Update Archive | |||
| Archive 10/14 - 10/19/2004: | |||
| 10/14/2004 - Well, I finally hit the road. I left Sacramento on 10/14. I stayed the first night out in Fresno (thanks Tina and John!).
It was great to see the folks in the Fresno office! 10/15/2004 - Funny story, I stopped to get gas outside of Fresno... almost took out a pump. That'll get your pulse rate up! After that it was pretty smooth sailing. Until I hit the mountains. The Tehachapi's weren't so bad, it was getting into and out of Death Valley that took a year off my life. Luckily there wasn't any traffic to speak of, I was a serious slow-poke going up the mountains - I figure I averaged about 20-25 mph going up the Panamint Range on Hwy190... heater running full blast in case there was any chance the engine might overheat. I kept staring at the road ahead, knowing it had to flatten out eventually, but it just kept going up. At one point I hit about 10 mph and started to worry that if I kept losing momentum I would start to roll backward. I hit the top at Towne Pass (4,956 ft) and it finally flattened out... and then I found out what folks meant when they said it wasn't up hill that you have to worry about. Down hill on the side of a cliff when you swear you can smell your brakes burning and they are the only thing keeping you and the 5,000+ pounds behind you on the road. Holy crap that was scary! Oh, look. Up ahead is the Amargosa Range... (Daylight Pass 4,316 ft), thank God the down hill wasn't nearly as bad. No more hills for me for a while. Whew! 10/16/2004 - I spent the day tooling around Death Valley, (finding out that there were easier ways out of the Valley... oh well) taking in the sights. I don't think I would want to live here (to hot and to much freaking dust), but the desert has it's own beauty that is every bit as majestic and powerful as the ocean or the mountains. It's so wide open it's like living without walls. The sense of timelessness is strong, the desert hardly changes.. it'll be here forever, so if you want to pick a direction and just go, you can. Saturday night the wind came up, strong. I really wish I had one of those wind measuring things... in addition to the 27 temperature gauges I have lying around. 10/17/2004 - The wind blew all day Sunday. I was getting sea sick in the coach it was rocking so bad. The clouds started rolling in Sunday afternoon and the wind just kept blowing harder and harder. With all the sand in the air pictures wouldn't turn out very well, so I updated the website. I don't get any cell signal in the desert so I couldn't post the update for a while. It's kind of weird being so disconnected. 10/18/2004 - The wind finally died down to a pleasant breeze. We headed back out to Death Valley to hit some of the spots we missed yesterday. If nothing else, I'm getting my exercise on this trip. Lot's of hiking. 10/19/2004 - We're off to see my grandparents in Pahrump, NV. Catch ya later! New Pictures: CA | |||