Death Valley Summer

The grand finale of our trip was an insane trip through Death Valley during the hottest time of the year. As the temperature climbed to 122 degrees F, we prayed our tough car, Subee, the Subaru would hold out. She only got hot when we had to climb to high elevations. Death Valley is a desert. Lots of rocks. Dust. Heat. Damn the heat. We took a five minute hike to the ghostly remains of a Borax Factory and promptly decided that we were dying and returned to the car. The five minutes it took us to get to the factory, took us 15 minutes on the walk back. The heat was that oppressive. It is the hottest I have ever been. It got up to 116 degrees one day in Israel when we were hiking on the road to Jericho. But 122 is worse.

After climbing back into Subee, being gentle with the A/C, we headed up the drive called Artist's Palette. It was a narrow drive past some colorful minerals in the rocks. Quite beautiful except for the sense of impending doom of realizing your road is a flash flood path and the clouds on high look rather ominous. After that drive, we headed to employee housing for the night because Carlie has a friend who works at Death Valley and he could put us up in air-conditioning.

That night around 11pm, we went to our car to fetch our sleeping bags. The sky was dark. No stars, complete cloud cover. Very few lights in the nearby houses. The temperature was 103 degrees. So much for cooling down. And the kicker was the wind. It was howling. A howling hot wind blowing at least 35 mph. It was terrifying. It was if the gates of hell had opened and swallowed us with Satan's fiery breath. Then there was a buzz and the power went out. It was only for a few seconds but during that time, you could not see your hand in front of your face. It was like being a cave with the lights out. Only you are outside, in a vast expanse of nothing with the wind of demons. We ran inside as fast as we could and were thankful not to be sleeping in a tent that night.