The next stop was Death Valley. The drive from the Grand Canyon to Death Valley is pretty short, and just as boring and deserted as the rest of the southeastern desert lot. Here is a photo of Death Valley- the lowest spot in the USA- 293 feet below sea level. People tole me I was nuts when I decided to do this trip in February, but it was the most perfect weather I could possibly imagine. Death Valley, of course, is like an inferno comparative to the pits of Hell in the summertime, so in winter it was absolutely perfect. It was about 60 degrees in the day, and I camped out that night in one of the free, park-managed campgrounds. It was PERFECT. I actually had to turn off my tent heater in the middle of the night as I was too hot!
So what you're looking at is the view to the west from my campsite. The gravel road goes out to nothingness until it starts to slope up to the western mountains. There are these unique salt-marsh, white chalk looking mountains too, on the southeastern entrance to the park. I should have stopped and taken a picture, but I didn't. alas.
I spent much of my evening after studying and cooking a can of soup, turning over rocks in the desert looking for scorpions and rattlesnakes. I wish that I would have seen some of them. I remeber when I was 12 and we were taking some kind of covered-wagon ride in Arizona- and the horses were getting spooked, so the cowboy got out and killed it. We actually cooked it, ate it, and he made the rattle into a baby toy that was going to be sold in the gift shop.
