Thursday, August 8, 2013

day 8: Hoover Dam and Death Valley National Park

We woke up and left camp to drive to the Hoover Dam.  How massive!


Such an amazing feat of engineering!  It was also extremely hot, it felt like we were in an oven.  I guess that's what dry heat feels like.  After we walked around the Hoover Dam we left and drove the long drive to Death Valley National Park.

long and straight roads

On the way to Death Valley we passed by Las Vegas.

Vegas

Death Valley, indeed.  It got up to 113 degrees while we were there. 

 (That looks like water behind John but it's actually all sand and rocks.  There was no natural source of water in the park.)

It was a beautiful park but incredible\y huge, there was no way we could see all of it.  Actually, while we only saw a "small" part of it we were still there for over 4 hours.


A scenic, non-paved section of road

When we decided to leave I was OK with that because I was getting tired of seeing national parks in the desert.  They made me anxious what with their little water supply and it was kind of eerie driving for miles and miles before you even saw another car.  Once the sun went down, we left Death Valley and it took us 2 hours to get out of the park!  It was creepy because it was pitch black and barely any other cars on the road.  Even when we got out of the park there were barely any signs of civilization.  Oh yeah, we had to pay $5.68/gallon for gas in the park!  We both were shocked!  We continued our drive in the middle of nowhere until we found a Denny's (2 hours after getting out of the park) and a place to stay (at midnight).  But we were thankful for food and shelter.

The sun setting over the Devil's Golf Course.

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