When I think of California, I tend to imagine glorious sand beaches and uber-cool surfing communities. But before you finally reach the great Pacific Ocean, you find yourself crossing a huge variety of different terrains in the golden state. In fact, as well as being home to over 170 mountain ranges and 33 million acres of forest, 25% of California is actually made up of desert. And where the Great Basin Desert meets the Mojave Desert lies the largest national park in the contiguous United States. Not only is Death Valley the largest national park, but it is also the hottest, driest and lowest. In fact, the park contains the lowest point on the continent, and holds the title of the hottest temperature ever recorded on planet Earth at 56.7 Celsius.
On our route from Vegas to Death Valley, we stopped in the halfway town of Pahrump for a bite to eat. Pahrump is kind of like a smaller, less glitzy version of Las Vegas, with its high concentration of casinos, restaurants and bars. It’s really not as impressive though. Imagine if you ordered Las Vegas from wish.com – Pahrump is what you’d get delivered in the mail. It looked better in the pictures, right?
Kate and I came through this way on our Harley-Davidson road trip back in 2012, and we remembered making a quick detour to the outskirts of town to grab a picture or two of one of Pahrump’s more infamous attractions, it’s legal brothels. Not only does Nevada have the most lenient gambling laws in the country, it is also the only state in America that has legalised prostitution in correctly licensed venues, and of the 19 that currently exist, two of them are tucked down the end of a dusty, rural lane at the edge of Pahrump. We couldn’t resist grabbing a few recreations of the pictures while we were passing by, and wouldn’t you believe it but the same old signs were still touting for business on the side of the road. Just don’t tell Bam what the sign is promoting! She’d pose with anything that girl.
As we wound our way down the 3000 foot drop in elevation towards Death Valley, the scenery became more and more desolate, and as we dropped the temperature rose. And rose. And rose some more. For some reason we had chosen to sleep in the park itself, in the ominously named Stovepipe Wells. The mercury was pushing into the low forties when we arrived, so not even close to that record figure of 56.7. That felt plenty hot enough though, especially at 7 o’clock at night. A quick check on Google told us that the overnight temperature wasn’t going to dip below 30 either. We had originally booked to stay two nights in Stovepipe Wells, but we were now second guessing that decision in case our slightly feeble air conditioning gave out on us. When we discovered there was also no WiFi connection and zero phone signal, I quickly hot-footed it over to the office and changed the booking to one night only!
Luckily, the campsite did have a well stocked bar, and a pool. So we were all able to have a cooling dip as we stared at the desert night sky, with the added bonus of a cheeky sour beer or two at the water’s edge, before heading off for a rather sweaty nights sleep.
The following day we headed off to explore some of the features of the surrounding National Park. Death Valley is, like I’ve already said, really big. To put it into context, it’s almost the same size as the entire country of Wales. Less sheep though. The surrounding terrain contains some of the most unforgiving and dangerous conditions on the planet, and this is a fact you are not allowed to forget. There are signs and notices everywhere you look, on lampposts, in windows and on notice boards, warning you of the extreme heat danger, and displaying posters of people who underestimated that threat and consequently never returned home. Most people come here to hike and see the far reaching parts of the park only accessible by foot. But at this time of year it’s not advisable to hike much past 10 or 11 in the morning, to avoid the time of day when the searing sun is at its most lethal. Considering we were not really in the market for any such life-threatening hikes, we decided to partake in a driving tour of the main features instead.
We started off at the mesquite sand dunes near Stovepipe Wells. These rolling mountains of sand aren’t the only dunes in the park, but they are the most accessible, being just off the main road, and therefore most visited. The largest dunes are about a mile hike, and are perfect for sand boarding, but we managed a grand total of about five minutes before the kids literally felt like they were melting and we retreated to the safety of the van.
We headed off to Zabriskie Point next, for arguably the finest view of the undulating landscape of Death Valley. This viewpoint, built in the 1920s stands at around 700 feet in elevation, allowing multicoloured vistas of the golden hills and mountains surrounding the white salt flats in the basin below.
From here we took a drive a few miles north through the desolate one way dirt road of Twenty Mule Team Canyon. This 4 mile unpaved track winds its way (sometimes pretty precariously for a 25 foot RV) through the spectacular badlands, canyons and buttes of this former borax mine. It takes its name from the wagon trains used by the Borax company to haul their shipments to market, using the power of twenty mules to make the treacherous journey. It was actually only 18 mules with two horses to lead, but I guess 20-mule-team was more catchy. During the six years in the 1880s in which the mule teams hauled over 9000 tons of Borax along the 165 mile route to Mojave in this hellish heat, incredibly they never lost one animal. They had a perfect safety record – that’s impressive.
It was time for lunch, and we headed to the Last Kind Words Saloon in Furnace Creek for a bite to eat before checking out the original wagon trains and locomotives in the museum.
We had one more stop to make in Death Valley – 15 miles south of Furnace Creek lies the lowest point in North America at 282 feet below sea level, Badwater Basin. Bizarrely, we were also only 84 miles away from the snow covered peak of Mount Witney, the highest point in the United States at 14,505 feet.
Badwater Basin got its name from the small spring containing incredibly salty water near the road. It must have looked tempting to the first visitors, until they tasted it that is. There is a comically small sign perched lop sidedly on the cliff face above the carpark denoting where sea level is compared to where you are standing on the salt flat floor. To be honest I wouldn’t have noticed it if I hadn’t looked for it, having read about its existence.
Again, the kids grew weary of the intense 45 degree heat of the valley floor within minutes, and we beat a hasty retreat to the van. By this point my phone had also turned its screen off in protest at the extreme heat, and I was randomly shooting photos hoping they would turn out ok. Luckily our on-board generator allowed us to run the air conditioning to maintain a breathable atmosphere inside the van as we beat a hasty retreat back out of the valley and on to our next destination of Joshua Tree.
After a tactical overnight stay in the town of Barstow, we found ourselves in the town of Joshua Tree in the Mojave Desert. This cute, artsy town immediately reeked of California cool, and was a stark contrast to the states we had visited so far. We had lunch in the rather kitsch JT’s Country Kitchen, and found ourselves surrounded by an edgy hipster crowd for the first time on our trip. The town is full of vintage stores and arty shops, in a well curated shabby chic kinda way. It’s almost like it has been entirely populated by urban LA city quitters, keen to stamp their creative marks in a new desert community of like minded individuals.
This area, and the Joshua Tree National Park in particular has been attracting creative types for many decades. Jim Morrison and Keith Richards came camping here in the 70s, Gram Parsons overdosed here after searching for UFOs, and U2 famously named an album after it. The park itself is fascinating, with huge sandy plains covered with perfectly spaced Yucca trees stretching into the distance between huge piles of boulders and imposing granite monoliths. The temperature here was far more manageable than Death Valley, and we managed a few scrambles up and down the infinitely scalable piles of rocks. Skull rock was a highlight. Obviously it bore a passing resemblance to a human skull, hence the name, and the inevitable queue of multi national tourists all vying to get a picture (us included).
Our next stop for the night was the nearby town of Desert Hot Springs in the Coachella Valley. The town sits on top of a natural thermal aquifer, and is home to many spa resorts taking advantage of the mineral springs. This water isn’t the smelly, sulphurous type of hot spring though, it’s actually pretty much just heated mineral water. Absolutely perfect for funnelling into a swimming pool for a relaxing soak. We stayed at Sam’s Family Spa which utilised the thermal waters perfectly by filling 4 partially covered soaking pools, with two cooler outdoor pools for regular swimming. The only real problem with this area is that it suffers from a huge amount of wind. The two neighbouring mountain ranges are separated by the San Gorgonio Pass, and are subject to something called the Venturi effect as the winds are funnelled and accelerated through the valley. The energy companies have taken full advantage, and the valley floor is a sea of wind turbines frantically converting all the free energy into power for the local communities.
We took a drive to visit the local town of Palm Springs to see what all the fuss was about. This desert resort town was once the toast of Tinseltown, attracting the very cream of the A-list from the 1920’s until it’s true heyday in the 1960s when the likes of Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley called it home. It must have been quite a sight, streets lined with glamorous piano bars and upscale boutiques nestled in the shadow of the beautiful San Jacinto Mountains.
Today, it feels very much more accessible to the general public. Even though the fancier neighbourhoods still attract celebrity purchasers, the general crowd you bump into on the main shopping streets are a mixture of trout-lipped lapdog toting LA exiles, and hip day-trippers and families marvelling at the plethora of mid century architecture on offer. It was snooty enough to feel exclusive and expensive, but not too snooty that a tramp like me would get shuffled out of the cafes and shops.
I think if you were a city dweller looking for a desert escape destination for a few days of solitude and relaxation, the appeal of Palm Springs is self evident. You could hire an exclusive 1940s pad that could have belonged to a silver screen legend, and spend a few days propping up the trendy bars and frequenting the day spas. But if you’re a day tourist like we were, a few hours is all you really need to have a wander and get a feel for the place.
It was time to beat a hasty retreat back to our less exclusive (but every bit as relaxing) Spa resort in Desert Springs and enjoy the thermal facilities one more time before heading off again in the morning to finally see the ocean again…