sand dune fun fun

Okay, at this point in my road trip I've gotten to Death Valley, a little later than expected, because I took a few scenic detours. I got lost on one of those "take this scenic loop road" things. How do you get lost on one of THOSE? Well I do. It was Mammoth Lakes, and it was pretty, but I was getting impatient to get to Death Valley...

So I got to Death Valley, as I said at the beginning of this series of posts. Now the posts will start from the northern end of Death Valley, route 190. Driving in at night, there were many bunnies crossing the road. I did not hit a single one. Yay for not running over bunnies!

I camped for the night at 2000 feet, sometime around midnight, took my shower under the water spigot, and slept in the car. It was around 90 degrees farenheit. The campsite was called Emigrant, and was free. Yay for free! I woke up at 9am and decided to start taking a look around the park.

By the way, if you want to check out the national parks of the US, get one of those national parks passes for $50, because that gets you into as many national parks as you want in a year's time, rather than coughing up $20 each time.

These awesome sand dunes were the first thing I checked out. You can walk right out onto them from the highway on foot and hike around. They are taller than they look. Here's a sand dune with dude for scale. They are fun for kids, because you can just pop out of your air conditioned car and hang near the car, OR, you can trek out a little more like I did.

There are several sand dune areas near the roads in the park. The sand dunes I explored were some of the shorter ones. Next time (this is my second visit) I want to hit the tall sand dunes in the northwest part of the park. The bonus of the tall sand dunes in that area is that they are at much higher elevation and shouldn't be so blasting hot. The sand dunes I explored were south and lower elevation than the campground, and each degree lower in elevation means some degree hotter. They had some chart at the park to map it out. I felt the heat, yeah.

I wasn't sure how far the sand dunes extended. It was really hard to tell, I wanted to keep going, but it was too hot for it now. It was neat to think you could just keep going on a long hike and just be surrounded by oodles of sand, and then maybe discover some other terrain. Maybe later in the day sometime. I'd guess it was 110F.

Two hippy types (a couple) were heading out to the sand dunes just as I was returning to my car. One girl just had flip flops, and neither had water. They didn't look like they were going to do the kids-hang-out-by-the-car-thing. I hated to be a smelly nelly, but I said to them, "You'd really be happier with water out there." I drank nearly a liter on my little romp, and it wasn't much of a romp. Also, the ground is well known (the pamphlets make it clear) to be much hotter than the air. So if you figure the air to be... whatever, then, well, you're going to burn your feet. Flip flops (beach sandals) are dumb. Are people made of jello? Maybe so. However, the girl did get water when I mentioned it, and didn't seem unfriendly about it. Hippy types are good that way. I suppose I could've let Darwin take its course.