7-25 Death Valley

There were tracks of wild burros around our campsite this morning.

We visited a ghost town, Ryolite, which had over 10,000 people at its heyday as a mining center in 1900-1910. The hotel and casino is intact, but not much else.'

We crossed two mountain ranges divided by a valley, and then Death Valley opened up below us, with more mountains far on the other side.

It was uncharacteristically cloudy in the valley, and the temperature was 103 vs. 120 or more on a typical summer day; plenty hot enough. The bottom of the valley is a salt plain, 272' below sea level, lowest point in the Americas. Plants are scarce throughout the valley. "Desert" has a new meaning, with a high standard. It seldom rains because prevailing westerlies cross three major mountain ranges which suck off all the moisture before the air reaches Death Valley. Nevertheless, it rained today enough to need windshield wipers when we were at "Bad Water", the low point.

We climbed over two more mountain passes to reach a valley along the foot of the Sierra Nevadas, which still have snow on their peaks. As we drove north, the elevation gradually rose to 8000', getting more forested and cooler.

Along the way, we happened on Manzanar National Historical Site. Turns out, Manzanar was one of the internment camps for Japanese-Americans during WW2. A Guard tower and barbed wire and a few buildings remain at the site, and the camp's high school auditorium is now the visitor center. A film with interviews of internees was very moving. It's well understood now that it was a mistake and simply wrong to intern people for no reason but their ethnicity. What I hadn't thought about was that it was directly contrary to the Constitution.

As we neared our campground in a high forest of Ponderosa Pine, it began to rain hard. And the temperature was only 53. But the camper is cozy warm with residual heat from earlier today.

Yosemite tomorrow, though the weather forecast is for more rain.