Of course you expect cold, rainy weather when you go to Death Valley, don’t you? That’s what we have, apparently for the entire week. At least we won’t be too hot. It is pretty windy, rattling the camper and making it sway from time to time. Then we went to the ranger presentation and it was all about the big storms of 2004 and 2005 that washed out roads, washed cars down canyons, and generally isolated the area for a week. Apparently, they just reopened some of the roads in January. It gives us that nice, secure, feeling as we contemplate a rainy week.

The scenery is lovely, though. It’s spectacular and weird. We came down through a canyon in what I think was dolomite. It was candy yellow rock eroded into badlands formations. We passed by Twenty-Mule Team Canyon, so I’m guessing that there were borax mines there once. We’ll find our more when we get to explore tomorrow. We really got in too close to dark to do much exploring today.

The camper has a lot of room inside, though we haven’t got things all that well organized yet, so there’s a bit of chaos figuring out how to get to everything. I think we could actually use less interior space without feeling too cramped, as long as we had it well-organized. I didn’t find it all that difficult to drive, but it does sway on turns and bumps. Flo thinks it’s huge (which it is). It was a pretty easy trip.

The cat generally disapproved. She spent most of the trip in Flo’s lap, but she refused to purr. Tonight, as things have settled down a bit, she is purring and eating, so I guess she isn’t that unhappy. It will be interesting to see how she adapts.

More tomorrow when we get to look over the neighborhood.