Death Valley
For Thanksgiving in 2004, the Hanlons invited
us, or at least those of us old enough to be interested and young enough to be
interested in spending a long weekend with the parents,
to Furnace Creek Ranch in Death Valley, California. We were not surprised that
none of our adolescents elected to come. A little hurt, maybe, but not
surprised. Everyone says that it is perfectly normal, and it is obvious that we
cannot remain all together indefinitely, but . . . why not?!
Here are most of us, at about 200 foot below sea level at the edge of an
enormous mosaic of salt called Badwater. Brendan is next to
Alex. We had just explored Badwater, which much to Russ's surprise actually
had water in it. You can see the shallow pools between crusts of salt in the
photo. He had never seen water in Badwater during any of his other visits to
Death Valley. Apparently it had rained hard in August, the first storm in 20-odd
years, and all the water that had drained into Badwater had yet to evaporate.
Here is another photo from the same trip, this
time including Marie-Hélène,
who took the above picture.
Death Valley is above all (or should we say below all?) a splendid natural
world.
So here are some examples of the visual feast that we shared before and after
our very civilized Thanksgiving Dinner at the Furnace Creek Inn.
First, above, the sand dunes which cover only a portion of the Valley
floor, looking east as the sun set behind us.
Then below is the odd volcanic crater that we visited, and the boys climbed
down (all the way) and back up (all the way, but a little slower!).
Next on the right is the moonrise caught by Marie-Hélène
out of the car window on the way back to the ranch from the dunes.
There were of course cute pictures of the children, as there are whenever
they play and we have the camera ready:
Finally, the high spot of the trip for the children was this engaging
creature who waltzed out on the rocks we were standing right next to!!
In case anyone out there does not recognize our furry friend here, it's a
tarantula, about the size of the palm of your hand and very comfortable here,
thank you very much!
