There and Back

The trip was amazing. Death Valley is a place every one should visit at least once.

It was about nine hours to get there and that was after changing buses because the first bus developed engine problems before we had left the city (better then though than on the way). During the ride down the children kept htemselves occupied taking pictures, reading, following the trip on a map, and doing activity books. (No movies were shown, no music was played. Yes it is possible to do). As we entered the park a full moon was rising and so we only had the barest sense of what the landscape would be like.

On Wednesday we visited Salt Creek where some of the chldren managed to see a kit fox up close and personal, which the rangers said had not happened for fifteeen years. The rest of the time was spent studying animal tracks, learning about the plant life and water quality that made salt creek what it is. No one tried the pickleweed but apparently desert holly is edible. Aferwards we went to Salt flats which is 282feet below sea level. The location is also known as Bad Water, so named by a prospector who found the water but when he brought his mule to drink it it refused to do so . (Bad Water is actually a habitat for a rare mollusk). Because of the anount of salts that have been deposited there it is possible to walk out onto a sheet of salt which resembles a marble mosaic tile floor. The sheet curves in varying directions so if one imagines the yellow brick road only instead of bricks it is irregular polygons of salt then you have a good image of it.

The following day we visited Scotty's Castle and went back in time to take a tour. The castle is a living history museum so all the tour guides are dressed in period clothing (ours had seamed stockings, a fabulous cinch waist flared skirt coat and a snood) and speak in the present tense of 1939. While there we alos saw two young coyotes who do not know how to hunt. They are very cute and therefore are fed by the tourists despite Rangers' requests not to do so. During the summer the pups will be captured and released into an area where they will be able to hunt or if they cannot provede food for themselves they will be recaptured and put down. While this affected many of the children they (I think ) understood that it was far kinder to do this then to have the coyotes starve to death during the non tourist season.

From there we went to Ubehebe Crater which is also called Coyote's Burden basket and is where the Shoshone believe they first emerged. Then we went to one of the original borax mines and that children were confused by the treatment of the laborers of the time.

I should mention that it snowed early Thursday morning so we got to see a white Death Valley. And on the trip back we stopped and the children built a snowman.
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No reading done on the trio but I have started Northanger Abby today (and Carrie I am loving it). Instead I started a lace stole in the Old Shale pattern and I have 2/3's of it done.