Las Vegas to Bishop CA, via Death Valley

Got a reasonably early start but a long way to drive today. Found a nearby Carl's Jr and found it nearly empty, then headed off from Las Vegas in a north-westerly direction, neither Pete nor I interested in returning. The lights are pretty, but they disguise a sick society.

At Beattie we turned in toward Death Valley after having a "rest" in the restrooms and a visit to the visitor's centre. We stopped at one point to view the valley and found it surprisingly cool (well not too hot, anyway). We proceeded and found ourselves at elevation 0 where we stopped for a photo. Here it was quite hot. We drove on through the Valley to Stovepipe Wells where we topped up with petrol, saw a number of ravens and what looked like an old drive-in theatre. We wondered why anyone would want to live there.

We then started to climb out of the valley on the other side and drove through Towne Pass into Panamint Valley which was an old dried up lake. There were typical cracked dry mud patterns. From there we could see the Sierra Nevada mountains in the background and they got closer as we approached Lone Pine. We stopped there for an ice cream and photographed Mt Whitney as close as we would get. Whitney is the highest peak in the contiguous United States.

Toward the end of the afternoon we finally arrived in Bishop. After a swim we walked the strip and chose Carl's Jr for dinner, walked some more then watched a little TV before bed.Read more