Can you spot the Airstream?

More Death Valley photos

In these photos:

1. Artists' Palette

2-3. Zabriskie Point

4. View into the Valley

Death Valley, and Looney Tunes

We spent three nights in Death Valley, sleeping at the national park’s no hook-up Furnace Creek campground. At an elevation of -196 feet, it was blissfully warm, and also very cheap ($18 a night).

So we got excited, and by the time the third night rolled around, we had used up all our stored electricity. Which led to a stumble into the firepit (unlit, fortunately), a barbeque in the dark and a very no-fuss bedtime.

We enjoyed our campsite, which was dominated by an amazing honey mesquite tree and across from a fellow 1960s Airstream.

Apart from Badwater Basin, we enjoyed Golden Canyon, Artists’ Drive and Palette and most of all, Zabriskie Point.

Death Valley is a bit of a misnomer, as it does contain a fair bit of life. In our experience, it was very Loony Toons. By night, we heard the screams, howls and barks of coyotes, out on the hunt. And by day, a friendly roadrunner spent hours at our site, presumably waiting (very patiently, it must be said) for a scrap of food.
In vain, though, as you’re not allowed to feed the animals at national parks.

Under the sea

Badwater Basin, at Death Valley National Park, is the lowest point below sea level (-282 feet) in the Western Hemisphere. The mountain you can see in the background towers 11,000 feet above it.
It's also a pretty inhospitable salt flat, stretching off into the distance.

Lulu, nine months old

Lulu at nine months
Our little baby is now nine months old, meaning she’s been out as long as she was in.
And for most of those nine months, she has been on the road. ‘Una vida sobre ruedas’, like in the Pedro Almodovar movie ‘Carne Tremula’ when the protagonist – born on a city bus to a prostitute – wins a lifetime of free public transit in Madrid.

We hope she isn’t mad at us later for going on this big trip too early for her to have any memories – “But you’ve already been to Disneyland, Lulu”, we might say. Will she be a gypsy or a homebody?

Up until now, she’s been pretty patient.

But now this girl is on the move, and carseats are nothing but a hindrance.

So we do the best we can, finding ways to set her free in campgrounds, our tiny Airstream, The Venetian in Las Vegas (where every single person in a Japanese tour group took photos and videos of her crawling around), and the front seat of the car – while it is parked, of course – the steering wheel is a great way to practice standing.

Lulu lets us know when she’s mad, or teething (usually, these days), or just wants to make sure we know she’s there. Whereas Sophia’s scream was comparable to a fax machine, Lulu’s has been confused with the whistle of a boiling kettle. It’s amusing, unless it hits your eardrum at a certain angle.

There had been some concern that with Sophia as a sister, Lulu might appear in comparison to be a bit of a wallflower. Not so. She is ready for life and demands to participate in it, ASAP.

The girls are interacting more and more, really becoming friends and fellow extroverts. They are extra sweet to watch in the morning, when they are bright-eyed and entertaining each other…with the rest of us having to caffeinate to gear up for the day.

The girl can eat. Everything in sight, all the time. We are being a bit naughty, letting her taste things like ice cream, but it seems so unfair to let her watch the rest of us enjoy nice things.

Unfortunately for me, she has no idea what to do with a bottle, or a sippy cup. But normal cups and mugs work fine, so we’ll have to work with that.

Lulu is Not Blonde, but has hair that is light brown and slightly wavy with olive-y skin. She will be more like Daniel.

Despite that, though, Lulu is very much a mama’s girl. I think it will be a shock for us both when I go back to work.

She has spent her entire life with her entire nuclear family. We hope that compensates for her slightly strange upbringing so far.

I certainly can’t complain, it’s been so nice to be a stay-at-home mom, even if our home has been on wheels.

Mojave National Preserve

Mojave Desert
Now this place is pretty desolate, at least it was for us…even as we are actually hitting a region (the deserts) at peak season.
I had been really excited to visit Kelso Dunes, which are singing dunes that boom and hiss when you slide down them. But there has been so much rain that the sand is too wet. Darn.

For us, the best part of Mojave National Preserve – which differs from national parks in that hunting is allowed – was Kelso Depot, a restored Mission Revival style train station along the Union Pacific Railroad. In its heyday, during the 1940s, the depot was host to trains carrying a daily load of 2,500 tons of low-grade iron ore hewn from a mine nearby. Boasting a reliable source of water in the desert, the station served Union Pacific employees as well as local residents.

If you've ever wondered how settlers went about naming places, here's what happened in Kelso: two guys put their names and that of their friend in a hat. The absent man (Kelso) won, and thus the town was christened.

Now, the Depot has been converted into one of the preserve’s main visitor centers, with the café reinstated to feed and water tourists and locals alike.

Trains still run through, though, and boy is it exciting to see those super-long freight trains close-up. Having breakfast at the cafe, you can start to imagine what it was like back in the day.

Unsure of where we were going to sleep that night - having decided to give the main campgrounds’ high altitude and dirt road access a miss – we stumbled upon an RV park that had fallen into disuse. Apart from the three or so residents, all of whom work at the Depot or on the railroad, the place is a ghost town – no toilet, no electricity, no water, nothing.

But there we stayed. All we had to do was give Julia, who runs the bookshop at the Depot, $10, our record low lodging spend!

Having enjoyed a chat with Larry, who told us we could indeed stay, we invited him in for a drink. What a guy. A former employee at the resuscitated Roy’s Motel & Café in Amboy along Route 66, he knows everything about the area.

We hard all about how Brad Pitt had offered to buy Amboy, how big the mark-up on Snickers bars is, how delicious the water at Kelso is, and what it’s like to grow up a Seventh Day Adventist.

Daniel said the whole experience reminded him of the movie ‘Baghdad Café’.

It was good to be back to basic camping, able to see the stars and enjoy a truly silent night, mostly alone in the high Mojave Desert.

A real oasis

Thousand Palms Oasis: Coachella Valley, California - this oasis in the middle of the Mojave Desert is fed by groundwater forced up by the San Andreas Fault. The two groves of palm trees and the oasis ponds have been left completely untouched, not an ice cream stand in sight.