Hello from Page AZ
Monday Evening – November 18, 2019 (Fourth post of this travelogue)
We are at a Holiday Inn Express in Page, AZ (link to Google Maps)
{google_map}36.907099, -111.476784{/google_map}
As we have said many times in this blog, our hotels of choice are the Holiday Inn properties. Over the years I/we have spent a lot of nights and have achieved the Platinum Elite status several times in the past. Last year I/we spent over 60 nights in HI hotels and this year will be over 40 nights. That includes my NTT travel as well as our personal travel. Out status gets us the best rooms and the points pay for several nights a year. Last night we stayed in St George, UT and our room had a Jacuzzi bath tub and a fireplace!
I have also mentioned that the primary driver for this travelogue documentation is for our reference and entertainment. . On this trip I have searched our blog many times for background information. The platform I use for the blog is WordPress (hosted on our GoDaddy site) and it has amazing search power. It is a ton of fun to go back and read about some of our past travels.
I had mentioned that I would document our Death Valley experience. Last Tuesday (11/12/19), we did a round trip tour of the southern part of Death Valley. We drove from Pahrump to Shoshone and then took the southern Death Valley entrance that took us to Badwater which is 282 feet below sea level. One of the information signs explained that the very low humidity (and very little rain – 2 inches per year) yields the barren salt flats. If there were more moisture the area would be a lake.
On next DV stop was Artist’s Palette. This is a 5 mile drive through beautiful canyons. About midway through the drive, a beautiful rock formation exhibits many colors which result from different types of minerals – hence the name Artist’s Palette. The day we observed the formation, the lighting was not perfect, but the different colors were quite visible.
From there we drove to the Furnace Creek Campground area. This area has many buildings adjacent to the campground and several displays of borax mining equipment. Since we had been there a couple of times, we did not spend a lot of time there. We did drive around the campground. It is basically dry camping. There were not many campers in the park (not unexpected given the November time frame). Speaking of “campers”, we have noted a much larger percentage of truck campers on this trip as compared to past observations. I don’t know if this is unique to the area or if folks are going back to that kind of camping unit.
Our last major stop was a drive (long and twisting) to Dante’s View. This is an overlook that is at 5476 feet. From this point you can see a significant portion of the southern part of the park. It is interesting that Dante’s View is almost exactly above Badwater.
Our tour took most of the day and we drove over 200 miles. We have said that Death Valley would not appear on our bucket list (if we had one), but once you experience it, you really want to return and enjoy it again. We have been fortunate to have done the park tours in the early spring and late fall. Summer could be a very marginal experience since the temperatures often reaches 120 degrees!
After we left the park we took a different route back to Pahrump (via Death Valley Junction).
Lots more to talk about, but it will have to wait for the next post.