December 4, 2025 Death Valley, California

 High of 70 and sunny.

I finished this basket today. It is made from dyed pine needles, polyester thread, glass beads. The center is a piece of slate that I sand blasted and painted 'The Earth laughs with Flowers', and glued murrine I made to it. It is 11 x 10 x 2 inches. We went to the Mesquite sand dunes today. I don't usually like these dunes, they are covered with foot prints and crowded. Today it was not crowded and the late afternoon light was pretty. 

As I was walking along in the dunes I could not figure out what the blue I was see was. It was a pair of sunglasses in front of a rodent hole. They look pretty good on John. The sun had two sundogs, one on each side. They are caused by ice crystals in the clouds.

Farther back into the dunes there are less footprints. Dried mud between the sand dunes. 

John with one of the sundogs. Dunes to the south. 

Dunes to the north. Dunes to the west. 

More dunes to the west. Sunset to the west. 

The full cold supermoon rising over the dunes. The Cold supermoon. 

Sunset, moon and dunes. 

John in the sunset. Sunset over the dunes on our way back to the car. 

Moon near the parking lot. The light in the foreground is from headlights. 

December 2 -3, 2025 Death Valley

 63 and partly cloudy.

Last light on the Funeral mountains with moon. Sunset with moon. 

Sunset, moon and dead trees. 

70, sunny and windy. We hiked into Desolation Canyon. Different minerals in the rocks make this a colorful canyon. 

John climbing up one of the dry waterfalls. The canyon is very narrow in places. 

John climbing a short dry fall. Colorful canyon. 

John is between these boulders. More canyon color. 

Cool hoo doo. Afternoon light on the canyon walls of a side canyon.  

Copper in the rocks makes them green. John climbing down the dry fall. 

This formation under this rock looked like a miniature cliff dwelling to me. Side canyon. 

Wrinkled mountain. A view of Death Valley floor at the end of the canyon. 

Salt devils on the salt pan in the valley. The salt is 6 feet deep in places. Close to full moon with last light. 

November 28- December1, 2025 Shoshone to Death Valley, California

 67 and sunny.

Helping my sister lay drip lines for the palm trees. U sunset clouds. 

Sunset and moon . Eagle Mountain on the way to Death Valley.

We are down to Death Valley for the week. Grackles roosting in the campground with the moon. 

We are used to camping at Sunset Campground which is  higher up and has no pesky trees in the view. Sunset is closed till January, so we are in the lower Furnace Creek Campground. Nice enough campground, but I miss the view. Blooming desert gold. These don't usually bloom until end of Feb or March. Perhaps we will have a wonderful bloom this year if they are already starting. 

Sunset at Furnace Creek. 

Freeze warning in Death Valley tonight. The low will be 47. . . We loaded up our boats and went to Badwater ( 282 feet below sea level) to boat on Lake Manly. Lake Manly is usually a dry salt pan. But with the atmospheric river it turned into a lake with water. That's me out there. 

John on Lake Manly, paddling away from the shore. The colors and reflections are beautiful. Looking north from my boat. 

Looking south at John. We paddled out about a mile. This is as deep as it got, maybe 12 inches. 

John with a colorful sundog. The wind came up a bit and there were some waves, they cast cool shadows on the bottom. 

Bigger waves. Paddling back was more work. We had to drag the boats about  3 10ths of a mile on the salt to get back to the car. 

Sunset was this kind of weird sundog. Sunset with birds. 

We walked over to the golf course, 214 feet BELOW sea level and had dinner at the Wild Rose saloon.