January 15-16, 2015 Death Valley National Park, California

 

Last night we were walking from the campground to the Ranch to look for dessert in the dark and I fell into this hole.  I was walking beside the road because I did not want to get hit by a car.  It is over 3 feet deep, just stepped right into it. I landed with a knee on each side. Got beat up, bruised and twisted my knee pretty bad. I am laying on the couch, John put frozen pork roasts on my various bruises since we don’t have room in the freezer for ice.  The top photo is the road and the hole, the bottom is the hole itself. OUCH.

This morning I saw our neightbor pictured here ride by with his golf clubs behind his bike. There is a golf course across the street from the campground. It is –218 feet below sea level.  I reclined on my lawn chair with ice on my knee and worked some on the basket.  15 hours into it so far.

The roses my sweet hubby brought me are opening up nicely. John took this photo of me iceing my knee from out the RV window. I am forturnate that it is in the 70,s and sunny here.

Sunset tonight from our campsite.We saw this John Lennon van at the visitors center. It is a rental camping unit from British Columbia.

The district ranger came back today to talk to John about the hole. Sounds like they will get someone to cover it so no one else falls in it. We headed to the southern part of the valley to see the flowers, they have exploded. We saw Ike and Mike, the coyotes who stand in the road and when you stop they come beg for food. I told them they are a disgrace to their breed.

John with flowers. Whole fields of them, it looks like spring in the winter.

Me in the flowers. Here is a nice shot of my knees to show you a) how tall they are and b) how swollen my left knee is. I can kind of hobble around.

Desert gold, sand verbenas and evening primroses. We saw this huge mound of sand verbenas.

There are whole fields of these white evening primroses, hillsides of desert gold.

Desert gold, sand verbenas and evening primroses. As you can see there is a lot of greenery with no flowers on them yet, it is going to just keep getting better.

We heard that Artist’s drive had lots of flower, after the southern part of the valley it did not seem like much, but it is a pretty drive.

Something budding, don’t know what, sand verbena and evening primrose in the middle with a few crypanthia behind them, pink evening primrose, desert 5 spot and crypanthia.