Re-Cap

After Kings Canyon we spent the next day driving and hiking through Sequoia National Park. We hiked to see the largest tree in the world (by volume), the General Sherman tree. We then drove through a tree, took a hike up the 354 steps to the top of Moro Rock (yes I counted every step), saw our first black bear of the trip, and tried to stay dry as we cooked a nice warm dinner in the pouring rain. It was the first time we had cooked in the rain since we left for our trip almost two months ago. What amazed us is when we arrived back at camp everything was bone dry. We assume that the storm just hit under us. We were at almost 8,000 feet above sea level while Sequoia National Park is at a lower elevation. We camped one more night and in the morning after packing up our stuff and putting the little guy back on the hitch we took off towards Los Angeles to visit the awesome Dr. Devon.

The drive to L.A. was only interesting because of the thousands of pomegranate, orange, plum, apple, nectarine, peaches and lemon trees.

Arriving a few hours later we pulled the little guy up to our friend Devon’s apartment in West Pasadena. From Thursday to Monday Devon toured us through Venice Beach, Hollywood and Rodeo Drive. Thankfully Devon drove the whole time because if you think New York and New Jersey driving is crazy you have never been to L.A.

It was sad to leave but when Monday rolled around we said our goodbyes and drove until we reached Death Valley National Park around sunset.

I had always pictured Death Valley as a lifeless and mundane desert, surprisingly, it is just the opposite.

Death Valley actually shocked me. Besides the thousands of miles of sandy desert there are also mountains and hilly terrain to hike and explore. That night we paid only five dollars to watch the moon rise over the mountains in a nice campsite just a few miles down the road from a section of sand dunes.

We did plan to wake up early to take some sunrise shots of the sand dunes however the sun didn’t rise over the mountains until about 7:30.So we slept for an extra hour and then  After  running up and down some sand dunes and taking a few photos we drove North to walk through two ghost towns. I took so many photos at the abandoned mining town, Rhyolite. The second town was located on a primitive twisty and mountainous one-way road. Thankfully we had to drop the little guy off at a vista point earlier because we would have never made it through back if we were towing. It was a very adventurous drive with beautiful views of the mountainous landscape. The ghost town, consisting of two abandoned buildings and a mine, was definitely not worth the drive. What made the drive worth taking was the last few miles when we drove through the base of Titus Canyon.

After picking the little guy up and having lunch we drove to the visitors center to drop our home off and head to the beautiful Artists Palette. The Artists Palette is the result from a volcano that erupted thousands of years ago. This one-way hilly drive took us to beautiful vistas of colorfully stained hills. We ended up hiking through these hills of blues, greens, pinks and purples for about an hour and then decided to pick up the little guy again and head South to fabulous Las Vegas.