Hello Vegas, Goodbye Vegas

We made our way south toward Furnace Creek, made a quick stop for some pricey gas (I guess $4.89 a gallon is still better than running out of gas in the desert), and checked out the gift shop before making our way toward the park exit.

We did manage to squeeze in one last scenic stop before we left Death Valley - Zabriskie Point. It was an easy walk to the overlook and had a really cool view. We spent a few minutes checking out the view before hopping back in the car. Time to head back to Vegas!

The drive went by fairly fast, with a quick stop at a carwash along the way to clean off the rental car since it was covered in sand from the night before. Mark really wanted to check out In-N-Out for burgers since he had heard that they were good, so we stopped there for lunch. People were right...they were good.  :)

We made it back to Vegas, checked into Bellagio, and grabbed quick showers so we could go explore. It was our last night before going home, so we wanted to make the most of it. We had to make our way over to Treasure Island, since we had tickets to see Mystere (one of the Cirque du Soleil shows), but we decided to try our luck on some video roulette first...and each won $2! We decided to quit while we were ahead and cashed out.

Bellagio has a whole section of high end designer stores, so I did some window shopping on the way out. Window shopping accidentally turned into actual shopping. Oops. This bag cost more than my first car, but my only regret is not buying one sooner. I love it!

We walked over to Treasure Island for Mystere. I liked it, especially the parts where people were doing crazy flipping stuff, but I think it may have been a little too trippy for Mark. After the show, we took the tram over to Mirage and had a fancy dinner at Stack.

We walked out of Mirage just as the fire show was wrapping up. There were really loud drums and big explosions and jets of fire...it was pretty neat. We watched the end of it all, then walked back to Bellagio.

The fountain show was pretty neat!  :)

There is a Chihuly glass ceiling in Bellagio. Very cool! We wandered around a bit more, played a little more video roulette (and won again!), then made our way back to the room and passed out in the ridiculously comfy bed.

I didn't want to leave the next day, but since I probably couldn't afford to stay in Vegas much longer with how expensive everything was, it was time to head home. We grabbed breakfast in a little cafe in the casino, gambled one last time (and lost...I ended the trip up a single dollar), then packed up our bags and checked out.

Bye, Vegas! I'll definitely be back someday.   :)

The scenery on the way home was pretty neat. At one point, I think we flew over part of the Grand Canyon.

Eventually the desert gave way to mountains, then the clouds filled in below and the view was gone. We made it back to Baltimore just fine, grabbed dinner at the Silver Diner in the terminal to pass time until traffic died down, then drove back home. Overall, it was a fantastic trip...Vegas was great, Death Valley was great, and I can't wait to go back to both of them again!

Desert Volcanoes?

After the sunrise, we went back to Stovepipe Wells, had breakfast at the restaurant (hello, chocolate chip pancakes omnomnom), then packed up our stuff and checked out of the hotel. We had to be back in Vegas by the end of the day, but we still had a few hours left to check out other parts of Death Valley.

So of course, the first place I made Mark stop was the sand dunes. Again.   :)

We walked back out onto the dunes. You could see a line of footprints where other people had already made their way out into the sand.

The guy in the green jacket walked pretty far out and eventually disappeared. If we had more time I would have done the same thing...I would have been perfectly happy wandering around the dunes all day.

Mark eventually pried me away from the dunes and we hopped back in the car to drive further north. We had heard a couple at breakfast talking about a neat crater in the far northern part of the park, so we figured we'd try to find it.

Hello, Ubehebe Crater! (I love the sign on the side.)

There are a few craters in the area, though Ubehebe is the biggest at 600 feet deep. They're formed by volcanic steam explosions; hot magma rises up and hits ground water, which flashes into steam and eventually explodes. Neat! The whole area is covered in cinder from the eruptions.

There is a path along the rim of the crater, so we decided to walk for a little while to check out the view. You can just barely make out the parking lot in the middle of the picture...the scenery is so dramatic in the park that you lose a sense of scale.

And of course, 'let's just walk up the path a little bit' turned into 'well, we already went this far, so we might as well keep going'. I'm starting to think Mark will never go hiking with me again after this trip.

I had given Mark my small camera, and at one point he got pretty far ahead of me. Probably because I was stopping every ten feet to take more pictures. If I ever wind up in the bottom of a crater or going off the side of a mountain, this will be why.

About halfway through the hike a jet showed up and started doing some aerobatic maneuvers overhead. I managed to zoom way in and realized it was one of the Thunderbirds! Neat.   :)

The trail wound its way around the ridges on the side of the crater. The cinder path was pretty soft, so it was slow going at times.

Looking back at Little Hebe Crater. We walked up the side of that crater a little bit, too, but you got a much better view from further away.

At one point the path was only a couple feet wide and had a fairly steep drop down to the crater floor. Normally something like that might seem a bit intimidating, but the ground was so soft that I don't think you'd fall very far if you went over the side.

As we rounded the far corner of the crater we got a really good view of some of the distant ridges. I loved all the layers.

We eventually started to get closer to the parking lot...

...and I looked down into the crater, just in time to see this person booking it down the trail that leads to the bottom. They were flying! It was a pretty steep path, and while I briefly through about following suit, I changed my mind when I thought about how long it would take to climb back up. Maybe next time.   :)

We eventually got back to the car. I would have loved to stay longer, but it was time to head back to Vegas, so we started to make our way south toward the highway.

Sand Dune Sunrise

Since we had gone to bed fairly early the night before, it didn't seem too painful when the alarm clock went off the next morning. There was no way I was missing a sunrise in the desert! Since the Mesquite Flat Dunes are only a few minutes from Stovepipe Wells, we decided to head over to check them out.

It was just starting to get light when we got there, so we walked out a bit onto the dunes.

We eventually came to a spot that seemed to have a view of everything, and I set up my camera. Thank goodness for gloves...it was COLD. Thankfully, we didn't have to wait very long for things to get good.   :)

I, of course, took a billion pictures.

One big sunbeam was slowly making its way down the mountains as the sun rose higher...

...then all at once, the light hit the dunes.

I just don't have words. It was gorgeous.

We stayed for a while longer and just enjoyed the view, then eventually made our way back to the car.

Salt, Sand, and Sunset

I'll apologize in advance...this post is a bit picture heavy!

It was still light when we got back to the car, so we drove a bit further to south to see as much as we could before it got dark.

Our first stop was Devils Golf Course. It's a big salt pan that was left behind when a lake evaporated; the wind shapes the leftover salt and minerals into weird craggy shapes on the valley floor.

It was pretty neat and we wandered around for a few minutes, but then everyone and their mother showed up so we decided to keep moving.

Every once in a while you could see white patches of salt in the distance.

After a few more minutes, we reached Badwater Basin. At 282 feet below sea level, it's the lowest point in North America.

Hi, Badwater! You're allowed to walk out onto the salt flat, and there is white salt everywhere - the sidewalks, the pathways, inside your rental car - since it cakes onto your shoes so fast. Of course we had to walk on the salt flat.   :)

My new fancy camera isn't exactly inconspicuous, and it seems like anytime I carry it, I attract people asking me to take pictures of them with their cameras like flies. My new favorite thing to do is then hand them my camera and ask them to return the favor. Their reactions are always great when I hand over my 5lb camera and they realize they're in over their heads (I always set it up for them in advance so all they have to do is push the button).   :)  

I love how I brought thousands of dollars worth of camera gear with me and somehow wound up taking one of the best pictures of the entire trip with my cell phone.

We wandered around and waited for the sun to set.

After a little while the sun started to break out from behind the clouds...it lit up the whole valley.

Ooo...

We wound up talking to another couple while we were waiting for the sun to set. They were artists, and they liked to come out to the desert for inspiration. I wish I had thought to get their names so I could try to look up their work.

Close up of the salt. There was a lot of texture!

The sun eventually dipped down below the ridges, so we started to make our way back to the car.

I loved that long white cloud...it looked so weird!

We were just about to leave when the clouds started to turn orange and pink. It only lasted a few minutes but looked really cool.

After finally deciding that the sunset was over, we started to drive north toward our hotel. We were spending the night at Stovepipe Wells, a little collection of hotel rooms and a restaurant and a general store in the northern part of Death Valley. It took a little while to drive back up there, but we eventually found the hotel, checked in, and walked over to the restaurant (well, saloon) for dinner. The saloon had a really strong wild west vibe, and after a little while it seemed like they had turned on a fog machine because it started to get pretty hazy inside and it even smelled like that fog machine juice. Turns out we were wrong...what we saw and smelled was blowing sand! While we were inside, the wind had really kicked up as a cold front moved through, and the sand from the nearby dunes was blowing everywhere. People could barely get inside the door because the wind was so strong.

I had wanted to try to get some star pictures at night since it should have been so clear in the desert, but as soon as we stepped outside I knew that wasn't going to happen. You could barely keep your eyes open, there was so much sand! We walked over to the general store, bought a couple little things, then made our way back to the room and called it an early night.