04.12.2003

Death Valley

is really worth a visit! It is just a good two hour drive from Las Vegas (if you stick to the speed limit, of course), but be warned it's a real borring drive as it takes you a long time to drive through an annoying wide valley were really nothing is happening - we, europeans, are not used to such wide and open areas :) Anyways, after the drive you are presented by the breath taking appearance of Death Valley. Fortunately, Ovidiu gave us many good tips so we could really see a lot of interesting things in the valley on just one day. We entered through Amargosa Valley und drove early in the morning to Zabriskie Point were you have a great overview. From there we went straight to Furnace Creek to pay the fee and then down to Badwater of course. A great part of the valley is below sea level and Badwater is the lowest elevation in the United States with 86 mtr below sea level! From there we drove to the Natural Bridge canyon and started hiking there until we could see the natural bridge - really very interesting to see something like this in real nature. Back to the car and further on driving through the artists palette where you see the hills in different colours from green to red and many more. Incredible. Then we drove to the Golden Canyon and hiked a little bit on the interpretive trail. Again, interesting. Unfortunately, we didn't have the right equipment for hiking with us - like good shoes etc. - so we only walked a little bit through the canyons. But when ever we have the chance to come back, we will go hiking there more! One thing I really liked about Death Valley is the silence. You don't hear anything! There are now animals - apart from some no noise making creeping things - and there was nearly no wind and there weren't hundreds of tourists - so it was really silent. Great! And the temperature in November is ok, we had 23C - not comparable to the temperatures in summer when they hit 40C. Puh. Then we drove on to see the sand dunes - again, simply amazing and then we drove through the Emigrant Canyon and back through the Mud Canyon as it was getting dark again. Afterall a very interesting day, we saw a lot and we learnt a lot - and we drove a lot! Everything looks so close together in these deserts, but if you start driving and haven't reached anything after one hour driving, then you start to imagine how nig everything is there. Anyways, if ever an ApacheCon will take place in Las Vegas again - we will do some serious hiking there. Promised. 3:40:47 PM

New Food

Yesterday, the remaining books of the Dune series arrived. Now I have the four books from Frank Herberts son, Brian, and Kevin Anderson on my table telling something about the time before the original Dune novel starts. Unfortunately I still haven't finished Cryptonomicon yet - but it's the best book I ever read; And I've only two hundred pages to go before I can start with the preludes to Dune. 11:17:28 AM