of characters and stories, some of which are believable.
This was a wagon used to pull out borax with a 20 mule team.
We visited Rhyolite, an old abandoned ghost town (there are even sculptures of ghosts) where gold was found in 1904, a town established in 1905 and had between 5,000 and 8,000 residents in 1908 before the mines went bust. The population had dropped to 14 in 1920.
Death Valley is stunning. The land forms vary from wide and flat salt plains to red rocks that could have come from the film set for "Cars". The abandoned town of Rhyolite could easily have been Radiator Springs and there was even an old broken down truck I wanted to call Mater. The ground is stoney and arid. At some points in the valley nothing seemed able to grow (it was a few hundred feet below sea level). As we came out of the valley and over a pass (3,300 feet elevation), foliage began appearing and then became more dense and developed more colour. Nevertheless, it still looked much more arid than, say, the MacKenzie country. in South Canterbury.
The locals may not have has a lot of entertainment as one of them build this house out of his empty bottles.
We were surprised to find it was the . . .
This was a sculpture outside a small museum at Rhyolite. It was about miners (obviously) but the artist from Belgium always put something of himself in his work. In this case, he represented himself as a penguin because he felt as much at home in the desert as would a penguin.
We eventually arrived at the visitor centre at Furnace Creek in Death valley. As the photo shows, it was 103degrees Fahrenheit (39.5C). It's a fascinating area with a strong recent history of mining for gold and other minerals (we visited an abandoned borax mine). It has also been full of characters and stories, some of which are believable.
This was a wagon used to pull out borax with a 20 mule team.
We visited Rhyolite, an old abandoned ghost town (there are even sculptures of ghosts) where gold was found in 1904, a town established in 1905 and had between 5,000 and 8,000 residents in 1908 before the mines went bust. The population had dropped to 14 in 1920.
Death Valley is stunning. The land forms vary from wide and flat salt plains to red rocks that could have come from the film set for "Cars". The abandoned town of Rhyolite could easily have been Radiator Springs and there was even an old broken down truck I wanted to call Mater. The ground is stoney and arid. At some points in the valley nothing seemed able to grow (it was a few hundred feet below sea level). As we came out of the valley and over a pass (3,300 feet elevation), foliage began appearing and then became more dense and developed more colour. Nevertheless, it still looked much more arid than, say, the MacKenzie country. in South Canterbury.
The locals may not have has a lot of entertainment as one of them build this house out of his empty bottles.
We were surprised to find it was the . . .
This was a sculpture outside a small museum at Rhyolite. It was about miners (obviously) but the artist from Belgium always put something of himself in his work. In this case, he represented himself as a penguin because he felt as much at home in the desert as would a penguin.
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