Day 7, May 31 2002
Oakland, CA, to Las Vegas via Yosemite and Death Valley, 487 ground miles start to finish.
Hershey place had stopped doing tours after 9-11 so we headed to Yosemite and had a nice few hours drive through fairly flat California countryside, stopped and bought a cooler and filled it with water and soda in anticipation of a long hot day.
Yosemite was simply stunning, we ended up at 9,700 ft at one point and words don't do justice to the scenery there. We took loads of pictures though, only some of them shown below. They have managed to keep the place completely unspoiled, to the point where folks like us who didn't read the guide books ended up totally famished because there was absolutely nowhere to get lunch.
Next stop was death valley, totally awesome and very very hot. We measured 110 F at the lowest spot which was some 176 ft below sea level. We did the whole day with roof down, but I'm not sure we could have if it hadn't been a bit overcast. Saw the Borax works and watched the sun set. An odd phenomenon was a second sunset in the East which actually turned out to be the lights of Las Vegas 60 miles away. That was an incredible finale to the day, after driving through the emptiness of Death Valley to end up driving down the strip - talk about sensory overload. I basically had to focus on the car in front to avoid an accident and let David provide commentary. We're in the Stratosphere tonight and will stay another night but somewhere else because they are full here.
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| The closed Hershey place | Yosemite...-> | |||
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| Death Valley...-> | ||||
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