Every early winter, I would read up at least one article about Death Valley National Park on the LA Times. Since I moved to CA 10+ years ago, this site has been added on my To-Do list someday. And every winter in the last 10 years went by without much effort to check it off the list.
Now that Tom lives part time in Las Vegas and Death Valley is only 2.5 hour drive from the Veer, oh why not? Of course, the decision was made before I actually explore about accommodation availability. I was thinking of doing this the week between Christmas and New Year on our road trip back to Las Vegas. But OMG there must be thousands other people think alike as I found out the rooms at the Furnace Creek Inn was running upward of $500+ per night. Holy smoke, I don’t need to see it that badly.
I found another timeslot which more acceptable for the same type of accommodation.
We scheduled for two nights here at the Furnace Creek Ranch, not the Inn (I wish….but I am so not used to self-funding high end properties….)
We started off on Saturday mid-day, slowly making our way through the odd ball town of Pahrump (not ever having a desire to stop here…), lost our way while looking for a short cut to to Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge as a short stop. We wanted to check out those endangered pupfish.
When we were about to give up, I spotted a small sign pointing down another unpaved road, another shortcut…well, we had time on our hands, so we followed it again. This time we landed at the right place. We found the visitor center and strode down a boardwalk, yes, a boardwalk in the middle of the desert. It was actually quite funny when you think about it. Following the well maintained boardwalk, we found a small stream, very clear water, and spot the endangered pupfish. Ok, I think they are pupfish; they were chewing on the flowing algae. But they are so small; I couldn’t tell if they were really “pup”, they didn’t look rounded.
It was a very nice and quiet strode, most of the time we were by ourselves. I got some gorgeous pictures out of it.
Pay attention to the one picture where a dead plant is covered by the dry white crust, looking like cauliflower, but actually is a result of the dry desert heat. And that stream, it is actually flowing up from an underground river to a pool, slowing streaming down for a while, and eventually sipping back in the ground or going back into another underground river. Pretty amazing how nature works.
The first few pictures in the slideshow are mountain ranges on our way from Las Vegas to Ash Meadows. Love the different veins through the face of the mountains.
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