On the way to Death Valley

We again started our day with a visit to Elise' sister at the nursing home. Her sister was much more talkative than yesterday, but the bad news was that much of the talk had to do with paranoid delusions.
We left Los Angeles around noon and were happy to be on the road.

We were headed for Death Valley National Park and soon arrived in the Mojave Desert, where we were surrounded sometimes by flatland covered with tumbleweed and other plants but just as often by high hills and mountains, all brown or in some cases multicolored from different layers of minerals, and mostly bare except for occasional patches of green from scrubby trees and other plants. It was quite dramatic and certainly a change from Los Angeles. There were occasional signs of human habitation along the way but these were small - a gas station, a general store, occasionally a post office. There were signs warning of cattle crossings but we didn't see any cattle.

At about 5:30, we finally came to a campground at Panamint, which was only a collection of tourist services - a gas station, some cabins, a restaurant, and this campground. From a distance the campground looked like "primitive camping" at its most primitive - that is, no showers, port-a-potties for bathrooms, tables, and firepits and not much else, but we were pleasantly surprised to discover that although the campsites were as bare and treeless as the surrounding desert, there were, in fact, showers, flush toilets, and - to my amazement -even WIFI - all for just seven dollars a night!
Temperatures during the day were up to 100 degrees, but at night the temperature dropped to the midseventies -quite comfortable. Elise and I took a short walk to admire the wonderful scenery all around us and then called it a day.