AS WE'RE EATING yet another mammoth and cheap Las Vegas buffet breakfast together (boy, we're sure going to miss these), Lou announces that he'd gone back down to the casino last night and won a hundred and twenty-five dollars playing blackjack. Everyone congratulates him profusely... and then goes back for more melon and danish.

Heading west out of Las Vegas on Nevada state highway 160, we drive through the Spring Mountains and into the desert valley on the other side. We pick up Nevada state highway 372 in Pahrump and drive into California, where the same road becomes California state highway 178. We cross another mountain range, the Nopah, and stop at Shoshone, a junction town on the edge of Death Valley National Park. This is a meeting place, and, as usual, the Waters family arrives within minutes of us. There is a museum and gift shop here and we spend awhile looking at some of the Old West memorabilia before starting up again. From here, the highway winds up and down two more sets of mountains, the Greenwater Mountains and the Amargosa Mountains. It winds more down than up though, as we are headed toward the lowest spot on the North American continent. As we come into Death Valley, the scene becomes easily the most desolate imaginable. Although there have been many times on this trip that I've imagined myself on an alien planet, this place fits that fantasy better than any other. There is absolutely no sign of life here. Spread out before us, as we descend the mountain road, is a sweeping panorama of total lifelessness. This, the lower section of Death Valley, is the floor of an ancient salton sea. It's covered with salt flats. It looks as though it's covered with water in many places, but the water turns out to be an optical illusion (a mirage), caused by the reflection of the sun on the shiny salt deposits. There is water, though. We can see recently dried mud fields, their surfaces cracked into big squares, and places where the ground is still damp. It doesn't rain much here, but apparently it did not so long ago. The highway appears to have been laid out by drunks. It neither runs straight up the valley, nor clings to the edges of the cliffs. Instead, it makes totally senseless wide sweeps out onto the salt flats and then back again to the cliff line. There doesn't seem to be any reason for it, and we can't imagine why, except perhaps to make people use up more gasoline than necessary.

One of the swoops back toward the cliffs brings us to Badwater. Named for the salt pond found here, Badwater is not a mirage. It is also not "water", in the sense that you can't actually use it for anything you might need water for, like drinking or for livestock, or for your radiator. The water is not really poisonous, it's just so full of mineral deposits that it's saltier by far than ocean water. Two official U. S. survey markers here record that we are 287 feet below sea level, making this the lowest spot on the North American continent. It is also the hottest, on average. Today is somewhat beyond average, as we are here at 12:00 noon in August. The temperature is 118° in the shade - but there is no shade. The temperature is 138° in the real world ("...but it's okay. It's a dry heat". Yeah, right; so's an oven).

Lou and I hike out along about a half mile strip of packed salt to where the the salt flats are, while the female members remain near the cars. To their credit, they don't just sit in the air conditioning and wait. They are taking photos of their idiot husbands baking their brains out on the salt flats. They are also observing as another visitor experiments with trying to fry an egg on a piece of black sheetmetal. Apparently it takes more heat than Death Valley to do that, according to their observations. Lou's and my observations are that the water table here is really only about four inches below the surface. In several places, people have dug holes in the salt crust and water is clearly present. It is very salty water.

From here we drive through the rest ot the valley as the salt flats slowly give way to normal desert scenery (small cactus and scrubweed). We stop at the Visitor's Center, which is celebrating the 100^th anniversary of the National Park and spend some time there. Linda and I see a very large bird fly out of a palm tree next to the building. Much larger than the ravens that are common in the southwest. We think (after comparing what we saw to illustrations) that it may have been a golden eagle.

It's much cooler at the Visitors' Center… 122°.

About twenty miles north of the Visitor's Center, we turn west onto state highway 190, stopping to look at a large field of big sand dunes along the way. We meet with Mary, Lou, and Lizzy again at Stovepipe Wells to buy drinks and sandwiches before beginning the arduous climb up the Panamint Mountains and out of the valley. As we begin the ascent, we see intimidating notices warning motorists to turn off the air conditioning so as to prevent overheating. Every few hundred feet there are turnouts, some with water tanks for filling radiators. At several of them are cars, mostly vans, with their hoods up. Even with modern technology, climbing a long, steep mountain grade in 100° + temperatures is not easy on a car's engine. I do notice that the temperature gauge is starting to rise, so we turn off the air conditioning and open the windows. It really isn't all that bad, and in just a few minutes we are able to turn it back on again, rather than leaving it off all the time. We do this several times as we climb the mountain range.

When I was planning this part of the journey, I had seen a shorter route than the one I chose, but the maps I was using indicated that the shorter route (a continuation of state highway 178) was not reliable. Mary's AAA TripTic, however, saw nothing wrong with the shortened route, and Mary suggested we take it. We turn off highway 190 onto 178 and proceed south along the western side of the same Panamint Range whose eastern face helps define Death Valley. The road is rough, but not bad. There is no one else on it. There is also no sign of any kind of civilization on it.

After awhile, the surface begins to get a little less, shall we say, finished. There are cracks that appear to have been patched temporarily - lots of them.

The sign as we pulled onto this road said "Ridgecrest - 75 miles"; we've gone about twenty miles and the road is deteriorating rapidly. There are no gas stations. There are no houses.

And there are no cars coming from the other direction…

Finally we arrive at an intersection, and there is a car approaching from the direction we will be turning. Never considering that the driver may have turned around when the road became impassable up ahead, I feel much better about Mary's choice. Even the patchwork road surface seems to have improved a bit.

Then we start up into yet another mountain range (the Argus Range). More tight switchbacks and steep grades. More warnings about overheating. But at the top of the plateau the road gets dramatically better. Actually it appears to have only recently been paved here. I feel vindicated that my choice not to take this route was based on sound advice, but I also appreciate that Mary's choice to take it will save us about an hour of driving.

After awhile we see cars coming the other way, and eventually we come upon the auto salvage yards and chemical processing plants of Trona, and Argus, and Borosalvay.

"Whew! I wonder just what kind of chemicals they produce here?", I ponder, as an evil smell begins to invade the car.

"Uh, farts?", suggests Linda.

We arrive at the Motel 6 in Ridgecrest just after 4:00. We'll never know if Tom Bodet left the light on for us, but they did leave us a fine swimming pool, and we sure don't waste any time getting into it. Lou becomes the self-appointed leader in a game of Marco Polo with Lizzy and a couple of other kids in the pool. There is also a laundry facility here, and Linda & Mary are washing the dirty clothes we've accumulated so far. With all the people and clothing dunked 'n dried, we drive across town to enjoy a really good southwestern dinner at the Santa Fe Grill, which the desk clerk has recommended, complete with margaritas and blue corn tortilla chips.

We drove 288 miles today.

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Story and original photography copyright ©1996-1997 by John Lipman. All rights reserved.
Descriptions, observations, and characterizations expressed are solely those of the author.
Background music is copyright © Ken Albin . All rights reserved.

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