Monty's 2001 Trip to California!

Adventures in Death Valley.
Artist's Palate...

A little further north along the Eastern road is a paved side road. The sign said Artist's Palate 1/4 mile. Another sign warned against busses, trailers or motor homes. That seemed quite strange since although the road was narrow, it was fairly surtaxing and not all that steep.

It was certainly far better than the road to the Natural Bridge where there was no warning at all. In any event, there was nothing about 4WD vehicles so I eagerly proceeded up this '1/4' mile drive. It turned out to be much longer.

I really do not know what that 1/4 mile sign was all about. Perhaps at one point in the past this road was 1/4 mile of pavement and then gravel. Now it is all paved so that sign makes little seance. Regardless, it is a fantastic drive, especially if you stop every few feet like I did ;-)

I probably did not get further than a half mile into the drive along the road before I saw a really nice, small, canyon to explore. It was not a very big canyon, but a fun one all the same. After exploring there and taking some photos, I drove up the road, but not very far when there was another canyon, then anhydrite, then another! I took lots and lots of canyon photos ;-)

Each of these canyons was unique and fascinating. None could be easily explored very far, some only a few hundred feet, before there was a vertical wall anywhere from 5-6 feet to much, much taller preventing one in cheap shoes and camera gear from easily climbing. Actually, the climb up is relatively easy, it's the climb back down which will get you. Also, all the sandstone walls are very crumbly and often would fall apart at the touch. That makes climbing even more difficult. For that reason, I mostly stuck to the canyon floors.

Another really interesting rock formation was along one of the cliff walls. It looked as though it was sculpted by intense blasting by wind and sand. Well, sand. Sandy wind? Something like that. Wind can't do much without sand ... Anyway, it was really cool so I took a bunch of photos :-)

Another cool spot was this eroded hillocks type structure. It looked like a pile of fine material like ash, eroded away in the rain. The only thing was the fact that this little hill was several hundred feet tall. Perspective is really difficult to deal with out here.

Another thing which came to mind was people having accidents out here. At one point I was walking along in a relatively flat area when I happened on one of the narrow canyons. Looking down was like looking into an abyss. There are few gentle changes out here. It's flat and then a sudden drop straight down, I'd guess 150 feet of near vertical waterfall tube. I carefully took a photo looking down that 'tube' and then continued on...

I carefully made my way a bit further up the top of this canyon and looking down into it's depths was pretty cool. I thought at this point that this would be a really nice place to observe a flash flood - at least I was on high ground. Of course that high ground could also succumb to a lot of slippery wet and slidey mud so perhaps I will just explore a dry desert. Besides, flash floods usually occur in the summer when it is far too hot to go exploring...

I took so many photos along this drive that I can't even think of the text to describe it all, so here's the rest of the 'few' which I picked out for this page :-)