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Death Valley
We woke early to find a couple of things had happened while we slept, a 6 point earthquake in the Napa Valley that'd caused quite a bit of damage and our eski had sprung a leak all over he back seat :-( until we get to a Walmart or some such to replace it we have few options so just bagged it with a garbage bag courtesy of the hotel and will deal properly later.
The plan today is Death Valley to Vegas. We set off at 8.30, first stop the local info centre for a map and advice on where to go, all very ably supplied along with a lot of warnings re the extreme temps to expect, water consumption etc which we have covered.
At 4000 feet there's a lookout into a deep crevasse. The view was spectacular all the way out and down to a flat sandy bottom. Even better was the view once we went out to the point via a rocky 4wd road off the paved lookout, truly a grand vista.
The road wound through the valley, up and down rising and falling up to 5000 feet at a time. Some sections are like giant roller coasters, steep dips and sharp turns, great fun :-). At each turn there's another spectacular view that has us reaching for yet more superlatives.
Mesquite dunes at sea level, from a distance look like carved pyramids. Close up they seem to go on for miles. Ten thirty am and we hit 98F, about 36C so still not too bad.
In less than a day we've gone from the highest to the lowest point in the USA, vast salt flats at Badwater baking in the dry midday 108F (42C) air. We wandered through a few more canyons before the road eventually took us out of Death Valley and on the road to Vegas.
We checked in about 5.30pm, pretty nice room & picked up our tickets for cirque du soleil tomorrow night. We went walking the strip checking it all out. There are characters all over the place, show girls, cat woman, batman, bumblebee etc etc all making a living by having their pics taken with them for tips. We grazed for dinner, a slice of pizza and a hot dog. The streets are seriously crowded and there's way too many smokers for comfort, the same goes for the casinos, can't believe they let smokers smoke just anywhere, breathing is quite difficult just walking through the hotel to go anywhere let alone making me want to gamble.
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