We thought we would go to Hoover Dam this morning and then head to Sequoia National Park.  BUT… fortunately nothing went wrong.  We just decided to change our plans.  We did get up this morning and drive just 15 minutes to Hoover Dam.  We wanted to take the Dam Tour and that required that you purchase tickets in person – not online like I initially tried to.  So we made sure we were at Hoover Dam when it opened and bought tickets for the first tour.  This was something that Charlie had really wanted to do on our cross country trip, so we were making it a priority. 

The kids enjoyed the tour at lot more than I thought they would.  We had a tour of the powerplant as well as walking through tunnels where the Colorado River had once been diverted while the dam was being built.  We viewed the river from ventilation shafts that are cut into the dam and saw the dam through safety inspection tunnels that are built into the dam.  At the end, we were able to walk through an interactive museum that gave a lot of information.  For instance, we learned that the building of the dam used 6.36 million square yards of concrete. 

Several people had recommended that we take the time to drive to Death Valley National Park.  Our next planned stop was to go to Sequoia National Park, but when I crunched the time numbers, it appeared that it wasn’t too far out of the way to go to Death Valley.  So off we headed.  In hindsight, we are all really glad that we went to Death Valley, but it took much more time than we were expecting.  I guess I thought we would just drive into it, hit the Visitor Center quickly, and drive right back out.  Instead, it took quite a while to get to the Visitor Center, and by the time we got there, it didn’t make sense to turn around to drive back out.  So that meant driving through. 

Death Valley is a HUGE park, and yes, it gets HOT in there.  It was 120 when we reached the Visitor Center.  Unlike some of the visitor centers we’ve stopped at, this one was excellent.  I found it very interesting to learn why Death Valley is so hot and dry.  They get on average, only about 2 inches of rainfall per year.  Evidently, the definition of a desert is an area that receives less than 10 inches of rain in a year and has a rate of evaporation that is greater than its rainfall.  At only 2 inches of rain per year and a rate of evaporation of 75 times its rainfall, Death Valley definitely qualifies!

Death Valley has a unique placement surrounded by mountain ranges: The Panamint Range lies to the west, The Owlshead Mountains to the south, the Armagosa Range to the east, and the Grapevine Mountains to the north. It is a narrow, lengthy, hole-in-the-ground with a depth of 282 feet below sea level. The Sierra Nevadas receive rain on their western side, so most of the rain has dissipated by the time it reaches Death Valley. This creates a “rainshadow” over Death Valley. Warm and dry air is captured in the valley and recirculates, continually being reheated, which just leads to hotter and drier air.

On our way out of Death Valley, we had to climb over the mountains.  In order to run the air condition in the back of the RV (back meaning anything behind the driver seat), it is necessary to run the generator.  Oftentimes it stays cool enough back there that it isn’t necessary to run the generator at all, but of course, that isn’t the case when its 120 F outside.  We turned on the generator, but a little bit later, the kids were asking us if they could turn it on because it was hot.  Knowing that we had already turned it on, we assumed that it must have turned itself off to prevent any overheating.  While going over the mountains, we decided to turn off the AC in the front area too, just to make it a little easier on the engine.  We definitely did not want to have vehicle problems in the middle of the desert.  Fortunately, we made it out of Death Valley without incident and headed toward Sequoiah National Park.

Rebecca