White Sands, Saguaro, and Death Valley
This early morning post brought to you by a 5:00 am burro alarm clock.
White Sands National Monument
Along with Carlsbad Caverns, White Sands National Monument has also become one of my favorite places. The forecast called for rain, but since a trip to White Sands would only add a few minutes to our drive to Tucson, we decided to swing by just in case the rain held off. Luckily for us, the weather was perfect when we arrived! Blue skies, puffy clouds off in the distance, and cool temperatures. I picked up a used sled from the gift shop and we drove out to the dunes. Pro-tip: you can sell your sled back to the gift shop after you’re done using it, if you manage to keep it in one piece.
We hiked to the top of a dune and did our first few sledding test runs. SO FUN.
If you find yourself at White Sands and want to sled fast, invest in the $1.99 board wax that they sell at the gift shop. Waxing the sled after every two or three runs really helped us pick up speed.
Not too far into our time there, a chunk of the sled snapped off while Evan was on his way down. Turns out it wasn’t a problem, though. Broken janky sled still did its job. And apparently breaking sleds is pretty common, because there’s a sled graveyard/dumpster in the parking area.
The sunset was beautiful, but difficult to capture in photos. The dunes changed colors as the sun went down. It truly felt like we were on another planet.
Saguaro National Park
Our next stop was Tucson to check out Saguaro National Park. My friend Lisa happened to be in Tucson at the same time as us, so we spent the night with her and she joined us for a hike up to Wasson Peak the next morning. Saguaros are the classic American desert cactus and they’re HUGE. Much bigger than I’d expected. We signed our trail names in the log book at the summit (I’m Jukebox forever!) and saw one name we recognized from the PCT. I doubt it was the same Honey Pot that we met on PCT, but hooray for coming across other folks who are using a trail name.
Death Valley National Park
After Saguaro, we headed towards our last national park of the trip/another one of my favorites: Death Valley. We spent a night in Vegas (barf, I hate Vegas. Except for the tasty breakfast I had at VegeNation) and drove the last couple of hours to Death Valley the next day. We arrived just in time for sunset.
We spent yesterday cramming as much into the daylight hours as we could. Death Valley is the biggest national park in the contiguous United States, and the driving distances between attractions are pretty long. Since we didn’t have a whole lot of time, we only saw a tiny fraction of what the park has to offer. We managed to make it to the Devil’s Golf Course, Badwater Basin, Artist Palette, Sidewinder Canyon, and Mesquite Dunes, which is a lot considering we were only there for one day. The highlights for me were Badwater Basin (because I love big, open spaces) and Sidewinder Canyon (because I love slot canyons).
Today, we finish the drive back to Oakland. I’ll pick up my car on Monday and start a three week long temp job on Tuesday. As sad as I am that the current adventure is over, I feel incredibly lucky to have been able to spend six months doing this. Six months! It’s hard to believe. But after six months of not being in one place for more than a few days, I’m ready to be settle down, at least for a little while.
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