We left Hurricane and headed for Death Valley via Las Vegas. This city has never really held much attraction for us so as you can guess we didn’t stay there. We may have had it been the end of the day as we’ve been told that the best way to see Vegas would be at night. Instead it was the middle of the day and stinking hot. We pulled into a gas 
station for gas and discovered 
the on ramp was closed and the directions I was given to get back onto IS15 didn’t seem to be working. We stopped and asked the first person we found - a kiwi from Geraldine. Luckily he was able to point us in the right direction and we headed for Pahrump where we stayed the night.
The plan was for an early start so that we would get through Death Valley before the hottest part of the day and by some strange occurrence it happened.
I 
don’t know why I have always wanted to go to 
Death Valley as it is really just 100’s of miles of nothing. And very hot nothing at that. But it was strangely beautiful in a barren killingly hot sort of way. We saw a coyote trudging wearily across the burning sands in search of shelter or water or maybe both. What a hard life he has merely to exist. Or maybe he was just looking dejected because Roadrunner had been about. (Wylie Coyote and Road Runner are my favourite cartoon characters). We stopped at Badwater, so named as the water is very salty and an early explorer’s mule refused to drink it. It is also the lowest point in the USA at 282 feet below sea level. We carried on eventually arriving at the visitor’s centre where we enquired about Scotty’s Castle (and saw Road Runner). To go there added another 80 odd miles to the days travelling and Marty had seen all the desert he needed and so I have put that on the still to do list.
The 45° temperatures had sure depleted the body of fluids (our own supplies gone by Badwater) so we stopped at Stovepipe Wells to replenish. Marty drank 2 - 32oz cups with hardly a pause. I managed one. Had a chat with a couple of Harley riders then headed on our way. Gas was getting low but at $5.19 a gallon Marty decided that we could make it out of the park with what we had. Thankfully he was right and we made it to Lone Pine. Met up with our Harley friends here and luckily had a discussion with them on our travel plans or we would have ended up in Yosemite instead on Bakersfield for the night.
Bakersfield came and went as Marty thought that it would be best to stay on the west side of town so we rode passed all the motels on the eastern side and then discovered that there were no others so we ended up in Buttonwillow for the night. A one horse town just off the 5.
We had travelled nearly 400 miles in stinking hot weather so as soon as we checked in I was off to the pool to cool off. It was heaven.
We found an Indian Restaurant near the motel so headed there for dinner before crawling into bed.
station for gas and discovered 
the on ramp was closed and the directions I was given to get back onto IS15 didn’t seem to be working. We stopped and asked the first person we found - a kiwi from Geraldine. Luckily he was able to point us in the right direction and we headed for Pahrump where we stayed the night.
The plan was for an early start so that we would get through Death Valley before the hottest part of the day and by some strange occurrence it happened.
I 
don’t know why I have always wanted to go to 
Death Valley as it is really just 100’s of miles of nothing. And very hot nothing at that. But it was strangely beautiful in a barren killingly hot sort of way. We saw a coyote trudging wearily across the burning sands in search of shelter or water or maybe both. What a hard life he has merely to exist. Or maybe he was just looking dejected because Roadrunner had been about. (Wylie Coyote and Road Runner are my favourite cartoon characters). We stopped at Badwater, so named as the water is very salty and an early explorer’s mule refused to drink it. It is also the lowest point in the USA at 282 feet below sea level. We carried on eventually arriving at the visitor’s centre where we enquired about Scotty’s Castle (and saw Road Runner). To go there added another 80 odd miles to the days travelling and Marty had seen all the desert he needed and so I have put that on the still to do list.The 45° temperatures had sure depleted the body of fluids (our own supplies gone by Badwater) so we stopped at Stovepipe Wells to replenish. Marty drank 2 - 32oz cups with hardly a pause. I managed one. Had a chat with a couple of Harley riders then headed on our way. Gas was getting low but at $5.19 a gallon Marty decided that we could make it out of the park with what we had. Thankfully he was right and we made it to Lone Pine. Met up with our Harley friends here and luckily had a discussion with them on our travel plans or we would have ended up in Yosemite instead on Bakersfield for the night.
Bakersfield came and went as Marty thought that it would be best to stay on the west side of town so we rode passed all the motels on the eastern side and then discovered that there were no others so we ended up in Buttonwillow for the night. A one horse town just off the 5.
We had travelled nearly 400 miles in stinking hot weather so as soon as we checked in I was off to the pool to cool off. It was heaven.
We found an Indian Restaurant near the motel so headed there for dinner before crawling into bed.
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