So leaving Vegas... planned to leave at 8am as we'd heard Death Valley was a long drive, and we wanted to camp about three hours outside it
a) to get away from the heat
b) so we'd be near the next destination to get a campsite in a first come first serve place, where they queue from 6.30am in the morning!!
Left Vegas at 8.30am which was pretty good I thought, and I had previously spoken to Kenny about the different routes we could take by showing him on a PDF map in my phone; (the picture at the top of the blog) easiest, shortest, ghost town or most scenic. Agreed on most scenic so away we went. Navigated the Vegas traffic ok, score!! And we're driving. 'Kenny, should we take that Teopoca road?'
'Nope, go straight on.'

Ok so on we go. I also say, 'should we stop at Walmart to get food to keep us going?'
'Nah we'll be alrite.'
Two terrible mistakes...
On we go, kinda following sat nav and instructions on my phone for the 'scenic route'. So we're driving and driving and I think to myself, surely we should have seen some of Death Valley by now. We've passed on sign that directed us towards it, and the sat nav kept telling us to do a U-turn but of course we ignored it as we had the directions. So I get fed up driving and it's Kennys turn, only coz we're in the National Park. (He ain't allowed to drive on main roads, ESP not highways.) Driving and driving on,
'Kenny... I think we've gone the wrong.'
'How? We couldn't have.'
'You followed the scenic route directions, ya know the bottom set of directions on the map?'
'There were more than one set of directions?'
'There are bloody four!! We talked about this last night!!!'
'Oops..'
'You idiot!! We've drove like 60miles in the wrong direction!!!'
So we were supposed to take the scenic route, what we did instead was:
160 highway,
Bell vista Road,
Major mistake: took 373 road instead of 127
Which lead us into the 95.
If we had of taken the 127, then badwater road, we would have seen the major attractions before we hit the furnace creek visitor centre. Instead we had to backtrack...

We end up driving to the top, driving back down and up, then back down and up the other side. Along the way, we tried to do a 2mile hike to golden canyon; it was soo hot, I had to turn around after 10mins, sweating buckets and could hardly breathe. We went to 'devils golf course', where Kenny was so hot he wouldn't get out of the car, but where we actually saw the temperature reach 50 degrees! Then we try to see another sight, natural bridge, which takes us along a dirt road for a mile, to figure out that it also had a hike at the end, so back we go along the dirt road after seeing nothing! Poor rental car.
We did see the Badwater or salt planes, 282ft below sea level (lowest point in America so HOT especially as the sun reflected off them) which were pretty cool. Artists drive was a beautiful 9 mile drive through the dunes/stones. Dante's view had great views over the park. Then saw amazing sanddunes at Zabriskes point, where we attempted to watch sunset (and saw a kit fox) but of course by the time we had seen all this, it was dark.

As you can imagine, having driven 8.5 hours practically solid, we couldn't wait to get our heads down but of course we don't have a campsite booked as we weren't supposed to be camping at DEATH VALLEY. We had to try and find one in the dark by hopefully being able to see the brown signs directing us. We get to the first campsite at 8pm, it's 37degrees and we can't get any tent pegs into the ground as it pure rock. Kenny says we have to sleep in the car. Can you imagine sleeping in a car at 37degrees, with no air because you can't open the windows incase insects or scorpions or rats get in?! No don't think so. So we check out a motel and decide if it's under $50 we'll stay: $149 no thanks!! Then we head to the next campsite, Emigrant, it's a higher elevation so supposedly colder. The benefit here was it was free, but still not able to get tent pegs in.

So at 30 degrees, woo hoo, 7 degrees cooler, we decide sleep in the car it is. It was such a ridiculously silly, disastrous day that if we didn't laugh we'd cry. To top it off, we'd had to spent about 10£ buying two tiny baps, 4 bits of cheese and a lettuce to have for dinner, because Kenny didn't wana stop at Walmart. Whilst enjoying this delicious mouthwatering dinner, he says' 'what's that?!' Jumping half a mile as he thinks he saw something at his feet. I laugh and make fun of him as he's always a big chicken. The next minute I see it, a kangaroo rat run over his foot!! The funniest thing ever. If there was anything to cheer me up that day, it was the look on his face!

We made it through the night, lived to tell the tale but agreed on two things:
1) We've had enough if Death Valley to last a lifetime
2) I am NEVER letting Kenny read directions again!!!