Death Valley NP: 282 feet below sea level!
Death Valley → Area 51 → Kingman
The alarm exploded at 4:30 a.m. in our neon-trimmed room at the Portal Motel in Lone Pine—a retro-desert launching pad plastered with Route 395 nostalgia. My head still throbbed from yesterday’s zigzag out of Sequoia, but sunrise waits for no one. By 5:00 we had Bessie’s high beams cutting through the dark desert highway like an old Eagles track, chasing dawn toward the largest national park in the lower 48.
At 6:25 a.m., the horizon flared orange, and six minutes later we rolled past the park sign: “Welcome to Death Valley—Hottest Place on Earth.” The thermometer read a chill 70°, but we knew the oven was preheating. Death Valley holds the record: a blistering 134°F, hotter than the Sahara, and today it would still roast us at 120°. Even the Visitor Center is named Furnace Creek, like a joke the desert never stops telling.
After weeks of alpine lakes and pine-scented forests, Death Valley felt like flipping the channel to another planet: lunar, vast, mercilessly bare. Highway 136 carried us to Father Crowley Vista Point, named for the “desert padre” who loved these stark canyons. We pulled over, stretched, and felt tiny against the drop-offs—straight out of a Mad Max storyboard.
By the time we hit Stovepipe Wells, we were ready for our first reel-worthy stop: the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes. These are the ones Hollywood loves—Star Wars: A New Hope filmed here, and standing in that sea of white sand, I half expected C-3PO to shuffle by. A dad and his daughter were making the first footprints of the morning, and I jumped out, thinking, heck yeah, I’m doing this too. Three dunes later my throat was Velcro, my skin crackling like parchment. Death Valley doesn’t just dehydrate you—it evaporates you. I staggered back to my crew—Alan, Kodi, and good ol’ Bessie—feeling like a human raisin.
At the Furnace Creek Visitor Center we grabbed our passport stamps, but the ranger had breaking news: “Did you hear about the flood?” I blinked. What flood? Did I miss a Noah’s Ark sequel while I was chasing Wi-Fi? He explained a rare desert storm had recently ripped through, closing several roads. Our Plan A (Badwater Basin) was toast. Instead, he rerouted us toward Zabriskie Point, and honestly? No regrets. The candy-striped badlands there glow like melted butterscotch, all folds and ripples of sandstone sculpted by ancient rivers. We filmed it, awestruck, then pointed Bessie eastward, waving goodbye to California.
The road spat us out into Nevada, straight toward Area 51 country. We refueled and let Kodi pee in Indian Springs, a town that feels half Mayberry, half X-Files. Right next door: Creech Air Force Base, nerve center for real-time drone ops. Just down the road? The Nevada Test Site, where Cold War mushroom clouds once rose like perverse fireworks. Oppenheimer country. Creepy doesn’t even cover it. Add in all the UFO/UAP lore swirling out here, and suddenly every shadow looked like a little green man waving us off.
We cruised past Las Vegas without stopping—the Strip glittered in the distance like a rhinestone mirage—but we were chasing stranger monuments. One last detour: the Hoover Dam. Crowded, boiling hot, the water level heartbreakingly low. Not exactly the gushing Ansel Adams postcard I’d imagined, but still—standing there, you feel the ambition of a generation who thought they could command a river with concrete.
By nightfall we landed in Kingman, Arizona, gateway to Route 66. We crashed hard, knowing tomorrow we’d roll straight into Americana’s mother road.