day 5 - crator then back to vegas
This post is part 5 of the "trip-2006" series:
- day 1 - the long drive to vegas
- day 2 - down in the valley + speed trap!
- day 3 - the Racetrack !
- day 4 - us395 + the badwater road
- day 5 - crator then back to vegas
- day 6 - the long drive home
Last (partial) day in Death Valley, and we started off by driving out to Ubehebe Crator. This was the first time that I'd been to the crator that it wasn't extremely windy. Last September, David & I hiked the whole way down to the bottom & back up again. As soon as David saw that we were there he was telling Denise that he'd show her how to get to the bottom. Since the sun wasn't that high in the sky yet at 9AM, much of the crator was still shady, and quite chilly. We got to the bottom pretty quickly, and David had loads of fun running around on the dry dusty crator floor and commenting that he was standing in "dry mud". Instead of taking the crazy shotcut route back to the top, we took the official route, and it went alot more smoothly (it also helped that it was at least 40F cooler than in September), not to mention faster.
Afterwards, we cut south to Furnace Creek where David turned in his Jr. Ranger booklet, and got his Jr. Ranger badge. He wasn't all that excited by it, but it was cute, and he really came away with a good understanding of the park's plantlife & terrain. He can recognize Joshua trees, pickleweed & desert Holly, and he loves the sand dunes, salt pans & crator.
We had lunch at the Zebriskie Point parking lot, and then went on a short hike through the narrows. The drive back to Las Vegas went fairly smoothly, and returning the rental also was easy. We went to the Bellagio buffet that night. Unfortunately, we had to wait in line for over 90 minutes to get in, but David was amazingly patient & well behaved. The food was quite good overall, although incredibly overpriced.
This post is part 5 of the "trip-2006" series: