That's a lot of water coming through.

Bye-bye landscaping

Friday

The morning after...

Clearing rubble from Hwy. 190 in front of the Furnace Creek Inn.

Road crews worked through the night scraping and clearing roads.

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Between the fresh snow in the mountains and a valley full of water, all that rain sure made for an incredible morning after.

What amazing reflections! How many people will ever get to see this? We have waited a long time to see something like this in Death Valley.

Wildrose and Telescope Peak

Looking south

Sand Ripples

Trona Pinnacles

We did a few different things this past weekend. First, we went with our friends, Dannielle and Britt, to the Alabama Hills and camped out and played around. Then, we took them back to Death Valley, regrouped, and drove a couple of valleys over to the Trona Pinnacles. We have driven past them several times previously but wanted to go check them out a little closer. We had a great time.

Camping in the Alabama Hills (BLM land).

Andrew, Dannielle, and I
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The Trona Pinnacles

The Trona Pinnacles were designated as a National Natural Landmark in 1968. They are some of the most unique geologic California Desert formations. The pinnacles or tufa formations (just like the Mono Lake tufa towers) are calicum carbonate spires that formed between 10,000 and 100,000 years ago when calicum-rich spring water and alkaline lake water chemically bonded. There are over 500 tufa pinnacles spread over a 14 square mile area in the Searles Lake Basin. They all looked like crittrers or different objects. It was fun wandering around checking them out.

I thought this tufa formation looked like a bird or eagle with its beak open. Look closely and you can see an eye.

This is the same formation as "the eagle" above, this picture was just taken from the other side which is where we camped for the night. Andrew thinks it looks more like a fish from this side.

Now the fish is about to swallow the moon.

A very delicate arch with a pinnacle on the other side.

I thought this one looked like a snapping turtle's head sticking up.