Flood waters in Death Valley

Friday, July 13th, 2012

We packed up this morning and pulled out of the Frasers around noon today.  We headed our car toward the Hoover Dam which was about 2 hours away.  We arrived and signed up for the Power Plant Tour- we watched a short movie and if you have never seen the Hoover Dam and get a chance to go, DO IT!!  It is an amazing feat that they accomplished with it being one of the 7 engineering marvels of the world.  They started building it in 1931 and finished it in 1935- 2 years ahead of schedule.  Incidentally, we had visited with one of the Fraser's neighbors before we left and he had actually worked on building the Hoover Dam as a teenager.  He told us a story about how he ate his lunch sitting in a spillway....he caused a big fuss as so many people on top were trying to see him.  He was almost fired :)



In the generator room.

 Some of the things that we enjoyed about the Hoover Dam was its immense size.  Everything that we see seems to be big.  We got to go down 500 feet into the mountain and were able to see pipes that the water ran through in order to power the plant.  It was amazing....The dam itself is about 726.4 feet high.  They poured enough concrete on the bottom that it is 660 feet wide.   At the top of the dam, it is 45 feet wide with concrete.  We all enjoyed the Power Plant tour and they had great exhibits that showed the kids how the power from the water could be turned into electrical energy. 



Overlooking the "Hoover
thingy" as the kids call it. No
swearing allowed!



It was hot while we were there but the man giving the tour said that it had been 130 degrees a couple of days ago.  WHEW!!!  There were forecasts for some rain (of course, it is the desert :)  but until today, they had only received 1/4 inch of rain for the entire year.

After our tour, we headed back through LasVegas.  Unfortunately, it wasn't dark yet so we didn't get to see all the city lit up.  We did stop to eat at an Old Fashioned A&W diner.  We had big frosty mugs of Root Beer-yummy!  We did have to go in to eat here- I remember where they would come out to your car to take our order.  While we were here, a rainstorm did come through (again) and it did cool off the temperatures nicely- it was in the 80's.

Well...it was time to turn the car to Death Valley. If I am honest, this part of the trip was the one that caused me the most anxiety.  When we were at the diner, the owner heard us talking about Death Valley and immediately said, " Oh, you don't want to hang out there!"  And Dave asked someone if there was a place to stay between here (LasVegas) and Yosemite.  The man looked at him strangely and said, " You do know there is a desert between us, right??"  :)  YES, WE DID AND HERE WE GO!!!  Since it had rained, the temperature was in the 80's and was actually very pleasant in Death Valley.  We had fun getting some pictures by signs as we entered into California and Annika and Jonathan wanted to lay down on the highway in Death Valley (the road game again :).  We entered the actual park at 8pm and drove for a bit until we pulled over to the side of the road to take a little hike.  Chris was hoping to find a scorpion but all we actually found was a cute little lizard.  I am sure that we made enough noise to alert anything close to us within 1/2 mile!  The rocks were amazing and looked like they came out of a volcano.  There were black mounds all over- they might have been burned by the sun!  It is hot enough usually.  We had a wonderful sunset hike but did not stay out long....I did not want to be walking around when we could not see what we were stepping on.  Especially since Annika was in flip-flops (sigh, that is what she grabbed when we said get your shoes!)



Chris looking for scorpions



 As we headed down the road, we could see a lightening storm in the distance ( of course, it always rains in the desert!)  It was now dark and everything was going well.  We saw a campground and (briefly) discussed what it would be like to spend the night there. It was near the lowest elevation, -200 feet below sea level and after that, we started going up in elevation. Quickly, we came upon a huge sandstorm.  It was so crazy we could barely see the road.  After this passed, then we hit the torrential rains and I do mean torrential. The rain was driving so hard, we could not keep the windshield wipers going fast enough.  First, we were thinking that it was good to get our car washed after the sand storm but as rivers started forming in the roadway, we started to reconsider.   We might have stopped and waited it out but we were going up and wanted to get higher. At one point we were 5000 feet above sea level....what extremes. We were pretty white-knuckled as we could barely see the road with the dark and  rain, it was extremely hard to see rushing water.  We actually went through quite a few streams that were 6-8 inches deep and were praying that the rain would stop.  We did have the kids get their shoes on and talked a little about what we would need to do if the car started getting sweep away.  As we were coming out of the rain, emergency vehicles passed us going the other way.  We prayed for the cars that had passed us going the other way and we were sure glad that we had not  been going down in elevation.



Walking in Death Valley



Shortly later, the rain started again.  We think that the storm was following along with us which is why we were hit by it 3 times.  But this time, we were going back down in elevation.  We spotted a vehicle by the side of the road which was flashing its lights so we pulled over to see if they needed help.  It was a couple (in their 60;s) on a crotch rocket, in the driving rain and their motorcycle would not start.  After talking a couple of minutes, the wife hopped in the car with us while the husband headed back down the hill to "pop" the clutch. Fortunately, the motorcycle started and we followed him until we were back out of the storm.  The couple headed back the way they came and we actually caught up with them at the hotel in Lone Pine, CA.  There were a lot of bedraggled travelers coming out of the desert as well as some climbers starting their ascent on Mr. Whitney.  We were thankful that God watched over us and we were safe from many unknown dangers that I am sure we passed.  We stayed that night at the Comfort Inn and were very glad to fall into bed and sleep.  Thank you Lord for being with us this and every day.