In a Galaxy Far, Far Away. . .

Last day in the desert, and we took a trip to Jawa Canyon from Star Wars. 

It was so beautiful, and so crazy to be wandering around what looked like Tatooine.

This was a favorite hike.

Even though the main trail had quite a few people on it, we found a side canyon to explore and make everyone's Star Wars dreams come true.

We found our own Jawa.

(Look at those dirty legs on Peanut!)

Such a fun trail!

After Golden Canyon, it was time to visit the lowest spot in North America. Badwater Basin was kind of hot, and Peanut wasn't feeling well, so we didn't hang out for long, and Daddy-o and Peanut turned back about halfway through our little walkm(he'd woken up feeling sick, probably from too many s'mores.) We had joked before we got there that all you had to do is dig down a couple inches and stand in the hole, and then you'd be at an even lower spot, and as soon as we got there, we saw that a lot of other people had the same idea, haha. There were lots of little holes on the main path where you could stand just a few inches lower than the 282 feet below sea level.

The terrain was so cool looking.

The salt formations settle in these geometric shapes that go forever.

We were pretty impressed, and then, we took a closer look. . .

so beautiful!

After that, we just had a couple more stops. We drove through Desolation Canyon and the Artist's Pallet area. We paused at one spot where we could pull off the road and make lunch--we've gotten really good at the roadside/parking lot ramen or soup bowl lunches. It's more fun than sandwiches.

The colors were so beautiful.

And then we drove around to Zabriskie Point where we got some amazing views.

We'll be back to hike more of these canyons someday!

Peanut was feeling a lot better by this point and enjoyed the last stop. He's our kiddo who gets the most car sick, and just has a more sensitive stomach in general, so traveling is usually a mixed bag for him, but I think the good times outweigh the bad.

The Highs and Lows of Death Valley

Day two--we didn't actually go to the highest or lowest spots, but we got pretty close that day. And we had some other lows to deal with--like the fact that we didn't realize our tires were bald before we left on this trip. It's scary enough driving on the freeway when you need new tires, but several of the hikes we had hoped to do involved driving miles on dirt roads to reach the trail head. 

We made it about a half mile up the first dirt road and decided it just wasn't in the cards this trip, but there was still plenty of cool stuff to see.

Actually, just pulling off the road right there ended up being so fun. We decided to eat lunch and figure out what we could do instead of the hike we'd originally planned. The views were gorgeous--so much picture taking occurred on this trip. 

We wandered around looking for cool rocks, wildlife (didn't see anything), and anything else interesting.

The views as we drove around the park were pretty incredible--

it's like another world, for sure.

And our hiking choice for the day was incredible. We ended up driving up to the Ubehebe crater which was caused by a gas/steam explosion. There's a trail that goes all the way around the crater, so we did the loop and got views of it from all sides,

 as well as getting to see several other smaller craters in the area.

We were so curious about the almost white colored plants growing on the hills--

It's desert holly! It looks almost exactly like albino holly.

The trail was often gravelly and especially on the steep parts meant we were slipping backwards almost as much as we were going up.

We didn't go into the crater. There was a trail, but we all felt like the effort to climb back out wasn't worth getting the view from the bottom. Maybe we should have, but there are a couple of us who aren't so crazy about steep hills (and I am one of those couple 🤣.)

The boys both worked on the Jr. Ranger badge while we were there. It was a pretty fun one--very doable in a day, and just the right amount of needing to go see certain things, along with a lot of pages that could be done in the campground.

But one of the spots we stopped on our way back to the camp ground was the old Harmony Borax Works where they explain all about the borax mining that put the Death Valley area on the maps.

(We're a bunch of sign readers, every where we go. 😁)

The ruins were pretty cool.

And you can see the dry creek bed with the borax deposits.

It was so cool to see up close.

Nature is so awesome.

Camping in the desert in November turned out to be pretty much perfect. The night temperatures were in the mid to high 40s, and it heated up pretty quickly once the sun came up, so we were really comfortable in the day. Only down side is that there aren't many daylight hours to go hike and explore, but it wasn't too big of a deal.

After dinner and a campfire, we went to look at the starts back at the Borax works because our campground was a little bright. There were a lot of starts out, but I think you need to find a backcountry camping spot if you really want to get the best views.

Death Valley Sand Dunes

Over a year ago, we had started talking about doing a trip for Thanksgiving 2020--camping in Death Valley for a few days, Thanksgiving in St. George with my family, maybe some extra national parks. And then, Covid happened and we stopped planning anything at all. But a couple months ago, I brought it up again, thinking through how we could do this safely, and we finally decided to go for it. Of course, things had to get more complicated--with Utah cases rising rapidly (and so many people refusing to cooperate with precautions), and then CA recommending quarantining after travel. We almost cancelled the trip, or at least the UT part of the trip, several times in the last week. But in the end, we decided that we were taking enough precautions to make it reasonably safe and that the benefits for everyone's mental health were worth the tiny risk we might be taking.

So, we loaded up the minimal camping supplies we needed for a couple nights in the desert, most of our food for a week of travel, and set off on an epic adventure. It wasn't travel like we normally do it (Bean and I were the only ones who even went inside for a quick bathroom stop, no food stops at all), but we made it to Death Valley National Park with about 2.5 hours of sunlight left.

And that meant we had time to stop at the sand dunes before setting up camp.

These were absolutely incredible and I'm pretty sure the kids could have played around here all day if we'd had time.

So much fun!

We got them all jumping.

Pure joy.

And of course Daddy-o couldn't let this opportunity go by. He got the coolest photo, for sure.

We were off to a good start, and with a couple days of exploring ahead of us!