Aptly Named Death Valley
Woman in the Middle | August 19, 2015When it was 106 or 108 or whatever crazy temperature it was over the weekend at my house, it was 122 in the aptly named Death Valley. I live just four hours from Death Valley and have been camping there once. Sane person that I am, I went there with family and friends in the winter. That is when Americans tend to visit Death Valley. But don’t think that the place that has recorded the hottest temperature ON EARTH is a vacant wasteland during the summer, Oh it is not. Why? Because that is when all the people from foreign lands feel a need to visit!
For some reason, I was thinking about this this past weekend. Probably because the blast furnace like heat we were having reminded me that we live oh so to close to the hottest place ON EARTH. Apparently I was not the only person thinking about this. When I opened our newspaper yesterday morning, there, on the front page, was a story about all the crazy eager foreigners who visit Death Valley, the hottest place ON EARTH, in the summer.
Just this past weekend, when the temperature was 122, there were people there from the United Kingdom, Austrailia, Italy, Germany, France and Luxemburg. People were equating the temperature to that blast you get when you open a hot oven. But they swear that they are there for the scenic, stark beauty of the desert, not to experience the ridiculously hot temperature at the hottest place ON EARTH. Yeah, right. That scenic beauty is there in the winter, too, when the Americans stop by to see it.
Death Valley had over 120,000 visitors in August 2014 and 1.1 million overall in 2014. Clearly, summer heat does not keep people away. Apparently, people from other countries like to visit the national parks in the western part of the United States, including Grand Canyon, Bryce, Zion, and Yosemite. Death Valley is on the list as well. Many of these parks are with in a days drive from each other by rental car or tour bus. On a two week vacation, a tourist can visit quite a large number of these amazing places and take home many photos of scenic wonders. They can, if they are lucky, also take home a photo of themselves standing next to a digital thermoter at Death Valley which reads above 120.
Ok never been to death valley, don’t expect to ever go there it being in a different country but there are many places I would like to visit.
I’ve never been there either and I live in So. CA! Of course, I WON’T be visiting it in the summer as I had been in 120 degree heat before and it was not pretty. So, I’ll have to put it on my bucket list during the COLDEST time of the year. I wonder what it’s like then.
Well, it doesn’t snow there. It is in the 70s during the day in February I think.
Well then, winter it is!