Dry Heat is Still Hot!

I would like to have a quiet moment alone with those folks who always say, “Yes, but it’s a dry heat”.  It was a very dry heat in Death Valley today, and yet, oddly enough, it was still hot.  Crazy hot!

We rose from our campsite in Yosemite early this morning to get a jump on the day.  The drive out of Yosemite was nearly as incredible as the afternoon spent touring yesterday.  At one point we crossed through a pass with an elevation of over 9,000 feet!  The views were spectacular, and the roads were nearly empty.  It was great fun.  Driving down the valley towards Bishop, California was also beautiful.  The Sierra Nevada Mountains are rugged and tall and a sight to behold.  Trees and even bushes were getting scarce.  At one point, however, we saw a herd of elk grazing in a green field (it was only green because it was irrigated).  That was cool!

We stopped in Bishop for breakfast, to gas up, and to visit a photography gallery recommended by my nephew, Rob.  Rob used to live in Pasadena and spent most of his free time exploring the Sierra Nevada Mountains and California National Parks on his motorcycle.  He suggested the route we took today, and it was excellent!

From Bishop we headed for Death Valley.  We were already driving down a valley with rough looking brown mountains on both sides.  We had to cross over the mountains to our left to get into DV.  We passed a few strange looking cactus along the way, but other than that life was limited to some grass and small bushes – the stuff that tumbleweed comes from.  Driving down the road towards DV we were buzzed by two fighter planes that came up from behind.  Paul thought they were about 50’ or 100’ over our heads; it was hard for me to tell from my position under the front seat of the car (the first one startled me a bit, to say the least).

We arrived in the Panamint Valley but for a moment we thought we were in DV.  The temperature was hot, but in the back of my head was I thinking, “this isn’t too bad”.   We were Father Crowley Point, a bluff overlooking a desolate valley, thinking DV was below us.  We took a bunch of pics, then drove down into the valley.  We paused at the bottom of the valley to look at the map – there should be a road here!  Then realized this was the Panamint Valley, and that we had to cross yet another set of mountains to get into DV.  It was pretty hot down there.

Us being manly men and all, we decided to experience DV without air conditioning.  From the time we entered the Panamint Valley until we passed the “thanks for visiting Death Valley” sign we had the windows down and the AC off.  That was about three hours of blazing hot, scorching ouch.

We finally entered DV and stopped at Stovepipe Wells, currently a store, hotel and a campground, and one of the original tourist outposts in DV about 100 years ago.  We were now at sea level – a more than 9,000 foot change from this morning!  The thermometer on the shaded porch at the store read 115 degrees.  Porches are about the only shade in DV, so the heat we were feeling was much worse than that.  We quickly plotted out a course: south to Badwater and the Artist’s Palette, then west and out of there as quickly as possible. 

Amazingly, we weren’t the only ones in DV in August!  It obviously wasn’t as crowded as Yellowstone or Yosemite, but there were a surprising (to me, anyway) number of visitors there.  We also have a hunch that we saw a few vehicles being test driven by car companies – I guess if you want to see the newest model of your pickup truck or minivan can take the heat this is the place to be.

There are no words to describe how hot it was in DV in late August.  My head throbbed. The back of my shirt soaked through from sitting in the car, but after a minute of leaning forward it would be completely dry again because the air was so hot and dry.  It was basically like sitting in an oven.  Dry heat is still hot.

We saw Badwater, which is a salt water lake in the spring but basically a puddle in August.  The former lakebed turns to baked mud in the summer, with salt deposits covering everything.  This is the lowest point in DV and the lowest point on the Continent (and the hemisphere, I think):  282 feet below sea level.  There is a sign mounted on the canyon wall behind the parking area showing you where sea level is!  From there we drove through the Artist’s Palette, which is a road that takes you into the canyon and around colorful formations caused by the different mineral deposits in the rock.  It’s probably really beautiful when your brains are cooking in your head.  Paul enjoyed the windy, hilly drive, which was a sharp contrast to the ‘straight as the eye can see’ road on the valley floor.  We also drove by the Devil’s Golf Course, where the terrain is supposedly so rough “only the devil could play golf there.” Or so it says on the website – from the car it just looked hot.

From there we were done and about to head out of DV towards Las Vegas.  One last stop: I picked up a cheap combination thermometer/key chain at Mt. Rushmore so we could check the temperatures on our trip.  This poor thing is useless.  The morning we had ice on the tent it read in the mid-40s.  Today is was reading 95 degrees in DV.  We decided to put it on a rock on the valley floor for an hour and see what it said.  On the way out of DV we checked it (after about an hour in the sun) and it read 110 degrees.  Hot, but considerably below reality. 

Seeing DV in August in awesome – if you’re only going to do it once you should get the full experience of the heat.  And I promise you, unlike my nephew, I only plan on seeing it once!