From Salt Creek to Badwater

It was another day of wandering under clear blue skies. The temperature warmed up to (and hovered in) the low 60s, and the wind was howling.

Salt Creek was my first stop of the day. I walked the boardwalk trail to the halfway point, then stepped off and followed a faint trail on the ground, crossing salty ground between several different kinds of plants. Every so often there were larger bodies of water, ponds or a widened creek. The ducks playing in the water quickly flew off when they heard my footsteps.

I followed the road across Daylight Pass, crossing back into Nevada for a quick trip to Rhyolite, a ghost town and home of the Goldwell Open Air Museum. The sculptures were accessible and touchable. The structures in the ghost town were another story, blocked off with barbed wire. That's too bad because one of the buildings was a bottle house. I would have liked to see it from the inside. I was able to walk into a bottle house on Prince Edward Island many years ago; seeing another one would be fun.

Back in Death Valley, sliding down and climbing sand dunes called to me. I was hoping that the seemingly constant wind would have scoured the dunes of footsteps. Nope!

About an hour before sunset I headed back to Badwater, thinking I'd try to catch some late day light. The sun dropped behind the mountains quickly leaving a subtle edge of pink hugging the peaks.

It was another (non-stop) good day.