Death Valley
It was a bit of a long drive to Death Valley so we broke up the trip with a stay in the town of Pahrump. If it just had a Planet Fitness gym (our usual shower spot) it would be the perfect place for a longer term stay! Everyone we encountered there was really friendly; The Nugget Casino was a perfect overnight parking spot and the local taco shop was incredible (and cheap!)
We were sad to leave after only one night but the warmth of Death Valley was calling and we wanted to try and grab a first come first serve campsite. We managed to nab the last one high up above Death Valley and reveled in having a picnic table and running water for the first time in what felt like a long time. Slightly embarrassingly, this was my first night doing our van life cooking. I made a pasta dish and for a first attempt it was good. We were also warm in the evening which was a real treat. Amy sat out reading under the stars while I got an early night.
Enjoying the warm evening and making pasta
The next day we woke up to sunshine and headed to Golden Canyon for a classic Death Valley hike. Even in mid-March it was really hot in the sun, I couldn’t imagine doing that hike in the heat of summer. We felt good though, it was nice to have dropped several thousand feet of elevation and the oxygen was flowing. The native people of this area prefer to call it Timbisha as Death Valley implies an area where nothing lives. This hike was fairly sparse but in the dry riverbed we saw a variety of plant life with some wildflowers starting to peek out. That afternoon we spent a long time looking for the campsite we’d booked with Lindsey. We went to the wrong one but the man there was really helpful in giving us an ice cream shop recommendation and we raced over to get some scoops. One downer of van life is not having a freezer so we can’t keep a tub of Ben and Jerry’s with us at all times. American ice cream is something else though - and the portion sizes are so generous. We got extra lucky because they accidentally put Amy’s scoop in a cup instead of a cone so we got the extra cup for free.
A fun mini-slot on the Golden Canyon hike
Looking over Death Valley
The campsite was the only one in Death Valley with a shower - but that was probably its only redeeming quality (though it was a big perk). It was more of an RV carpark and the pull ins were long and narrow so we were sandwiched between two giant rigs both running noisy generators kicking out fumes. Delightfully peaceful. There’s an improbable, and highly wasteful, green golf course in the middle of the park (despite the area getting no rain at all some years) and most of these RVs seemed there for a blowout St Patricks Day weekend of golfing. We decided to try somewhere different on our final night in the park.
Fun fact - Death Valley is the largest National Park in the US outside of Alaska. I’d have never guessed this. It’s just slightly smaller than Northern Ireland. This size shows through in the park management of backcountry activities. There are very few maintained paths and if you want to go wild camping (to use the British term for it - I think Americans would call it “backcountry camping”) you just have to park your car off the road; walk at least a mile from it and make sure you aren’t camped within 100ft of a water source. Easy! You can fill out a permit to leave on your dashboard which we did but it’s optional. There are zones where you can’t camp which are the popular spots for daytime visitors but beyond that - choose your own adventure.
Heading out into the desert
We’d spent the early afternoon hiking up a steep canyon full of wildflowers (and then a second canyon when it turned out we’d gone the wrong way) so we weren’t looking for anything too ambitious. To be honest, none of the rangers we spoke to had any kind of recommendations for us so we picked a hiking trail on the map and set off. About halfway there though we saw the edge of the Mesquite Sand Dunes and decided we’d rather pitch on the edge of the dunes rather than on a hiking trail in a rocky valley. It’d also mean we weren’t putting our tent up in the dark. Heading out - the contrast from the jam packed salt flats earlier in the day was immense and we both felt uncomfortable in the silence, it was as though someone was about to come and tell us we weren’t allowed to be there.
No one did though - we had a relaxing dinner accompanied by three big black circus beetles who appeared one by one the minute we dropped a grain of rice. They’re so named because if threatened they’ll stand on their heads and emit a stink. They seemed to be ok with us being there though and they happily fought over their grains of rice while we got ready for bed.
Just our luck it was cloudy so we didn’t get to see the desert stars but we had a gorgeously peaceful night although I did have some weird desert dreams.
We woke up the next morning to what sounded like rain on the tent and, once again, it was freezing cold - why?! It felt like changes in the weather were afoot and some of the areas we’d walked through the day before seemed to have the potential to get really muddy in the rain so we packed up and were out of there before 8.
Ominous clouds gathering as we left. I managed not to fall in the creek on the way back though!
Back to Big Buddy still safely parked on the side of the road (always a massive relief) we made the short (in Death Valley terms) drive to Ubehebe Crater which was on our must visit list. It’s geologically really young at only a couple of thousand years old. The 600ft deep crater was created when hot magma reached ground water and turned it into steam which expanded until it couldn’t expand anymore and then exploded. The wind was fierce at the top and we had a lot of fun slip n’ sliding down the loose gravel deep into the crater - and conversely slightly less fun dragging ourselves out two steps forward one step back. That was the first time I noticed that I felt fitter than when we started this trip though which powered me to the top.
You can tell the cold has caught up with us here!
Running up and down a crater is a great way to warm up though!
By this time the rain was really starting to come down and the temperature had dropped considerably so we made a beeline for the car and started the journey out of the park. Driving back towards the sand dunes there was sand blowing all over the road and visibility out in the dunes themselves looked really low. I was glad we’d left early to avoid having to hike back in the swirling grains of sand.
We decided to try and follow the warmer weather south to Joshua Tree national park and juust about made it to a petrol station before we ran out (apparently quite a common experience for the novice in this part of the world). We did slightly regret not returning to the town of Pahrump and exploring its delights more thoroughly but it’ll still be there if/when we pass through the area again.
Big Buddy wasn’t enjoying a huge hill so we stopped for a bit and found this enormous cactus on our way out of the park!
And this baby version of the same cactus nearby!
