Death Valley

Today started positively, with a celebrity sighting. We hit the buffet breakfast in Paris - unlike your normal buffet, this thing was huge. I was standing in the crepe queue when I look up and see Holly Madison, from Girls of the Playboy Mansion fame, and Hugh Hefner's previous number 1. Woohoo! She had smaller boobs than I expected. Obviously needs more crepes.

After checking out and loading up the red Postman Pat beast, we headed towards Death Valley. It can often reach 50 degrees there, so we were aiming to miss the heat of the day. But failed. It also has the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere, Badwater, at 282ft below sea level, or 85.5 metres. It was stinking hot, about 46 degrees, and the brake pads didn't appreciate it.

It's very barren - not much can grow in the heat - and it's not actually a valley, but a basin caused by earthquakes.

Death Valley has the highest recorded temperature in the USA - 134 degrees fahrenheit, or 56.6 celsius. Pretty hot. The landscape was quite moon-like at times, and there's also sand dunes, salt flats, and mountains that look like they've been transported from Morocco or something. Very other-worldly.

We're beginning to realise why a lot of Americans don't have passports - we've seen such a small chunk of the country, and yet the variety and distances are huge.


We found a hotel in Bishop, California, and bunked down for the night.