Mammoth Mountain and the dangerous Death Valley!

Mammoth mountain without snow, is like if you are in Las Vegas without money! That doesn’t fit. So we decided to stay there for a short time. But we saw a few mysterious things! The evening we arrived there, we jumped into a hot spring in the middle of nowhere! We had the information where it was from a dude and it was kind of: “go on the highway, after a green church turn left, pass a couple cow crossings and you should find it.” And we found it! It was beautiful to sit in that natural warm water until the sunset. The next day, we went hiking to see a cliff which is formed only with natural hexagons! Devil’s postpile, that how it’s called!

Before driving through the dangerous Death Valley, we decided to go first to a ghost town and sleep a night at the entrance of the park so that we can leave the next morning very early to escape the heat with our truck without air conditioning!
“Bodie”, they called the town after the name of the guy who discovered the gold mine… Unfortunately he died alone in the blizzard before he had time to find gold. After the gold rush the town passed from 10’000 to 0 inhabitants. Now, just the tourists, meters of snow, lot of wind and mouses are living in the town. Crazy to see the houses left deserted like they were 50 years ago. Beers in the saloon, child draws on the walls, rotten mattresses, nothing moved like if people had to leave their houses because of a war.

Alarm at 5.30am, we were ready to drive through Death Valley. Gallons of water in the trunk, we were ready for our fight against the heat. The landscapes were really crazy… no vegetation, wild donkeys (burritos), mountains and valley. While we were driving hours in the middle of the desert, we thought: “come at least we go hike 5min and feel the heat in the sand dunes!”
And BIIIM ! There in the dunes, Rogier stepped on a piece of glass or a sharp rock buried under the sand! We drove as fast as possible to the first ranger station and we hoped that they could put a few stitches in it but: No! We had to drive 50miles until the next Medical Clinic out of the park to put 12 stitches in my 7.5cm cut.
Fortunately we didn’t die there in the middle of nowhere, and next stop is Las Vegas!