Road Trip Summer: California Highway 395 through Death Valley
Wildrose Charcoal Ovens
Death Valley, California
Watercolor on paper, 11.5” x 5.25”
You know how it is.
You tell your travel buddy in June you’ll take a road trip with them in September.
By the middle of August, you’ve got a broken ankle, but all the travel arrangements are made, and you can’t back out now. So off you head in September with your crutches and your Darth Vader boot into the Mojave Desert and beyond.
Anyway, that’s how my summer went.
My best travel friend and I did a loop tour of California Highway 395, crossing east from the Central Valley over Tehachapi Pass, through the to the western edge of Death Valley National Park, then north on CA 395 to CA 88 and Carson Pass.
Visiting Death Valley with a broken ankle in September might have been a small mistake.. California’s summer doesn’t end because the calendar says it’s almost fall. We drove through 115 degree heat in the valley below the Panamint Mountains, stopping (but not getting out of the car) in the ghost town of Ballarat, where the car thermostat briefly topped out at 118.
“118 degrees Fahrenheit is too damn hot!”
Too get a bit of cool, we headed into the high country to Wildrose Canyon (we saw wild burros!). We spent the afternoon in the shade painting the charcoal kilns that once produced charcoal that was shipped via mules to smelters 25 miles away.
Despite the heat, I love Death Valley. The name may be morbid, but the views are tremendous, the history of the land deep and rich. The landscape is one I’d love to paint over and over.
Just not at 115 degrees.
Approaching the Panamint Mountains
Death Valley, California
Watercolor on Paper, 8" x 10.5"
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