USA West coast road trip - Part 4 - Death Valley

Day 8

I'm not a morning person, the girls don't like driving by night so splitting the driving schedule was easy. Julie and Caroline drove out of Yosemite (so I wouldn't lose it in the mountain) and I took the wheel in the desert. Nothing around, just you and the road straight in front of your eyes! With the heat, the road was a bit blury and sometimes it would go up and down giving us the impression of being in a little theme park (which I loved but Julie's stomac hated). Like they say, simple pleasures, are often best. I absolutely loved driving there.

I was glad for the air conditioning. I could see the temperature rising as we got nearer to the park's entrance. 39º at 6pm...scary! I was anxious about going to the desert, to say the least. I'm from Normandy, I lived the last years in London. I'm a frog happier with the rain, so desert didn't seem like the place to go.

We arrived at the Sovepipe Wells around 6.30pm. Getting out of the car and into the oven. To my surprise, although it was hot, it was so dry that it felt kind of nice. It wasn't this sweaty heat that I faced in Vietnam, turning you into a dirty and flappy creature. It was like walking into an hair dryer...My lungs took few seconds to adapt then it was as if I'd always lived in one and it didn't bother me.

The "village" is like a Dr Quinn film set left in the middle of nowhere. There's the hotel, the restaurant, the shop and that's pretty much it. As we check in, we see people coming in with no reservation.

-"Sorry no room for tonight" advises the desk manager.

-"Ok" answer politely a couple. We're staring at them and wondering if they realise the next hotel is min 100km away... Will they end up sleeping in their car or with the snakes outside? We'll never know...

We bought a few over priced items at the shop (mainly food and a cap as I had forgotten my hat and my pale scalp is not friend with the hard sun) then went for dinner at the restaurant.

I'm so happy to see "snake bite" on the drinks menu ( not a common drink in France) I don't pay attention to the extra mention. When the waiter brinks a beer darker than ebene, I first think he's put too much blackcurrant. I happily raise my glass and yyyaaaakkk! It's a snake bite with sout! Desappointed. I leave my glass on the side of the table.
We stop by the swimming pool but actually the dip is not as enjoyable as we thought it would be. The water feels weird on my skin. We're quickly out... and off to an early night.

Day 9

The alarm clock rings at 5am. That's arsh. We pack our food and head to the dunes for breakfast. We play silly games like "look I'm dead in the desert" or "let's jump in the dunes" and take another hundred of pictures of us, the sun rising, the desert, etc...

Around 8am we leave as we want to check a few sites before the sun is high. First we start on a tiny bumpy road and a walk up to the Natural Bridge; before heading to the salty Badwater bassin; and finally the beautiful Artist's palette and Zabriskie point. 

I was scared of the desert and I fell in love with it. It was a short romance but one I'll never forget.

Can't say the name about our next stop: Las Vegas. 

To be continued...