We departed Las Vegas on Sunday the 15th and after filling up the bus we headed out on State Highway 95 toward Death Valley. More stark and spectacular terrain as we pressed on toward the desert on an anticipated 229 mile run for the day. The temp this morning was about 40.

After about 100 miles we entered the Death Valley National Park and descended to its sandy bottom. Here's one of the GPS units we have as we stopped for lunch in Furnace Creek ... reading -185 feet ... now that's pretty low.

Immediately after that we officially entered the park and stopped at the ranger station to browse and pay fees if any. This appears to be a quite new facility and is well manned and maintained with adequate RV parking.

When you leave Furnace Creek you actually go a bit lower and I think we hit -252 or something like that. The scenery is really awesome and the road appears to go off into nowhere ... pretty close.

After the valley part and still on Highway 95 we began the climb to our destination of Lone Pine California for the night. We climbed to over 8000 feet and stopped at a rest stop at that altitude for some shots and let the driver take some deep breaths.

Then with several stops to let the brakes and driver cool off we descended back to about 4000 feet and arrived at the Boulder Creek RV Resort in Lone Pine. This is a nice gravel park with some amenities and friendly staff.

That was an awesome day and these few pictures don't even come close to showing the nature of that drive.

Our initial intention at this point was to head around the south side of the Sierras and visit both the Sequoia and Yosemite parks from their western entrances. That all changed because the parks were still closed due to the massive storm that had hit a few days earlier so we then planned for "Plan B" ... always gotta have a Plan B.

So then the next destination would be Carson City to the north and then over the mountains westward toward the Placerville California area.