Today would be our last in Death Valley. We were feeling a bit slowed down, plus I needed to figure out where we would go next and where we would stay. It all took some time, and we didn't leave our room until mid-afternoon.
We first stopped at the sand dunes to recreate a photo from the last time I had been here, 51 or 52 years ago. Here's the photo from then:
And here's the photo from now:
For our last Death Valley experience we decided to hike into Mosaic Canyon. The canyon was formed by water running in flash floods through faults in the rock. The rock, in turn, was formed from the remains of sea creatures that lived in the ocean that covered this area a few hundred million years ago.
The hike is in the stream bed and begins wide enough
but soon becomes more narrow and eventually very narrow before widening out again.
In the narrowest part, the walls of marble are polished by the furious scrubbing of gravel carried by the torrent of flash floods. It was our first cloudy day, and one couldn't help but think that if by some perverse miracle it rained there would be no place to hide.
Eventually, the stream bed widened. We walked along, enjoying the beauty of constantly changing colors and shapes.
Eventually, we decided we would enjoy getting off our feet and having the before dinner drink that had become a Death Valley tradition. Besides, it was getting dark and we had no lights. So, back we went.
At times, looking back, we could see a distant mountain on fire with the light from the setting sun.
Back we went through the narrow, gravel scrubbed granite.
And then we were out.
As we emerged I saw this gentleman sitting on his folding chair on the rock above me. He said he was a third generation dairy farmer from Northern California. He was in his seventies and had recently retired at the insistence of his son. So now he had time to sit here with his pony tail and red, white, and blue tie-dyed shirt and enjoy the sunset.
It seemed a fitting way to end our time in this most unusual place.
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