Claire and I went onward with the trip that I previously posted. Not exactly in that order but we got it all in there. It was amazing. We saw some really cool stuff.
Some of my favorite stuff included Sequoia National Park, and seeing the giant Sequoia trees. It was like walking through a magical world with trees bigger than you can imagine. Also, we were at 6500 feet above sea level so there was 55" of snow. Sequoia National Park is in the Sierra Nevada and is very beautiful. We saw some mule deer that seemed very tame. At our camp site there were tons of "extreme bear warnings" that i think were total bullshit. The park ranger was telling us at the elevation of our camp site the bear were still active but i am pretty sure they exaggerate for all of the people from L.A. that don't know shit about bears and camping. I told one of the park rangers we were from Alaska so she would stop lecturing us about it.
Death Valley was really cool. That was the one place i didn't do any reading on prior to our visit. We camped at 190 feet below sea level and went down to badwater basin which is the lowest point in the western hemisphere at 282 feet below sea level. The night before we camped in Joshua Tree National Park and we were at 4,000 feet above sea level ( it hit 32 F) and then drove north and camped at 192 feet below and of course it was way warmer, Kind of cool how that works. Wikipedia reports badwater basin as the second lowest point in the world, but there were maps that we saw at badwater basin that showed different statistics. I don't know who to trust. hmm.
We went on quite a few hikes in death valley and one was to a natural rock bridge. This thing was really cool, very high and very big despite how photos look. But what good is a bridge if you cant use it and walk on top of it. So of course i had to climb it. It was a decent little free climb. Claire wouldn't watch me do it because there were some scary parts.
Another hike we went on took us on the west mountains of death valley and to a peak where we could see tons of other rock mountains (thats the best way i can describe them). Some of them look like piles of sand but were as hard as a solid rock and as rough as sand paper. I think at that peak we were at about 4000 feet above sea level and not far away is bad water basin. Thats quite the change in elevation.
After Death Valley we drove to a ghost town called Ballarat. It was pretty cool. We didn't exactly know what to expect, there wasn't a ton there. There is one guy and his dog that lives there full time and kind of keeps the place up. I didn't know this at the time but i guess Charles Manson and his family of followers use to stay there pretty frequently. kinda crazy.
We camped in Joshua Tree National Park at 4000 elevation - got a bit chilly, but i didn't think it was too bad. We saw a bunch of Joshua trees which are on their way to death with in the next couple hundred years. I did a little rock climbing there too and we did a few hikes there as well.
So i haven't had time to explore L.A. at all but will soon.
This is badwater basin, lowest point in the U.S. - it looks like frost on the ground but its actually salt - its a salt flat
This was on a hike in death valley - its strait out of the indiana jones movies
This is a joshua tree
No comments:
Post a Comment