Travel Good

Jen said it first, but there is something quite nice about walking across the Brooklyn bridge on Wednesday and driving into Death Valley two days later. The modern marvel of air travel!

We sadly found ourselves in the middle of the biggest tourist season for Death Valley wildflowers in recorded history. The national park had its biggest fall/winter rainfall in the 94 years of recorded weather for the region. I've read accounts of 14,000 visitors in the past month. I had to use my car horn three times in the middle of nowhere, which is just plain wrong.

The flowers weren't even the best part. Sure, yellow, white and purple blooms in a desert are interesting, but the terrain changes were mindboggling. There's Badwater, a salt lake 282 feet below sea level (lowest elevation in the USA), Golden Canyon for hiking and rock scrambling, the utterly bizarre salt formations at Devil's Golf Course, and sand dunes that unfortunately wouldn't sing for us. Perhaps it was too "wet" at the moment... (I have plenty of photos, but I'm being lazy)

We even stumbled on a decent microbrewery, Indian Wells, on the way home. They make a pretty good red ale that is wonderfully cheap at Trader Joe's...

Definitely must return to the desert soon.