Day Fifteen

We slept in a hotel last night! After four nights in a row of camping, a bed was nice. We woke up late-ish (I got up a little before 10), checked out of our hotel and headed over to Hash House a Go Go, which is one of THE breakfast places in or around Vegas. (Or, so I hear.) There was a line and a half hour wait, but it was worth it because our food was really, really good.

After eating, we drove to Death Valley National Park. Along the way, we saw weird things. Like this, literally in the middle of nowhere.

Also, we stopped at a rest stop near Area 51 and I got so much awesome alien stuff. Alien driver's license, a t-shirt, Area 51 dirt, etc. AWESOME.

We got to Death Valley around 3. It's probably the biggest park we've been in so far; we drove probably close to 100 miles within the park alone. At least 70-80, maybe 100. Anyway, there were some cool small things and cool really big things.

Small thing: Devils Golf Course. We talked about where the missing apostrophe should be, and whether it could be grammatically correct as is.

Our first real stop was at Badwater Basin, the lowest spot in North America: 282 feet below sea level.

Badwater Pool is water that a man years and years and years ago dubbed "bad water" because his donkey (I think) wouldn't drink from it (because it was so salty).

We walked out to the salt flats.

Salt, not sand or snow.

Can you see that teeny tiny little brown sign in the middle of that rock? That's sea level.

Artist's Palette, where there were many different colors of rocks. I'm not sure why it came out so washed-out, maybe because it was very bright. Or I over-exposed the picture. Whatever. There was blue and pink.

Supply and demand! The only gas in Death Valley!

Some dunes / mountains from a great height.

Supermoon!

This sign says Zzyzx Rd. Which is an awesome name. It's also the name of a town around here. I had no idea what setting I had my camera on when I took the picture, and it wasn't what I wanted but it was kind of cool! So I made some more.

This seems like a safe place to sleep, right?

At least I have my friend, whatever this tree is, right here.