Golden Day

We made a spontaneous decision to move quickly this morning and drive up to Zabriski Point and watch the sun rise over Death Valley. We skipped breakfast and just grabbed our cameras and jumped in the car. We managed to get there before sunrise and took some worthwhile pictures, but the reality is always better than the photo. The two dimensional picture can't really show the grandeur and scale of a thing.

The pink mountains on the far side of Death Valley are the Panamints.

We got back to the R-Pod and finished our morning. I did my meditation, Spanish lesson, and made breakfast burritos using some of the held out beans from last night's dinner. Russ took care of some computer business (Facebook?) and was relaxing at the table. This is such a typical scene for us, that I felt like I should take a picture of it too.

Relaxing with his new book.

We drove south and parked by the road near the trailhead, because the parking area was full. The hike we chose was Golden Canyon-Gower Gulch Loop Trail with the spur to Red Cathedral. We ended up doing about 7 miles, an estimate because on the way back from the spur, we started talking with another hiking couple from Vancouver, Canada and missed our turn onto the Gower Gulch trail and had to retrace our steps. The hike was amazing. I find that I really miss the qualities of desert hiking. It smells so exotic to me, like sage and dust. The wind was fierce; it could really blow us off the trail if we weren't careful, plus we had to protect our eyes from the dust it kicked up. The wind kept us cool and comfortable though, it was a pleasant day to be outside. I was extra glad to have my poles with me, they helped me stay balanced in the wind on the gritty trail.

Red Cathedral. We ate lunch here.

From the high point. You can see the valley floor (our truck is parked down there)!

Gower Gulch had some nice mineral colors in the rocks.

When we finished up, we finally got a shower! We've been careful to not over use our fresh water supply, but since we are only two nights from leaving and refreshing our tanks, we planned to clean up at last. I didn't realize how much I appreciated being clean until spending a week dirty. We then went out to a fancy dinner at the Inn at Death Valley. Yummy. Plus I didn't have to cook anything or clean up the trailer afterwards.

Feeding the (clean) hiking beast.