USA road trip, Post 2: Death Valley and Yosemite National Parks

On Sunday afternoon, September 15th, Mum, Dad, Roxy, Ben, Finley and I headed west out of Vegas with the aim of being at the sand dunes in Death Valley National Park, California, for sunset. Three years ago, Ben and I had done the same thing with Delle and got some awesome photos.

This time, however, our timing was slightly off and we missed getting to the sand dunes in time! You'll have to click on the link above to see what they're like. On this drive we had a little boy who napped very well for the start of the drive, but later on was (quite understandably) unhappy about still being in his car seat. I had gone to the trouble of finding out the exact sunset time in Death Valley that day, but hadn't factored in quite enough stopping/ feeding/ changing/ cuddling time, so it was already dark by the time we reached the dunes. Oh well, it's all part of the experience of road tripping with a baby!

Here are some family photos we took at the entrance of the National Park...

Once we knew we wouldn't get to the dunes in time, we stopped at a lookout that seemed surprisingly busy considering how deserted the roads felt. Only Ben and Dad had the energy to walk up the hill to see the view though! Did I mention that Death Valley is the lowest, hottest and driest place in North America? It holds the record for the hottest temperature ever recorded on Earth: 57 degrees Celsius in 1913. It would have only been in the 30s while we were there this time, but that feels plenty hot enough to me now that I've acclimatised to Canadian temperatures! Here's the view from the lookout...

That night we stayed at the Dow Villa Motel in Lone Pine, California. It was the same place Delle, Ben and I had stayed in 2010. This time we'd booked one room for all six of us, but due to an extremely fortuitous mistake on the part of the front desk clerk (he'd accidentally cancelled our booking weeks earlier when someone else had called to cancel theirs), we ended up getting the motel's last three double rooms for the same price! I particularly liked this little sign in each of the rooms...

View from the Dow Villa

Monday was our biggest driving day - about 6.5 hours (550 kms) in total. We were en route to San Francisco, via Yosemite National Park. Again we were a little unlucky with our National Park intentions! There were wildfires in parts of the park, although that didn't affect us other than seeing some smoke and burnt areas, and having to drive at 10km/hr for about half an hour while we passed through a fire zone. However, the waterfall we had walked to on our last visit to Yosemite, and decided to walk to on this visit too, had dried up due to it being the end of summer! We still climbed up on some rocks, saw a deer and some squirrels, and ate a picnic lunch in the park.

Passing through Bishop, CA

"Aussie" licorice at a shop in California

Yosemite National Park

Spot Ben and Finley!

Winding hillside roads after Yosemite

That afternoon we drove the rest of the way to the California coast, and stayed the night in Alameda, a town outside of San Francisco.

To be continued...