Death Valley to Las Vegas

The mountains at sunrise from the Hotel car park at 5.45 a.m.
13 degrees with promise.




There was an 80 mile run to start with to get to Death Valley itself. In Death Valley we stop at Furnace Creek to water and hydrate properly, we now had a 2-3 hour ride depending on stops to get thru Death Valley. Gatorade, water and salted peanuts for breakfast then.




Well once again words fail me really, this is just the biggest landscape I have ever seen, brown, dusty, very little greenery and Hot by jove hot and dry, you could feel your throat drying up.

There would be few places to get out of the sun once we were in the valley so all systems go belt up and off.
I was able to (safely) take many photographs whilst riding, the straights were 10 minutes long, hopefully you can see some of what I mean.
There are too many photos of similar landscape to post but being there and taking photos was the only way to take in the enormity and extremeness of this place.




Tourists wave at you as they come the other way in their air conditioned car, they are nearly out of the Valley at our end, Rangers shake their heads at you as you pass them and that really gives you confidence.

At Shoeshone we start to show minus meters on the sat nav elevation, first single figures then quickly up to minus 75 meters (remember this is meters below sea level), I got a photo of minus 89 meters (bottom left corner of the sat nav) and finally I saw minus 110 meters.
So technically I am under water at this point.



You might just be able to the “Sea Level” sign on the mountain side, I had no option but to shoot into the sun, the thing in the top left of the picture is the roof of an RV I sheltered under and obviously made a bad composition.



The place says it all Badwater Basin


It seems that places in California so far are named after either the men who pioneered / found the place or some obvious statement about it, so this is a salt water plain, at the bottom of a valley, at minus 85 mtrs with a creek and hence the name Badwater Basin.














The Bike is holding up and looking good






We took time out and respite at the Crowbar Inn, what a brilliant place, the waitress was really bubbly and must have been used to seeing dishevelled bikers, as the first drinks just disappeared as we all just swallowed like camels.
Free re-fills all round and strawberry milkshakes for some.

One Misquite Chicken Salad and Orange juice in a jam jar later and we are back on the road with 80 miles to go to Vegas.













We arrive in Vegas and it is even hotter than Death valley was, 41 degrees as we sit at every set of traffic lights into Vegas, then we see our hotel complex and all is well, shower and beer is only ½ hour away.