Death Valley

Just the name.....Death Valley.......has an iconic ring to it. It is deep in our mythology, even if we are not American. Blame it on all those grainy black and white Westerns on the television weekend aftenoons when we were children. Or when I was anyway. And certainly, the walls of the restaurant at Stove Pipe Wells are hung with posters of mostly long forgotten movies called somethingorotherdeathvalley, or that were filmed there.

As I am sure I have said before, I do try very hard not to use the word "awesome" unless I truly mean it. And in this case, I do. Death Valley is awesome. And we didn't even visit at the hottest time of year. Temps between 90 and 100F were quite enough for me, and I was fascinated by the way that any moisture in your skin is just sucked right out as you stand there!

It is huge and beautiful and we barely scratched the surface. Definitely now on my list of places to which I must return.

So a few photos to try to give some flavour of it.











This next was taken at Panamint Springs. (I loved the names - Furnace Creek, Stovepipe Wells, Badwater, Panamint Springs.)



These are Joshua trees. All these years, I had heard of the things and not realised what they were like.





I am going to leave it there, gazing at the looming wall of the Sierra Nevada. I had intended to do a larger post, but the internet is doing its Sunday in Hebden Bridge thing, and I can't bear the snails pace!

I'll try not to leave it too long!

(More photos on Flickr, as usual.)