Desert flowers after a wet spring
No one claimed bragging rights this week, although Travel Luver named the place...but along with a few other places it reminded him of. But it is Death Valley, home of Wiley Coyote and the Road Runner; of the Twenty-Mule Team Borax commercials, and the long-running Western series Death Valley Days, which included Ronald Reagan's last performances as an actor.
The name calls up images of dry desert and parched cattle skulls, but it's actually a quite varied environment, or series of environments. Nearly unpopulated by humans today, for many years the area now controlled by the Park Service had a number of villages clustered around the one serious industry: mining borax. The park is mostly in California, but sticks a bit into Nevada. The pictures below show the park in some of its incredible variety.
Birds at a campground at Stovepipe Wells
Badwater, at 282 feet below sea level, is the lowest point in the United States
Dunes near Stovepipe Wells
Desert Holly
The Devil's Golf Course
And, of course, the Road Runner and Wiley
Tune in tomorrow for a new puzzle: Where in the World is Gumbo?
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