From Barstow I still had a two hour drive to reach the gates of hell (fee payment will be required please). Death Valley National Park was an eruption of Earth’s insides. It was as though the desert had taken back anything Mother Nature had given to the area, and was torturing the land and punishing it for the sins of everything that has ever existed. The mountains that surrounded the sinking wasteland were burnt and bent out of shape. It seemed as though the rock had been abused by centuries of heat and wind, and what remained was so grotesque, it was more beautiful than anything I had seen.
Before getting too far into the park I found myself stopping along the side of the road to capture as much of the landscape as my camera would allow. The sad truth however was that the lens just wouldn’t cooperate. I wanted to steal part of the evil that was embedded in the essence of the park. I wanted to take away the supernatural feeling that the Valley’s surroundings forced on me. I wanted to show the world what this planet was capable of doing to itself. I can’t blame it all on the limited nature of a still shot though, the elements were making it difficult on me. It would take about thirteen seconds for the sun to start toasting my skin. All I had to do was open the truck door and a flash of heat would destroy hours of built up A/C. Even the heavy wind that sailed through the Valley channel was a hot, dry belch from the place where they produce ugliness. I spent most of the day with an expiration tagged to my body, knowing that the desert was trying to swallow me up and never let me leave.
The cool part about Death Valley, aside from its accurately descriptive title, was that it displayed all aspects of the way a valley meets its end. I started my day north of Furnace Creek at the Sand Dunes. At this point in the park the shape of the valley changed allowing the winds to slow and deposit small sand particles that are normally used for pelting tourists in the face. The sand collected and formed a sort of frozen sea, locked in time. It was strange to find the golden dunes in the middle of the valley, but then again, it seemed like none of these bizarre perversions of nature should have been there at all. I headed south and joined up with the Badwater highway. The road cut directly through the centre of the park and varied its elevation from sea-level to over two hundred feet below the zero point.
My second stop was at the head of a short hike that lead up one of the many hidden canyons within the mountain range. The trail began as a narrow hallway with towering walls on either side, before finally opening up and giving me some room to breath. It was Star Wars A New Hope all over again; I was waiting for some new Lucas creature to come out from behind a rock and attack me. More then anything I couldn’t help but think that minus the whole atmosphere thing, this could have been Mars. The canyon was basically a concentration of the elements with more heat and higher winds taking their turns at me. I made it a half hour out and back and was happy to get back to the sanctuary of the Dakota.
Artist Drive was a single lane of worn out pavement that crept back into the mountains. These mountains looked old, like they had experienced more then a healthy mountain should. The drive was really fun. They had a warning at the start of the track stating that vehicles over 25feet long were not allowed. I understood why, when the road started twisting and turning so tightly that it almost folded back on top of itself. It was basically the type of trail you would ride a mule down. At this point the mountains showed there wear and tear with a variety of colours ranging from the dried out burnt yellow to a fiery red that faded into a deep black. It was the mixing of these colours with the lighter grey and white rocks that made the whole scene look like a wardrobe malfunction. The colours were folded together into ages of layering that strongly resembled the wrinkles in most of my shirts now after two weeks on the road. When the loop ended I continued south.
The Devil’s Golf course was a huge field of crystallized sand too sharp to walk on. It was yet another booby-trap that the valley had laid out for humans to fall victim to. Like all the aspects of Death Valley, the crystallized structures were a result of the heat, sun, and the erosion from the wind. You could actually hear small cracks and pops as the wind rolled over the Golf course and continued to change the structure of the crystals.
Badwater is the lowest point in North America. There was a sign high up on the rocky cliff, over two hundred and eighty feet above the small pond of bad water that read ‘sea level’. The area was named by a prospector who found that his horse wouldn’t drink the water even as it faced complete thirst. What makes the water bad is the high sodium chloride and sulfate content. The area is one of the hottest places in the world and I can contest to that. Outside the park, at high noon, I would call the temperature of the Death Valley area ‘warm’, by the time I made it to Badwater, the sun had started to dip down but the temperature was definitely closer to ‘scorching’ or ‘blistering’ or ‘stupid hot’. And on top of that, the temperature of the ground was probably in fact hot enough to fry and egg on, literally.
I spent a lot of time taking the scenery in from within the safety of the truck. The whole experience was made that much more interesting with the deep blue sky and puffy white clouds overhead. The contrast between the happy sky and the angry valley was one thing that did register in the camera. And I know I said the lens couldn’t capture the true hideousness of the land, but as I look at some of the shots now, the pictures tell a pretty vivid tale.Next stop Vegas. VEGAS!!! Maybe?
As I was leaving the park the Dakota spoke up; it was suffering. It yelled at me with a sort of whiny sequel while I used the clutch. Instant fear. I wanted to just turn up the stereo and think about rainbows and smiles, but the truth of the matter was the desert had eaten away at my truck. I pictured the Dakota giving out in the middle of the Death Valley ocean of nothingness. I pictured the inside of the cab slowly turning into a furnace as the A/C melted away. I pictured myself standing outside the truck with my broken cell phone waiting for a car that would never come. I pictured the movie Gerry, I pictured Into the Wild, I pictured the demise of all the great heroes in tragedies where nature wins. And then I was in Vegas. I had made it. The truck held out. As I pulled into the Tropicana parking lot, and the Dakota came to a chocking stop I could smell a burning; the vehicles inside were melting away. It was my first night in Vegas and I already had my own unique story. I just hope that the saying ‘What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas’ applies to Dakotas.
Day Ten: The Jackson MiniTramp tribune reads: Death Valley Claims its latest victim…
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