We awoke excited to reach Death Valley today, the first of our major destinations for this trip. We left the hotel around 9am under clear skies and a crisp temperature of 41 degrees. Rob told Michele not to worry about bundling up because once we reached our laundry location in Nevada, it would be 80 degrees!
Our trek continued west on I-40, slowly descending in elevation throughout the day. We had a 10 minute slow down due to very oversized cargo.
Our first leg stretcher was at 10:45am near Kingman, AZ. Back on the road we turned north off of I-40 onto US95. The road was in poor condition and the road noise was intense for the first 10 or so miles. It eventually smoothed out and we enjoyed the rugged landscape.
We soon caught views of the Colorado River winding its way through mountains and valleys before crossing over the Nevada state line at the Hoover Dam in Boulder City. With the new bridge in place since we last rode by on our Yosemite trip in 2017, one cannot see the dam from the road. We had a time zone change back an hour.
The Las Vegas skyline appeared around 11:20am.
Since today was a laundry day, we first stopped for lunch at Black Bear Diner in Henderson, NV. It was 80 degrees by then and very windy.
Although Henderson is next to Las Vegas, it is a clean city and has pretty palm trees. After a leisurely lunch we did our laundry at the nearby and highly-rated Oasis Laundromat that we had scoped out prior to the trip. The very large capacity washer and dryer handled our combined load within 30 minutes each.
After the laundromat, around 2:30pm, Rob fired up the GPS and saw that our arrival in Death Valley would be 6:15pm or so. How could that be? Michele's heart sunk that there was so much more driving left in the day. Rob knew something wasn't right and refreshed the route. Thankfully it changed to just 2 hours left with arrival after 4:30pm. Our route was I-215 to I-15 South to Nevada 160 West.
In Pahrump, NV we took highway 372 that crossed into California, which turned into CA-178. As typical of other crossings into California in the past, the minimalist sign read, "Entering California." We took this route all the way to CA-127 North, then CA-190 to Furnace Creek.
At 4:45pm we approached the park entrance and enjoyed the varying colors of the rock formations.
Michele checked us in to our cottage room. These new 2-room cottages were built
since we last visited in 2017 and are a nice change from our week of
hotels. They are lined up like a pedestrian-only neighborhood.
We went to dinner at the Saloon restaurant. Michele liked the little
coyote in front of the balcony and wondered if it had a name.
Rob joked that should she ask the servers if anyone has named the taxidermied animals in the room, nobody would want to be the server for the table with the weird lady asking about the stuffed animals.
We chatted about tomorrow's plan to visit the Visitor's Center and map out sightseeing for our first day of exploring the park.
Today's mileage was 336 miles. Total mileage for the trip so far is 2,627 miles.
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