A superbloom in Joshua Tree and a visit to Death Valley

No internet to speak of in Joshua Tree - we are now in Las Vegas and I am catching up the blog and will do the Las Vegas blog before we leave here ---

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That rain we got at Joshua Tree NP created a super bloom for the wildflowers in the desert!  We had the incredible luck to be there for it. You’ve heard that a picture is worth a thousand words?  Here are several thousand words!

From Joshua Tree we drove to Death Valley NP. We are nearing the park…

With 3.1 million acres of wilderness, Death Valley NP is the largest NP in the US outside of Alaska.  It is also the hottest place in the world.  A record high of 134 degrees F has been recorded.  Average highs in the summer months are in the 120’s, with night temps sometimes not dropping below 100.  That’s why we’re here now, early March.  Our highs have been upper 70’s, lows in the mid 50’s.

The wind had picked up and was creating quite a dust storm across the desert floor.

After getting settled into the campground, we decided to do some exploring.  We were surprised to learn that most of the side roads were closed!  It turns out that the day before Death Valley NP had received ½ of their annual rain amount in 6 hours!  EVERYTHING flooded!  Death Valley gets almost 2 inches of rain per year. They had received .8 inches. One road to Badwater Basin was open but none of the drives off of the road were open. So, off we went to Badwater.  Badwater received its name when a miner couldn’t get his mule to drink from the lake.  So he decided the water was poison or bad.  Actually, it is just salty.  It is also 282 feet BELOW sea level!  This is the lowest point in North America. 

Take a careful look at the mountain behind the boardwalk into the lake.  See the small white box towards the upper middle-left side? That indicates sea level.

There is little water in the lake now.

 But this is a huge expanse of lake.

The salt chunks are large, too, about the size of my hand.

This mountain is on one side of the lake and the valley.  Ages ago there was a tectonic split that caused one side of the land to rise and the other side to lower.  The lowering side eventually developed mountains, creating the valley we know as Death  Valley.

 Borax was a big mining product in the late 1800’s.  This was the Harmony Borax Works, operational from about 1888.  As the price of Borax went down when it was discovered in less remote locations, the enterprising owner of the company began tourist excursions and encouraged the protection of Death Valley.

 Those of you as old as I am will remember the “20 Mule Team Borax” ads.  Yes, they really did use 20 mules to pull the 2 heavily laden wagons of borax the 165 miles to the Mojave Railroad Depot.  A 1200 gallon tank of water went along for the ride to provide water for the mules and men during the trip.  That alone weighted 10,000 pounds.  Poor mules!

Here is Luke standing by the 2 wagons and water tank for size reference.

There was and still is a lot of borax to harvest and refine.  All of this white is borax.

Next we climbed on the sand dunes.

The nearby dunes contain a few creosote bushes, but as the 14 miles of dunes goes further into the valley, the bushes disappear and the dunes grow larger, some as high as 100 feet.

See the sweeping fan of mountain at the bottom of this ridge?  This is a example of an Alluvial Fan.  The fan is caused when water erodes the mountain side, forming a gully or canyon.  The eroded rock and sand is deposited in a fan shape  emanating from the mouth of the canyon. Heavier material stops moving nearer to the canyon or gully, the lighter material goes further.   The net effect is a "fan" of deposited  material, much like a river delta. The many alluvial fans found in Death Valley are considered some of the best examples in the world.

Death Valley has a lot of offer, including a volcanic crater.  Not a caldera, but a crater created 2000 years ago when a massive volcanic explosion was caused by magna mixing with an underground spring.  The resulting Ubehebe crater is over 600 feet deep and one half mile wide.

Last thing for the day was a walk to the top of the Zabriskie Point overlook.  Rock folds…

Chocolate topped mountains

And the golden colored badlands.

On Saturday, we checked the Visitor Center and learned that 3 roads had opened.  Off we went!! (along with every other Saturday visitor to the park).  Our first stop was the Golden Canyon trail. These trail takes us through those beautiful golden colored badlands we saw from the overlook the night before.

 The rocks are just beautiful up close, but without that absolutely gold glow that they have in the setting sun.

Death Valley’s red rocks are visible from the trial.

The next open gravel road was to a hike to the Natural Bridge.  This was a bit more of a climb with an elevation gain of 185 feet from the starting point to the bridge.

Here is the bridge

 Best of all, the 13 mile road to Dante’s View was open.  

This breathtaking viewpoint is over 5200 ft about Death Valley.  THIS is the valley and salt flats of Death Valley.  A most wonderful end to our visit here.