Wednesday, November 18, 2020

We are leaving Ely, Nevada today going towards Death Valley, California.  The interesting part of this drive to me from Ely to Death Valley was that most of the drive through Nevada was over 6,000 feet.  We were driving through high dry desert.  Very high desert.  

We decided to enter Death Valley through Titus Canyon - a 27 mile gravel rocky road that takes 2-3 hours.  Fascinating.  Canyon is just outside Beatty, Nevada which is at an altitude of 3,307 ft.  So we are dropping 3307 ft in 27 miles.  That should start to give you a hint of what Titus Canyon drive is like.  We will be driving through rugged mountains, steep, deep valleys and an incredible narrow canyon passage for the finale.  The magnitude of this drive is hard to capture in pictures, but we will try.  There were also amazing subtle layers of colors but that too was difficult to show in pictures.  Clearly  you will need to go to see for yourself.  So worth it.  There were large and narrow bands of green, red, white and browns.

This helps explain the environment:  "Contained within Death Valley National Park's boundaries is a diverse rock record stretching throughout most of geologic time. From 1.8 billion-year-old metamorphic rocks exposed in the Black mountains, to recent playa sediments deposited in the valley basins, Death Valley possesses a superb geologic record. Paramount is the realization that Death Valley’s geology is an ongoing dynamic process. Wind, water, and plate tectonics are still hard at work, shaping the park on a day-to-day basis."

Entering Titus Canyon is a one way adventure for reasons to become obvious as you look through the pictures.  

I wanted to use a couple of stock photos to help show the layers of colors that are exposed as we initially traveled the mountain passes.  The greens and red swirling layers combined with white and dark brown were amazing to imagine how they were laid down over the milleum of years.  I would like to tell you what causes the green and red coloring, but it gets really complicated here and I think a full course in geology might even have our heads spinning.  So I am just going to be amazed at nature's hand in all of this.

Who is that guy?  I don't know.

Back to Bob and Lynne photos...want to take credit for ours now!

To help show the magnitude of the environment we did a "where's Waldo" picture taking again.  Look at this wandering folding layers in this curve.  Now in the second picture, find "Waldo" Lynne to see how large each layer in this folding actually is.

In this canyon find the "Waldo" subaru

Another canyon shot with "Waldo" Lynne with her hands raised high.

Get the picture?  everything is so much bigger than can be described.

When we came out of the canyon we were greeted with a granddaddy of  a sand storm in Death Valley.  Actually quite beautiful.  And an example of  on going geological transformation.

And I swung the camera around to me to show the wind on me....

So, Death Valley National Park is not just a vast flat hot desert, although we did stay overnight in that valley floor....lots of wind continuing.

Tomorrow, a little more exploration of Death Valley as we head out and then home!